Pound Australian Dollar Exchange Rate Falls; Gains For Barclays (BARC.L) Send Share Prices Spiralling

May 8, 2014 - Written by Frank Davies

STORY LINK Pound Australian Dollar Exchange Rate Falls; Gains For Barclays (BARC.L) Send Share Prices Spiralling

UK and European share markets opened up strongly this morning following a key-note announcement from UK banking giant Barclays (BARC.L). This development, coupled with the hope that Mario Draghi will deliver a go-ahead assessment of the state of the eurozone economy later today, has sent the Pound to Australian Dollar exchange rate (GBP/AUD) lower. The Pound Australian Dollar exchange rate is currently trading down -0.62% at 1.80752 GBP/AUD.

Global equities markets began today’s session firmly on the front foot, with London’s benchmark FTSE 100 Index adding almost half a percentage point to its value during the first hour of the European session. The move higher was lead by gains from banking sector behemoth Barclays (BARC.L) which had jumped by 5% to trade back above the 255p level. The British institution had slumped to below the 240p threshold briefly yesterday morning as market participants priced in a disappointing set of profit figures.

However, today brought a new dawn for Barclays with the company’s management revealing a bold recovery plan which will bring the instigation of a ‘bad bank’ and the trimming of almost 20,000 jobs worldwide. The positive investor sentiment which has followed has seen the high-yielding currencies well supported on the day with the Australian Dollar recording particularly impressive gains against Sterling which sent the Pound Aussie exchange rate down to as low as 1.8054 GBP/AUD.

Losses for GBP/AUD were further fuelled by a relatively strong set of Australian jobs figures, published during last night’s Asian session, which revealed that the overall level of domestic joblessness had remained static last month. It appears increasingly likely that the GBP/AUD exchange rate reached a peak which it will not be able to eclipse for some significant time when it poked its head above the 1.9000 threshold during the early part of 2014. Analysts are now forecasting further short-to-medium term losses for the pair which now looks to have run out of forward momentum.

Australian Dollar Exchange Rates Today - Sending Money to Australia (12:30 08/05/2014)

The Pound Sterling to Australian Dollar exchange rate is trading down -0.62% at 1.80752 GBP/AUD.
The Euro to Australian Dollar exchange rate is trading down -0.5% at 1.48476 EUR/AUD.
The US Dollar to Australian Dollar exchange rate is trading down -0.68% at 1.06543 USD/AUD.
The Canadian Dollar to Australian Dollar exchange rate is trading down -0.45% at 0.97994 CAD/AUD.
The New Zealand Dollar to Australian Dollar exchange rate is trading down -0.59% at 0.92233 NZD/AUD.

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