Chris Redfern Moneycorp

For a second week the Australian and Canadian dollars and the South African rand filled three of the four bottom slots on the currency league table.

Common to all is the fear among investors that slower growth in China and the eventual winding down of the Federal Reserve's bond-buying programme will result in reduced demand for commodities and energy.

With the Aussie in particular there is an awareness that the currency is still, in the opinion of many, overvalued. That point was made loud and clear by Ford, which announced the closure of its nine-decade-old Australian manufacturing facility because the strong AUD made it uncompetitive.

At the top of the table, by an accident of timing, was the Japanese yen. Like Japanese government bonds and equities, the currency was all over the place. Six months ago there appeared to be a clear strategy of money printing by the Bank of Japan to erode the yen's value, cure a decade's inflation and return the economy to growth. The authorities are now trying to cherry-pick the desired results. For example, they want higher inflation and lower government borrowing costs, outcomes which are usually mutually exclusive.

Investors don't know what to make of the constantly-changing messages out of Tokyo but many of them - the ones outside Japan at least - fear it will end in tears for Japanese Government Bonds (JGBs) and the yen.

Sterling tripped over its own UK economic data too often for its own good. Inflation fell more quickly than expected, retail sales went down when they should have been steady and the breakdown of first-quarter gross domestic product showed falling personal spending and business investment. Fortunately the pound has fewer opportunities for serious error this week.