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Our opening rate against the US dollar this time around was 1.4574, but we didn’t get the good positive start to the week we wanted. By the close of play on Monday evening we had fallen to 1.4436, leaving us wondering if in fact this week could turn out to be worse than last week. Perhaps the coalition government is making investors nervous?

The opening rate this time was 1.6519, and once again things started off in a predictable way. We were on 1.6650 by Wednesday evening, but by the time Thursday evening rolled around things had dropped to 1.6419. We knew where things were likely to end up by now, and on Friday evening we were proved right as the pound fell to 1.6351.

But now we are looking at the first two days of the new week. A few hours before this article was written, it was announced that the UK would now have a new Prime Minister in the shape of the Conservative’s David Cameron. But would this result – announced as it was later into the evening – have an effect on how the markets ended on Tuesday night?

However it would be from Thursday onwards that we would start to see some differences in the exchange rate between the British pound and the US dollar. By Thursday evening there was a marginal drop to 1.5098, but the week ended in disastrous fashion as the hung parliament put paid to any hopes of a better exchange rate.

Luckily we did seem to be getting better news here, with an improved rate of 1.1520 by the close of play on Monday night. And Tuesday made things look even better, with that figure going up to 1.1584. This meant we had achieved a good increase of nearly a whole Euro cent here at least.

We certainly did a lot better on Thursday as we finished off the day on 1.1522, but there was still one day to go and the pound wasn’t exactly looking like it was in the driving seat here. Eventually we ended up with a rate of 1.1490 on Friday evening, which meant we had lost out on nearly half a Euro cent during those last three days of the week.

We certainly got a good start to the week, because by Monday evening we were sitting on a rate of 1.5446. But by Tuesday all that good work had been undone, and we had slipped back to 1.5327 instead. This meant we had actually lost out on 0.002 during those first two days.

The picture was little different the following day, when we managed to creep up to 1.5389. We clearly weren’t going to achieve much this week, and indeed we lost some ground to close out the week on 1.5347 on Friday night. This gave us a three day loss of 0.0039.

Let’s move on to see if a similar disaster was awaiting us with the Euro on day one of this new week. We were starting from 1.1401 here, and although we did have a dip on Monday it wasn’t on the same scale as we had seen against the US dollar. Instead we had a smaller loss to contend with which pushed us down to 1.1357.

Elsewhere we had better news though. The US dollar did not have what it took to survive against the pound over those first two days, as the pound added on a total of 0.0066 in all. It was a similar story against the Hong Kong dollar, with the pound increasing its standing by 0.054.