The currency blog

Just when you thought it was safe to get back into the water after the previous EURUSD short squeeze, we see a 2% move up in the pair and it now trades over 1.25. The combination of the successful Spanish bond auction, speculation of a disappointing US jobs number later today and fears over a US double dip recession all helped the Euro climb against the Dollar. However, the fall-out from the ECB rollover of €442 bn of bank funding has delivered a relative tightening of monetary policy compared to other countries. The subsequent yield advantage of the Euro has been quickly identified by the market and has driven up the price of the Euro against both the Dollar and Sterling. A weaker Euro is needed to drive growth in the Eurozone over the medium term, so the result of the ECB policy of shoring up a trembling Eurozone banking system has been slightly counterproductive. The announced austerity measures across the Eurozone will need to be offset by foreign demand for growth to continue, something that a stronger currency makes less likely.  Whether the ECB sees this as a temporary blip in the downward trajectory of the Euro or we see further Euro strength, it is clear that this issue will be at the front of policy maker minds over the coming months.
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Currencies Direct is very proud to say that every charity we support with our Dress Down Friday and other fund raising activities, is democratically chosen by it’s employees. Over the past year we have been supporting 3 charities per month and following a Positive FX questionnaire, the results showed that whilst employees would still like to support a number of charities, they would prefer to make more of a difference and so going forward we will be supporting 3 charities for 2 months at a time.

A list of charities made up from suggestions within the office, was handed around this week for people to vote on their favourite 9. The winning 9 charities, along with their scores are shown below with the months that we will be fundraising for them!

July/ August

Marie Curie Cancer Care - 122
Wilderness Africa Trust - 49
Right To Play - 63

September/ October

Bobby Moore Fund - 92
Amnesty International - 60
Centre 56 - 85

November/ December

Anti-Slavery - 55
Ndoro Childrens Charity - 86
Food For Life Vrindavan - 105

The final group game for England was a vital must-win clash against Slovenia. We decided to show our support for the home side by having the game on the screens in the office, and by wearing football shirts (for a donation to charity of £1 of course). A couple of people even sported a St Georges cross on their faces courtesy of Barbara and her face paints!

An extra £20 was raised on the day which will be split equally between this months charities. Some photos from the afternoon are below:

An action shot - was it a goal… nooooooooooo its offside!

Rooney hits the post!!

All over - 1 - 0 to England - roll on Germany in the next round on Sunday!

Another month is over and the summer is edging closer! Lots of fun things took place in April, as well as Dress Down Friday we had our first Dress Down Thursday (before Good Friday and the bank holiday). We also had an Easter Egg Raffle with 11 prizes where David Miles bagged the top prize and I didn’t win anything despite buying lots of raffle tickets - my waistline is thankful however! We got into the sporting spirit with a sweep for the Grand National at Aintree - again I didn’t win, I’m seeing a theme here!

All of these things added together meant we had a fantastic result for April and we raised £355.05. This has pushed the co-operative wall total up to £5582. Well done to everyone that took part in the activities this month and thank you, but how did the individual charities do?

Diabetes UK £118.41
Stepping Stones Nigeria £103.52
Honeypot £133.11

So Honeypot was the favourite charity in April! The wall has been updated to show the charities that we are fundraising for in May and they are:

Face The Future
David Shepherd Foundation
Smile Foundation India

Thanks for reading, and as always don’t hesitate to forward any fundraising ideas you might have to the CSR Committee!

Check out the total on the co-operative wall below!!

£5227 - we have broken the £5k barrier. Well done to everyone for their contributions during March. We had a fun time, with the usual Dress Down Fridays and we also held a sweep for the first Formula 1 race of the season!

All these added together to raise the healthy sum of £260.55 for the month of March. And this is how the money is split between the 3 charities:

Help a London Child - £113.09
Epilepsy Research - £64.68
Born Free Foundation - £82.78

So, the Easter bunnies are on the hop and we have a Dress Down Thursday to look forward to this week as well as lots of new activities. The charities we will be supporting over April are:

Diabetes UK
Stepping Stones Nigeria
Honeypot

As always, click back here for regular updates on the additional fundraising activies that we get up to!

Thank you for reading

Currencies Direct Chilli Charity Challenge

Deepak Goyal brought the ‘hottest sauce in the Universe’ into the office and laid down a challenge - who could eat the most! Read the rest of this entry »