The NZ dollar did virtually nothing to justify its one-cent gain over sterling.
A quarterly 1.7 per cent increase in New Zealand retail sales provided investors with the excuse to take it higher, but the Kiwi's main achievement was to keep its head down whenever the snipers were around.
The Aussie did nowhere near as well: investors were unimpressed by the unexpected loss of 16,000 Australian jobs in January and the uptick in unemployment to a 12-year high.
Sterling's position as runner-up was almost as unlikely. It owed its success first to the anticipation and then to the fact of the Bank of England governor's warning that UK interest rates could rise 'more quickly than implied by current market yields'.
He did also say it is 'more likely than not' that inflation will turn negative in the next few months but investors were relaxed about that possibility, as they seemed also to be about the euro.
The single European currency did not have a great week but it lost only half a cent to sterling and went up by three quarters of a US cent despite unfortunate developments on the Greek front.
When finance minister Yanis Varoufakis met with his Eurogroup counterparts on Wednesday, it looked at one point as though they had come to an agreement on a relaxation of the terms of Greece's bailout. They even got as far as drafting a statement. But then a couple of them made the schoolboy error of phoning their bosses for approval and did not receive it.
There is thought to be a chance of success when the Eurogroup reconvenes today, but it is equally possible that they will simply kick the can a bit further down the road. They do, after all, have previous on this one.
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