Swedish Krona Has A Tough Time

But in order to gain the full picture we must go back through the events of February.  If we just looked at the figures that we saw during the first part of March, there is a chance that we wouldn’t see exactly what is going on.  But as you will see during this report, there is some hope that things might change and improve as the second half of March gets underway.

The Financial Times is a good indicator of what is going on in the financial and currency world.  And this news story published on the 9th March showed just how much the Swedish krona was struggling.  You can read more about the events here.

When it comes to major currencies, most people think immediately of the British pound as the one that has had the most battles of all.  But in fact the Swedish krona does pip it to the post to win that undesired title.

Let’s take a look at how things developed against the Euro during February and into March, to see how this happened.

On the 1st February a single krona could claim 0.0942 Euros.  But if you were keeping an eye on your currency converter throughout the month, you would see how much those figures were going to change.  Just two days later the exchange rate was down to 0.0930, which gave an indication of the tough times that were still to come.

So what happened next?  Well, the krona actually pushed back during the next few days and finished strongly the following Friday.  It ended up claiming 0.0946 Euros by the end of that week, so that at least was good news.  Indeed it peaked at 0.0958 on the 9th of February – but little did we know at the time that this was going to be the highest exchange rate we would see for some time.

In fact, after the 9th things started going rapidly downhill.  Two days later the exchange rate stood at 0.0924, and although it did go up and down a little there was no doubt about which direction it was going in on the whole.  It carried on sliding downwards and eventually recorded an exchange rate of 0.0903 on the 22nd February.  And that would be the last time the rate would be above 0.090 for the whole of the rest of the month.

The following day it dipped below that point and landed on 0.0898.  By the time the next weekend arrived the figure had gone down to 0.0873.  There was clearly a genuine slide in exchange rates going on here, and it was the Swedish krona that was on the downside.

Just one week later the picture had changed again.  As the news story in the Financial Times testified, the Swedish krona was really performing poorly now.  At the end of the 6th March, as everyone headed home for the weekend, the krona could claim only 0.0853 Euros.  That was a far cry from the 0.0942 it was bringing home back on the 1st February.  Where on earth would the figures go next?  The Swedes were no doubt hoping for better figures to come, but it didn’t look as if that was going to happen.

But the following week gave us something of a surprise.  The figures on the 9th March – the date of that news story – were indeed still not in a good place.  The exchange rate then was pegged at 0.0864 at the end of the day.  But then things started to improve day on day, and by the time the week finished on the 13th March, the Swedish krona was now taking home 0.0900 Euros.  It had just crept back into 0.090 territory before the week ended.

So where now for the Swedish krona?  Was that last week’s worth of figures a sign that the worst was over and we had seen the lowest point already?  Or was it merely a slight blip in the downturn that we had already witnessed over the past two or three weeks?

We’ll have to wait and see where things progress over the next few weeks to get the answer to that one.  But as a currency that is generally seen as being quite a strong one, it will be interesting to see where it heads next.