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Poor trade figures and positive UK house prices have equally little effect on the pound. Euroland data positive but not positive enough.

Another two cent range, almost identical to the previous week's, held the pound and the euro in close step. A net half cent loss for sterling left it at €1.1150, exactly the same position it had occupied at the beginning of the month.

There were not too many UK economic data and events to worry the pound last week but almost every one of them engendered some sort of reaction - mostly negative. It is a tribute to sterling's growing resilience that on every occasion the loses were temporary.

The pound's toughest hurdle was Tuesday's trade figures. September's trade deficit was substantially worse than investors had been led to expect. Instead of remaining steady at just over £6 billion the trade gap widened to more than £7 billion.

The announcement coincided with unhelpful news about Britain's credit rating. Ratings agency Fitch said the government's reluctance to cut public spending could mean a downgrade of Britain's sovereign debt, making it harder to sell.

Thursday's unemployment figures could have been worse. The unemployment rate actually fell to 7.8% in September from what had originally showed as 7.9% in August. Instead of the expected 20,000 job losses in September "only" 13,000 extra people found themselves on the dole.

The Bank of England's Quarterly Inflation Report was a little strange, if not for its content then for the way it was spun by Governor Mervyn King. The detail of the report suggested that the Bank's economists are optimistic about an economic rebound next year.

The tone of the governor's speech was gloomy. Nobody is sure whether he was deliberately trying to manage expectations (and the pound?) downward or if he was simply suffering from swine flu.

One almost consistently bright topic was house prices. In the last eight days the RICS, the government and property website Rightmove have all - one way or another - reported positive news about UK residential property.

For the RICS it was another improvement in its price balance, this time to its highest level in three years. At Rightmove, where they measure asking prices rather than actual transaction prices, a -1.6% monthly fall still left the index +1.6% higher than a year earlier.

Where the pound managed to recover from everything that was thrown at it the euro came close to keeping a clean sheet. The Sentix index of Euroland investor confidence improved by more than five points to -7.0.

Euro zone industrial production scored a second successive monthly increase, rising by +0.3%. The economy moved out of recession in the third quarter with gross domestic product rising by +0.4%.

They were all decent enough numbers. The problem was that they were not as good as investors had been led to expect. The Sentix index was three points short of forecast.

Industrial production grew by only half as much as promised. GDP was supposed to have gone up by +0.6%. From the market's point of view the euro was damned with faint praise. Reasonable progress but no cigar.

Neither the pound nor the euro has any clear sense of purpose. There is movement but the ups and the downs are roughly in balance and sterling looks just as it did at the end of October.

For several weeks now the conservative strategy has been to maintain a neutral stance on currency exposures. There is as yet no reason to modify this stance.

Buyers of the euro should hedge half their requirement with a forward purchase. Those with a short time horizon who do not want to cover their whole exposure should protect themselves with a stop order.

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Is any property below €50,000 a cheap Spanish property? Are cheap Spanish properties only to be found at auction or as bank repossessions? How much below market value does a Spanish property need to be to be considered cheap?

Continue reading: What IS cheap Spanish property?