Chris Redfern Moneycorp

It was revision of (fairly) recent work for sterling when it rose to €1.29 at the beginning of the first trading day of 2015.

As they had in September last year, sellers lined up to take advantage of a six-year high for the pound. The downward pressure was enough to knock a cent off the sterling/euro exchange rate and the pound fell against most other currencies at the same time.

That one day's action undid all of the good work done by sterling earlier in the week. It only managed to avoid the wooden spoon because a new five-year low for oil prices sent Norway's krone to the back of the field for a second consecutive week.

The euro fared no better than the pound over the seven days. It was undermined by the renewed prospect of Greece leaving the currency union after the general election on 25 January and by the increasing likelihood that the European Central Bank will be forced to go down the path of quantitative easing. With the anti-austerity Syriza party leading in the Athens opinion polls the German media reported that Chancellor Merkel thought Greece's exit from the euro would be 'manageable' if that was the way the country chose to go.

The US dollar and the Japanese yen led the way as investors moved their cash away from higher-risk Europe.

That could be the case in the coming week too. The Northern Scandinavian crowns are likely to be held back by weak economic performance and low oil prices. Political risk will overshadow sterling as the election campaign gets underway. Wednesday's consumer price index figure will the euro's biggest problem: Cheaper oil is expected to take the headline inflation figure negative, putting the ECB under even more pressure to start printing money.