This week’s currency movements

For some while, I’ve been getting Smart Currency Exchange’s weekly updates on currency movements.Smart is a company I’ve used to transfer money to a company I’m setting up in Canada, and specialises in transfers for business and property-purchase purchases. (Basically, they don’t do small amounts, but have rather better rather than, say, my bank, for sending a few tens of thousands of pounds or more.) This is their weekly newsletter, reproduced with their permission.The rates given are the “inter-bank” rates, for comparison, not the “client rates for sending, by the way”.

Currency	Rate Last Week	Rate This Week
EURO	1.245	1.268
US$	1.971	1.996
CAN$	2.014	2.013
AUS$	2.122	2.135
NZD	2.481	2.535
AED	7.244	7.331
CHF	1.965	2.047
ZAR(Rand)	15.445	15.48

Charles’s Thoughts: Sterling had a good end to the week. A couple of factors seemed to benefit sterling. Firstly the Royal Bank of Scotland has announced a rights issue which indicates that UK banks have started to restore their balance sheets. Also it is thought that the Government is set to announce next week plans to ease tight conditions in the mortgage market which will help markets. Hopefully these positive factors will allow sterling to regain some equilibrium short term.

The US is enjoying the papal visit. However there has been no divine intervention as regards to the US economy and the expectation is for further interest rate cuts. Still significant economic problems which are weighing on the US$ as it closes in on US$1.6/€1. No relief short term.

The € had an interesting week. Euro land inflation is still at the top end of expectations which means that the European Central Bank will not cut the € interest rates in the short to medium term. However, there are ever rising concerns about the Euro land economy and the strength of the €. The € maintains its “safe haven” status which it has held for a while but pressure is continuing to rise in Euro land.

Sterling had a good end to the week against most of the high yielding and commodity back currencies. Concerns in New Zealand about a possible recession are rising and as such we could start to see weakness for the New Zealand $.

[Declaration: I receive a small commission for any customers I refer to Smart using the above link. This does not affect the price you pay for your currency, since it replaces money that would otherwise be spent on advertising.]