It has been sterling's week. It was also sterling's month, quarter, half-year and year.
Over all of those periods, the pound was the top performer among the dozen most actively-traded currencies.
Compared with its (admittedly weak) position in mid-February 2013, sterling is an average of 15 per cent stronger. For good measure, last Friday it touched a six-and-a-half-year high against the US dollar.
Its progress last week was mainly down to Bank of England governor Mark Carney.
As expected, he provided new forward guidance about monetary policy when he introduced the Bank's quarterly Inflation report.
The original guidance dated back six months and focused on a 7 per cent unemployment rate as a necessary criterion for higher interest rates.
With unemployment already down to 7.1 per cent, the governor needed a new way to persuade his audience that rates would remain low for a considerable time. So he unveiled a fresh set of goalposts, relating to spare economic capacity and sustainable growth.
Having examined the new guidance investors inferred that UK interest rates would begin to head higher in spring next year and they decided this was a good thing for the pound.
Down at the rear of the field, the US dollar received no help whatsoever from its own new central banker. In her two presentations to Congress, Janet Yellen said nothing to alter investors' expectations for US monetary policy under her leadership.
While that was not a bad thing for the dollar, it did not provide any new reason to buy it.
There were reasons to sell though, notably the monthly falls in retail sales and industrial production.
Sterling will be hogging the headlines again this week but with UK data for inflation, employment and retail sales all scheduled for release, the pound is not guaranteed the runaway success it enjoyed over the previous seven days. For it to do well, the numbers will have to be better than good.
