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pound on the slide

Posted: Sun 03 May 2015 12:12
by montgolfiere
anyone wanting to change pounds to euros anytime soon..might be wise to do it 'asap'......Pound already lost 5 euro cents in a week....if there is 'an impossible election result' on thursday ...it could sink like a stone....

Re: pound on the slide

Posted: Mon 04 May 2015 10:09
by martyn94
montgolfiere wrote:anyone wanting to change pounds to euros anytime soon..might be wise to do it 'asap'......Pound already lost 5 euro cents in a week....if there is 'an impossible election result' on thursday ...it could sink like a stone....
The problem with this is that the current exchange rate already reflects people's expectations about what might happen next Thursday. The fact that the rate has already dropped by five cents might just as well indicate that it has "overshot" (if you do not believe that FX markets are strongly efficient). In truth, it's just a mug's game.

Posted: Mon 04 May 2015 14:49
by montgolfiere
'Playing the markets' i indeed a @Mugs Game'.... Changing Sterling at the best rate is sensible, if at all possible.!!! I am not sure the 'election effect' has been fully taken into account as yet. Last weeks fall was , at least partly in response to, poor Manufacturing Output Data.... some of which is the result of the high pound of the past few months!!!

Posted: Mon 04 May 2015 20:42
by martyn94
montgolfiere wrote:'Playing the markets' i indeed a @Mugs Game'.... Changing Sterling at the best rate is sensible, if at all possible.!!! I am not sure the 'election effect' has been fully taken into account as yet.
Me neither. That's the problem with the future. But if people haven't, it's not that they didn't have four years' notice.

Posted: Fri 08 May 2015 09:48
by Smiley G
Sterling currently 1.3798 (up 1.87%)

Posted: Fri 08 May 2015 12:54
by montgolfiere
at least one bit of good news!!! depending on your peronal preferences.!!!

Posted: Fri 22 May 2015 06:57
by montgolfiere
up over 1,40 this morning!!

Posted: Fri 22 May 2015 09:38
by Santiago
Yes, it certainly makes Britain seem expensive to those earning Euros but on the other hand for French businesses selling to the UK, or people living here on a UK income, a strong Pound is a good thing.

I hope it will encourage more British tourism to the region as many local businesses have suffered in the last few years.

Sterling

Posted: Fri 22 May 2015 12:31
by BT
My understanding is that British holiday makers are heading for Greece (Crete) this year. Booking are way up.

BT

Posted: Fri 22 May 2015 13:11
by opas
I manage 6 properties in this area, a couple of them are luxury villas, those are fully booked from early june to mid sept and 3 of 4 apartments/ maisons du village are also Full.

It will be a very busy season for me.

As to exchanging money, i shall mention it to my financial advisor when he returns from photographing stuff to sell on le boin coin :roll:

Posted: Mon 29 Jun 2015 08:03
by Smiley G
Currently 1.42890 !

Posted: Mon 29 Jun 2015 08:35
by montgolfiere
I imagine it could well go to 1.45 this week as the Greek Tragedy continues....

Posted: Mon 29 Jun 2015 17:16
by martyn94
montgolfiere wrote:I imagine it could well go to 1.45 this week as the Greek Tragedy continues....
And I imagine that I'm Cary Grant, sometimes, in a dim light. The question is whether your imaginings are any better than everyone else's collective imaginings as expressed in the current exchange rate. If there were strong reasons to think that 1.45 is the "expected" outcome (in a statistician's sense), then the rate would already be 1.449. The fact that this isn't so suggests that other people see substantial uncertainty - as I do, if that were worth anything.

Thinking that we can guess exchange markets is a fantasy for most people, which we would do best to keep to ourselves. That way, we only have our own losses on our conscience when we get it wrong, as we mostly will.

Posted: Sun 19 Jul 2015 16:27
by montgolfiere
1,44 this morning.......

Posted: Tue 21 Jul 2015 23:04
by martyn94
montgolfiere wrote:1,44 this morning.......
Tell me what it'll be in three weeks' time (to the day), and I'll be impressed. Or not, as the case may be.

