The pound had a week of short, sharp rises and falls against the euro, which ultimately returned to where they started. Nevertheless, GBP/EUR is well over 0.5% up over the month and 5% (yes, five percent) up on this time last year. If you would like to fix this rate for the year ahead, you can do so with a call to your account manager on 020 8108 5163.
Why would you do that? Maybe because we are only ever one data release, economic or political event away from one’s currency collapsing.
You could see a hint of that on Friday for the US dollar. America’s most important jobs report is the innocuous sounding Non-Farm Payrolls, but on Friday it showed double the number of new jobs being created in January as had been expected. The impact of this was such a boost to the dollar that a $500,000 property in the USA instantly cost nearly £5,000 more for UK-based buyers.
This was one report, but it was such a surprise to the markets that it sent speculators piling into the US dollar and the pound collapsed against it as a result.
This is always the possibility with currencies; whether a single labour market report from another country that weakens your currency by 1.5% as on Friday, or some sort of global schism like war or pandemic that weakens it by 10%. A lot can happen over three months or so of a property transaction.
So do call your account manager on 020 8108 5163 and discuss de-risking the whole process.
