Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder.

It's Thursday the 27th of February.

I'm back at Currency Online Group, an organisation that I've been talking to for over a year now.

They handle, of course, foreign currency, but they're also attuned to what is changing, and that's why I want to catch up

with Kaya Needenthal from Currency Online Group. We've had, you might have noticed, some

changes in the United States politically. What effect, Kaya, has that had on the currency market?

Yeah, hello, Simon. So in terms of since the US election,

there's been quite a lot of fluctuation and volatility in the market. I think post the election,

the pound weakened against the US dollar. At the turn of the year, it was pretty weak. But then

since then, it's been steadily growing and it's trading it around about 126 at the moment.

So I think it's going in the right direction and I would probably think that the pound

would further strengthen against the US dollar.

That seems to be the general consensus in terms of outlook.

And in terms of the kind of wider currency markets as a whole, yeah, there's always going

to be kind of volatility and it's generally kind of centered around geopolitical events. Obviously, the US presidential election probably being the first and foremost

and the biggest driver for change. So, yeah, it's always kind of a big kind of key point in a

calendar when something like this happens. But yeah, always changing. So make sure you kind

look out for the rates and try to capitalize on the exchange rates around those moments

when it suits you. On that subject, what do you think the best strategy is for people who are planning

European or American holidays over maybe Easter or the coming summer? Okay, yeah. Obviously,

this is totally kind of like a subjective, but I would say that in terms of European holiday,

the actual pound is reasonably strong against the euro at the moment. So I would say now would be

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