January was an intriguing month as far as the currency markets were concerned. The picture was full of ups and downs, but now we have February to contend with. What would happen in this month’s currency converter figures to give us food for thought?
An overview of the currency markets during February
0.6287 was the figure we finished up on at the end of January with regard to the US dollar against the British pound. Could the dollar do better in February?
This was necessarily a short month, and so by the time we were two weeks in and halfway through it, the dollar was on 0.6250. Not much of an improvement but better than it has been in a while. However it spent most of the next few days back in the 0.61 region, before returning to 0.6214 on the 25th. Finally the dollar finished the month on 0.6164 against the pound, so it had lost out overall.
The US dollar bagged a rate of 0.7303 against the Euro to close out January. Once again the halfway point of the month on the 14th saw a rate of 0.7440 on the converter, and this would be as good as things would get too. Finally the month closed out on 0.7228 so there was a drop for the dollar here as well.
Next it’s the turn of the US dollar against the Hong Kong dollar. Last time we left it on 7.7974 and this time it turned out things would be very choppy indeed. The pattern for the entire month looked very much like the letter W with a bit of a drop at the end. This meant the closing rate was 7.7902 so clearly it wasn’t a good month for the US dollar.
Finally the US dollar ended January on 82.157 against the Japanese yen. It did well for the first half of the month, rising to 83.797 in the process. But once again, it couldn’t sustain the level; eventually the yen dropped back to close the month of February on 81.870.
Meanwhile, over in Europe…
The British pound finished up January with a rate of 1.1615 against the Euro. So could it do better and get better results during February?
It rose to 1.1901 by the end of the first week, so things were looking good. But as we have seen so far, things don’t always carry on that way. Towards the end of the month the exchange rate fell to 1.1691, but luckily the pound managed to claw back a little of the losses. It eventually finished on 1.1726.
Elsewhere last month…
The Canadian dollar always seems to be quite close in the exchange rate with the US dollar. It ended January on 1.0009. As it turned out this would be a good month with lots of improvements for the Canadian dollar. By the time the month ended it had improved to a rate of 1.0220. Now it was clearly above parity, and that is something we haven’t been able to say for a while at least.
Looking forward
It has been a strange month for the US dollar, and not a good one at that either. It slid against many other major currencies so we can only hope that it will improve come March.
The pound did rather well against the Euro though, and that is encouraging to see. It only remains to be seen whether the pound can continue in that vein or whether it will start to slide back again in the near future. We just never know what to expect from these two currencies.
Of course the currency markets are always fluctuating and we can never be sure which currencies will improve and which ones will not. But the month of February certainly produced some interesting results when we may not have assumed it would happen. It will be intriguing to see which currencies do well as we move into March and keep a close eye on the currency markets.
So the winners were perhaps the pound (to an extent) and certainly the Canadian dollar. But the US dollar has some work to do yet, and we will be watching.