News

So here we are with our second report of this week, in which we take a look back at how the week began with the first two days worth of information. Last time we had a better end to the week than we’d had at the beginning in terms of how the British pound was doing. And in fact we managed to finish off last week with a better rate of exchange against every one of the five currencies we look at.

Let’s move to our first stop as usual which is the US dollar. Our closing rate last time after that initial loss was 1.4947, and thankfully we managed to push back up to 1.5061 the following day. There were still two days left to go for the week though, so what would happen there?

So were we in for a similar tale against the Euro? The closing rate here last week was 1.1201, having lost out on a cent and a half. And Monday was no better against the Euro than it had been against the US dollar, as we finished the day on a lowly 1.1029. Once again we saw a small climb the following day to 1.1033, but it wasn’t enough to give us any real confidence in what would happen next.

So let’s start out by focusing on how the British pound fared against the US dollar for the remainder of the week. Our starting exchange rate on Wednesday morning was 1.5424, so the aim was to try and push that up as the week went on. And we did at least get the best start possible with a small increase to 1.5438.

As last week ended we saw a raft of bad results for the British pound. In those last three days of the week we had lost out on nearly three cents against the US dollar, while the loss against the Euro was at least limited to just over a cent. The loss against the Hong Kong dollar was equally troubling at 0.23 over the course of three days.

We’ll start with the US dollar as always, where we will see that the pound finished on 1.5679 on Tuesday night. Wednesday did better as we managed to up things to 1.5795 by the end of the day. But the midweek point turned out to be the high point of the week as well, as the next couple of days’ worth of figures proved.

But how good would our performance be against the Euro? We were starting from a position of 1.1506, and once again Monday started off well as we ended the day on 1.1526. But that initial rise was soon forgotten because by Tuesday evening the exchange rate had gone down to 1.1487.

Last time we saw the pound dip against all five of the major currencies we look at in the first two days of the week. It lost half a cent against the US dollar; nearly a cent against the Euro; 0.041 against the Hong Kong dollar and 0.0167 against the New Zealand dollar.

Welcome back to a new look currency report, which from now on will be issued twice weekly instead of once a week. This report will focus on the changes which took place over Monday and Tuesday of this week; next Monday’s report will then concentrate on what happened between Wednesday and Friday.

The US dollar certainly had the best position so far, and it made us wonder whether there were other losses in the offing. It was certainly the case that we had lost enough in a single day to put the pound on the back foot, and even those miniscule increases since then had shown the dollar was in charge.