Lira getting Stronger - Why?

[stoop]

Here's the actual story. Seems I was given the wrong info a few weeks back as at that time the bitcoin was worth about 3,000 dollars - so it would only have been 30 million dollars.

http://gulfnews.com/business/economy/the-10-000-bitcoin-pizza-purchase-remembered-1.2032051

[corbindallas]

I can never work out the Lira rate, all Turkish indicators are showing positives, inflation down, unemployment down, growth up, relationships with Russia back on track, Quatar relief adds to export market, Coup over a year now, referendum out the way, tourism rising, foreign investment growing etc etc, so why the bloody hell is Lira getting weaker against the Pound? On the other side Sterling has all negative indicators, BREXIT, inflation, austerity, debt mountain growth, public spending increase, political uncertainty/unrest etc etc. but holding strong? Weird and impossible to predict!

[Colwyn]

It looks to me that the lira has been pretty stable, or rising, since the disastrous January of this year. At the start of February the rate was 4.75:£ and now it is 4.65:£ - an improvement of 2% for the lira. But that is a bit feeble due to the recovery of the pound at the same time. Against the usual international measure - the dollar - the lira has improved by 6%. What's wrong with that?

[corbindallas]

Not sure 4.87 to 4.44 in last 6 months is stable, especially when exchanging forex, every time it starts to go down gradually it then jumps up quickly and as I said there seems no proper underlining to why.

[Colwyn]

I don't know where you are getting your numbers but, if they were correct, that would show the lira getting stronger by nearly 10% whereas your original post said you wondered why it was getting weaker.

[corbindallas]

Yahoo finance for the figures and today it is 4.63%, my point is that the rate is not stable at all, yet the economic returns suggest it should be good, even yesterday the IMF posted a positive re the Turkish economy, today it has reflected this by getting weaker not stronger??

[JohnF]

Lira is a volatile currency and has been for years.

JF

[Colwyn]

I am going to agree with both of you. I agree with corbyndallas that, in the short term, the lira bounces up and down with no clear driving force for these variations (if we could predict currency movements we would be multi-billionaires!). Also JohnF is right that, as one of the "emerging economies" Turkey is always closely watched and thus its currency potentially volatile. My comment was intended to point out that the lira has been RELATIVELY stable since the start of February. The graph below shows a 12 month view $/TL. As you can see in the period from start Oct to (nearly) the end of Jan the TL took a  real hammering - losing 22% 0f its value. Sice then it has just jiggled up and down a bit.

[Colwyn]

Understanding Currency Exchange Rates

The Unite union says that, finally, after 7 years of oppression by a Tory Government utterly clueless about economics, it is going to organize opposition to the vicious and vindictive 1% pay rise cap on public sector workers. The money markets seem to believe that the workers are likely to be victorious against the weak and wobbly Tories - "ruling" by permission of the headbangers in DUP - and thus that the BoE will be inclined to raise interest rates. Buoyed with this optimism the £ has leapt up against all major foreign currencies - including a 1.7% hike against the lira which currently stands at over 4.55 to the pound.

See? It's easy this currency business, isn't it? You could have predicted that yesterday. Couldn't you?

[madmart]

According to my phone the lira is now at 4.8 to the pound. How long before it hits 5?