1/10/2017
Pound sell­off is one for the record book – a chart
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Pound sell-off is one for the record book – a chart
Fast FT
JUNE 24, 2016 by: Peter Wells
The pound’s decline isn’t just its biggest on record, it is vying to be among the biggest falls for
any major global currency in decades.
Sterling was trading about 7.5 per cent lower at $1.3755 at just before 11am in New York, but
had been down by as much as 11.1 per cent against the dollar in the Asian session as news
emerged that the UK had voted in favour of leaving the EU, writes Peter Wells.
Not only is the pound’s historic move (http://next.ft.com/content/434a3fcf­62d2­3a99­bd2d­
3013fd426d84) likely to be a record decline with respect to itself, it will also rank among the
biggest one­day drops for major global currencies.
https://www.ft.com/content/60416c82­682f­3a0c­b269­6c759a535169
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1/10/2017
Pound sell­off is one for the record book – a chart
In our table, we’ve calculated the three largest one­day falls for some of the most popular
global currencies using daily Bloomberg data back to 1971, save for the euro (introduced as a
physical currency in January 2002) and the Australian dollar (floated in December 1983).
One notable thing is how the pound’s plunge on June 24 is head­and­shoulders above its next
biggest decline, which happens to be Black Wednesday in 1992. (That was the day the UK
government had to withdraw the pound from the European exchange rate mechanism, and
famously made George Soros £1bn by shorting sterling.) The biggest falls for other currencies,
notably the Australian dollar and the euro, tend to cluster. So this pound move is quite
incredible; but you probably already knew that.
The euro, which was down 2.4 per cent at $1.1113, was also on track to post one of its biggest
one­day drops since the currency’s physical introduction in 2002.
[Ed. A previous version of this post incorrectly displayed gains for the Japanese yen and
Swiss franc. Apologies for the miscalculation.]
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