Posted: Wed 22 Jul 2015 10:32
by Santiago
Until the Greek situation appears to be under control, the Euro will remain weak. But as everybody in the financial world knows about the Greek problem, I imagine the Euro is trading at a rate that already takes all that fear and uncertainty into account.

That's pretty much as far as I would go with predictions.

Posted: Tue 12 Jan 2016 08:10
by Smiley G
Commercial rate down to 1.3342 this morning.

Posted: Fri 15 Jan 2016 16:54
by Smiley G
Now down to 1.3071 this afternoon, close to a 52 week low of 1.2920 :(

Posted: Fri 15 Jan 2016 20:35
by SteveB
Yes, for the last few weeks I've been playing a kind of "currency roulette" trying to pick the right time to make forward contracts with a currency dealer for my house purchase - something other cash buyers will probably be familiar with. For people who aren't, the idea is that you fix your exchange rate at a particular time, rather than having to use the rate that is operating at the time you hand over the money. This involves having to guess whether the rate will get better or worse over the period in question, which is practically impossible to predict, even for the experts. Considering the amount of money involved in a house purchase, fluctuations in exchange rates can of course make a lot of difference to the cost of the house.

In the end, by breaking the sum up into smaller chunks and fixing the rate at different times - the last chunk today in the middle of the latest slide - I managed to get an overall average rate of about 1.32, considerably worse than it was a month or so ago, but the way things are going perhaps quite a lot better than it will be by the time the purchase goes throug, around the end of next month. My only consolation is that the difference more or less equates to the reduction in price I managed to negotiate with the vendor.

Of course, the exchange rate might recover in the next few weeks, but such is the nature of gambling!

Forward contracts

Posted: Fri 15 Jan 2016 21:07
by Expatcounsellor
I opened a account in Ireland with my Irish hubby when we were over in Ireland last year. You don't need to be buying a house to use a forward contract. I used moneycorp nn arranged a standing order to send money from my UK account by standing order every month to Irish account via a forward contract for a year at 1.35. Then when the rate improved a bit before Xmas I took another one out for six months at 1.38. Delighted I did now....only regret I didn't say 12 months for the second one too. It's great as I now have money in a euro account in Ireland n a debit card I can use anywhere in Europe . idewl for seeing irish family but also great for france n can use in UK if I needed to in emergency....

Posted: Mon 08 Feb 2016 22:27
by Smiley G
Down to under 1,29€ to the £

Posted: Wed 06 Apr 2016 17:14
by Smiley G
Down to under 1,24€ to the £Pound

Posted: Tue 26 Apr 2016 22:37
by Smiley G
Now over 1.29, due to anticipated "Remain" win on June 23rd.

Posted: Fri 29 Apr 2016 19:45
by montgolfiere
lets hope so.....it would be a disaster otherwise.

Posted: Wed 22 Jun 2016 11:35
by Smiley G
Currency traders have indicated that even a very narrow "Remain" win will cause hiccups in the markets if a divisive outcome emerges on Friday. I suppose the same would happen if it was a narrow "Leave" win.
One thing is certain, Britain will change on Friday.

Posted: Fri 24 Jun 2016 17:51
by Smiley G
Smiley G wrote:Currency traders have indicated that even a very narrow "Remain" win will cause hiccups in the markets if a divisive outcome emerges on Friday. I suppose the same would happen if it was a narrow "Leave" win.
One thing is certain, Britain will change on Friday.
Well I DID say "Britain will change on Friday" and the £1 has dropped to a current level of £1 = 1.22630€.
If more voters had bothered to vote the outcome may have been very different. 72.2% of the electorate, for such a vital decision, was lower than the 82-83% that most forecasters were predicting.

Posted: Fri 19 Aug 2016 15:29
by lp353927
I am interested in this issue - property prices in London after Brexit. KPMG predicted that prices would drop by 5% nationally. But the contrary happened. The weak pound attracted foreign investors and now we enjoy even higher prices.
It seems like the interest rate drop will do the same - https://tranio.com/united-kingdom/analy ... rket_5177/