News

Things looked more promising on Thursday as the pound finished the day on 1.5554. But if we started to get a little more optimistic we were soon left feeling disappointed again. That’s because Friday blew what little we had gained on Thursday out of the water, leaving us on a sorry 1.5373 to end the week and the month.

The final figure achieved by the pound against the US dollar on Tuesday was a dismal 1.5518. But would it slide even more or could we actually do better than that by the end of the week?

No wonder the pound proceeded to slump when the economy is threatened with “real risk” of a second recession. So how far did this slump take sterling? Last Friday we saw the pound end the week at $1.551825 against the US dollar. It was holding on pretty well on Monday in the $1.55 range but by late Tuesday the 24th it was at $1.5447.

Against the pound, the first half of the week was in positive territory against the US dollar, but that ended on August 20 as the pound slid down by a significant amount. The pound slipped a bit against the euro and the New Zealand dollar and then recovered by Friday. The opposite was true of the Hong Kong dollar, with the pound increasing a bit on Wednesday and then falling the next two days.

Let’s begin with the pound against the US dollar. The pound ended last week at 1.558573, and it seemed that it would continue to strengthen as the European economy as a whole grew stronger. So far so good by Monday evening as the pound strengthened to 1.561320 for a .176% increase.

The first half of the week was definitely split in two, with the pound slipping against the US dollar, the Euro and the Hong Kong dollar on the currency converter. Elsewhere we had better news as the pound did well against the New Zealand and Australian dollars.

As always our initial point of evaluation is with the US dollar. Here we are beginning with a rate of 1.5872 on the currency converter, and initially the news was very good. Monday evening saw a closing rate of 1.5959 on the cards.

We had a marginal increase on the Wednesday, pushing us on a little further to 1.5941 against the US dollar. After that we saw a dip the following day to 1.5897 – only half a cent or so down but enough to take away the chance to end the week on a great note. And indeed with Friday ending on 1.5872 it was not the result we wanted to close out the week.

Our third stop is the Hong Kong dollar, where our opening rate was pegged at 12.118. Once again we had a good day to start with, recording an increase to 12.288 in the process. Tuesday was better as well with another leap up to 12.367 to close out the first two trading days of August.

We started off well by adding a small amount to our exchange rate, finishing Wednesday evening on 1.5578. This improved to 1.5619 the following day but we lost a little momentum to finish the week on 1.5604. This was still better than we had started with originally though.