Here we are with another report to pore over, and it looks as if the British pound has some work to do this week. Let’s dive right in and see whether the pound could achieve anything of note, or whether it would be left in a worse position to the one it started in.
An overview of the currency markets for May 13th – May 17th 2013
As the week began, the British pound stood at 1.5383 against the US dollar. The first two days clearly didn’t go in our favour, as by Tuesday night the pound had fallen to 1.5300. Things got worse still the next day, as it dropped to 1.5198. This clearly was not going to be a good week for us. Fortunately this was the rock bottom point, and although we didn’t recover all the lost ground, we did at least recover to close Friday night on 1.5234.
When the week began against the Euro, the exchange rate was 1.1844. This climbed slightly to 1.1846 on day one before falling the following day to close on 1.1790. Fortunately things started to improve for the British pound and it increased its standing to close on 1.1837 by Friday night. This was still slightly down compared to where it had started.
Let’s move on now and see whether the pound could do better against the Hong Kong dollar. A similar pattern began here as we started on 11.938 and then fell back to 11.875 by Tuesday evening. Things got worse the following day as the pound dropped to 11.796 but again this proved to be the low point. The pound then had two days to recover and it managed to climb back up to 11.827 by the time the week was done with.
Next stop is the New Zealand dollar and here the pound started on a rate of 1.8504. It managed to buck the trend here as well, rising to 1.8578 by day two before dropping back slightly to 1.8504 the following day. By the time the week was over though, the pound had managed to improve its standing to 1.8842 – significantly better than it had started with.
Finally we have the Australian dollar to look at, and if previous weeks have been anything to go by there is a chance it may mirror the positive pattern seen against the New Zealand dollar. It looked as if this may be the case as the pound began on 1.5371 and improved to 1.5421 on Tuesday before losing ground and finishing Wednesday evening on 1.5376. But then we saw the same increase we had seen against the New Zealand dollar, and the pound finished on a high note as it closed on 1.5644 on Friday night.
Notable events in the world of currency
The pound improves against the Canadian dollar
Here the pound climbed from 1.5531 to 1.5649 over the course of the week.
A slight improvement against the Swiss franc as well
There was more good news here, although the improvement was slight – climbing from 1.4722 to 1.4736 as the week closed.
More good news against the Icelandic krona
We can complete a trio of good results here if we pick this currency, as the pound increased its exchange rate from 182.744 to 188.004 here.
It is easy to see it was a mixed week in the end, although if we had judged things on the first three results we may have assumed we had nothing but disappointment coming for the British pound this week. Fortunately we did have some good results in some areas, so it was good to have some good news to celebrate. Hopefully we will be able to improve our standing against the Euro and the US dollar next week, but at least we had good results elsewhere this time around.
We shall be back next week to find out if the British pound can build on this performance and deliver even better results.