The guessing game continues. When people who know about these things said, four and a half long years ago, that nothing gets decided in EU negotiations until the last possible moment, I wonder how many of us believed them?
Yet here we are just five weeks from the day that the UK finally casts off the comfort blanket of European Union “freedoms” (or “straight-jacket”, depending on your point of view), and we’re not much further along.
Looking at various currency predictions this morning different experts are saying that the pound will go one of three ways: up, down, or sideways. That’s about as helpful as they get, I’m sorry to say. (You can still download our October-December quarterly forecast here. They are an amalgamation of all the major banks’ forecasts so if nothing else it’s interesting to see if your bank got it right or wrong).
So where does that leave you if you have a currency exchange upcoming in 2021, as I know that many people reading this today have?
Looking at the GBP/EUR graph, of the past six months, which you can do here, it’s clear that sterling is trading at around its highest rate against the euro since the pandemic struck.
Against the dollar, sterling has rarely been stronger since the referendum in 2016 and only on a handful of days, literally, in the past two years.
Could it go stronger? Certainly. Could it go weaker? Undoubtedly.
But one thing we can predict is that there will be post-Covid bounce by the spring and that a hoard of cash saved by those who have been locked down but haven’t lost their income, will be spent.
So, I would urge readers with a plan to buy a property abroad, or do business abroad, to think seriously about locking in today’s rate.
You can do that by calling your trader on 020 8108 5337.
