£ strongest major currency in the world in 2009

gozomark

purch wrote: »

It was pretty clear 6 months ago that the ECB was well behind the curve in it's response to the looming recession.

absolutely, as evidenced by the fact they are only now talking about QE. Its also down to their mandate

BOE - inflation 2% +/- 1%
Fed - inflation and growth mandate
ECB - inflation below 2%

the ECB mandate is much stricter than Feds or BOE, and meant they were constrained much more before acting

sabretoothtigger

What about australia, they just returned to positive GDP

£ wont be strongest for 09, its just people leaving the dollar at this moment.
I think this is also why the arabs placed the biggest share sale in recent history, nows a good time to take their money back home

It has been good though, british cash has outperformed the dow index over the last month

To anybody tempted, this is a thread about currency exchange, not gold.

Gold is a currency without a country, zero gdp and zero(ish) inflation



We need to see a £ index to consider its strengths really, without that the parity with gold is the closest thing

DiggerUK

sabretoothtigger wrote: »

Gold is a currency.

I do support your claim, but what we are talking about here is forex rates, they are moving in the most incredible ways, and we all need to understand why and how. We could be wrong don't forget. :rotfl:

sabretoothtigger

Probably best to consider the dollar index then. I dont normally study forex, seems we have the dollar and everything is stated relative to it which is bs

http://www.futurespros.com/futures-currencies/british-pound?sym=B6

chopperharris

my ifa just last month put 60k of mine into sterling , advised me to wait before buying my villa 300k euros til late in the year if i want to pay nearly a third less and put a further 60k of mine into sterling liquid reserves.

last year my portfolio and fees included made me down 25 percent or so , las six months im now back under 20 percent down , well beats savings rates....is there growth well there must be , is it this dead cat gubbins might be dunno.

A good bounce will be helped by a good summer after two bad ones , and that only helps increase the pound v euro even more.But a high quid means exports suffer so its swings and roundabouts.

I also doubled my stake in rbs in my private portfolio.

DiggerUK

Gozomark,
I'm guessing you have a site you use for tracking forex rates. For anybody who doesn't here is the one I use.
http://finance.yahoo.com/currency-converter?amt=1&from=GBP&to=USD&submit=Convert#from=GBP;to=USD;amt=1

When rates are set tomorrow it will be interesting to see what happens to pound if more QE or gilt sales are in the headlines.
I don't see rates going up. (Digger prediction)

nrsql

gozomark wrote: »

hence the title to the thread - its not just against the $ - its up 14% v € and 30% v yen from the lows - this is £ strength, not $ weakness

Yep - I realised that. Seemed to be changing into a thread about the dollar rate though. Sterling probably has a much better outlook there.

Will be interestin to see what happens later in the year when RPI increases (unless there's a change in the calculation to reduce the affect of mortgages).

mrposhman

DiggerUK wrote: »

Gozomark,
The rise in value of the pound has been frustrating for us who are invested in gold.
The reason is simple, as pound strengthens the price of gold (pog) in UK falls.

I don't want to turn this into a gold thread, and I'm not usually one for saying "I told you so" but a few months ago when we seemed to get a daily "buy gold thread" I mentioned it probably wasn't the best time (and equities have massively outperformed, and I also mentioned the exact thing that has happened in terms of the value of sterling. Shame most of the gold bugs don't listen to advice but each to their own I guess.

Ps. This isn't directed at you specifically so don't take this as a dig at you, just frustration of the arrogance of some of the posters of a few months ago (and I can't remember if you were one of these).

Anyway, back to the currency. All good news for us in the UK. Shame I'm off to australia next month (only in transferring money stakes) as the Aussie $ has kept track with the £ even as the £ strengthened against the $, the € and the yen so not all that great for me.

gozomark

yep, my "£ strongest major currency in the world in 2009 " is only true if exclude A$ as a major currency - A$ is up 1-2% v £

DiggerUK

Gozomark,
Still can't call sterling as strongest currency.
Against other currencies it has only made about half it's losses back from a year ago.
Everybody is gaining against the dollar it seems, but not getting past it.

It seems like a race were the horses are lame and the jockeys are p1ssed.