Talk:Exchange rate

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Changed the example. The PRC government states that its policy is to have the RMB trade within a narrow range with the US dollar, but it is not formally a peg. The HK dollar is formally pegged to the US dollar.

Can we have some explanation as to why exchange rates vary? Clearly, at a particular time, some people will prefer to have their wealth denominated in yen rather than dollars, and vice versa - hence the market. So specifically, I'm asking for reasons why a person would choose to transfer their money from one currency to another. What makes one good, and another less good?

Why do they vary? The first things that come to mind are:
  • Central bank open market operations
  • changes in relative interest rates between the countries
  • Changes in balance of payments and balance of trade
  • changes in inflation rate and money supply
  • short term currency flows (ie. corporate profit repatriation)
  • hot money flows (speculators) (political uncertainty)
  • growth rate
  • yield curve
  • almost any other piece of economic data that is released
The complete list would be very long. mydogategodshat 03:07, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Quotation

Hi, the paragraph about quotation has to be rewritten, but I dont want to overwrite somebody else's stuff. So, since I'm still new, how do you handle this? Overwriting and waiting what happens or discussion?

Cheers a random user...

Welcome to Wikipedia. Be bold to editing. Anything you edit can always be reverted if necessary.
Roadrunner 19:01, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Rewritten to remove contradiction & to agree with [1]. But does anyone use 'price currency' and 'unit currency' outside Wikipedia? Andy G 22:34, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Bear market

"In the foreign exchange markets there is never a 'bear' market." A currency can enter a bear market. In any transaction there must be a buyer and a seller. In that sense the world market can never enter a bear market. - Jerryseinfeld 22:39, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hi this page has been edited by Me...Bond.

-Unless, of course, human beings colonize another planet. :)

[edit] Move

Move this article to currency market or something like that. - Jerryseinfeld 05:27, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

  • vote for move Currency Markets
  • absolutely not Bluemoose 18:05, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • There used to be a redirect from Foreign exchange market to this page. I understand that "Currency Markets" and "Exchange Rate" are two seperate topics. I have removed the redirect and later, that page has been designated as a economy stub. Please feel free to improve Foreign exchange market.doles 00:38, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)

[edit] Mechanics of trading

This section needs a re-write, but since finance is not my strong point I'll leave it to someone who is more of an expert on the topic. I have made a few edits which hopefuly will make it more encyclopedic. I deleted the last paragraph which was non-NPOV and seemed like a marketing blurb cut and pasted from a currency trader's website.

The paragraph beginning "It is possible for investors to speculate on currency..." was poorly written as it used too many exclamation marks, and phrases like "you are very happy!" and "nice fuzzy feeling". I have attempted to improve on the style and make it more encyclopedic. --Peter 02:17, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Top traded currencies

The table which shows the top most traded currencies says that 1st is USD then JPY and THEN EUR, but if I'm not mistaken (IF I'm not, I not saying I right) Euro is traded more than Japanese Yen. Can anyone clear this up for me. - Gerbon689 13:10, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Fluctuations in exchange rates

I suggest we remove the following line from paragraph 4; "When China announced plans for its first manned space mission the price of the Yuan jumped." The Yuan is pegged to the dollar, therefore, how does it jump? Googling failed to reveal any news articles reinforcing this statement. --Danrdanny 12:16, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

good catch! That is very misleading. I'm assuming the contributor for that blurb meant the synthetic yuan futures.... I'll see if I can fix/clarify. Feco 22:59, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] External Links

I cleaned up the link section with two goals in mind:

  1. reduce the use of this page as a google pagerank manipulation- the descriptive terms attached to the links shouldn't be obvious google fodder... I tried to change them to reflect who/what was on the linked paged.
  2. I cleared out obviously commercial links... several pages provided cross rates, but some of them were just the bait to a trading platform. Why list eight different sources of cross rates when we already have two or three comprehensive sources that aren't just the cover page for a trading site?

Feco 19:19, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV

I just added a NPOV tag to the article. There are many things in the article that I think are very much aimed at Americans. For example: from it's very first mention, the US Dollar is simply reffered to as the Dollar. Others include capitalising numerous currencies (which at one point does include the US Dollar, but for the most part, only currencies other than it) - Gerbon689 22:07, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

I wonder if you have made any edits to correct the problems you identified, Gerbon689. I see nothing in the recent edit history from Gerbon689. It is always preferable to correct than to complain. Also, there does not seem to be any dispute about the neutrality of the article. It seems only that you are unhappy with its quality, i see no one disagreeing with you. Perhaps you are deeply offended by the article's american-centric viewpoint, but i would really recommend you make the changes you feel neccessary. It sounds like your suggestions are reasonable, and i'm not sure who you think will dispute your changes. If there's no dispute, then the NPOV of the article is, by definition, NOT disputed, and thus the NPOV template you have stuck on the page is not justified.
I suggest that the NPOV template be removed, and Gerbon689 make the changes she noted. This seems like the least upsetting course of action. Please comment. -- Fudoreaper 02:06:16, 2005-08-26 (UTC)
It does not appear that anyone disagrees with me, so i will remove the NPOV dispute warning from the page. It has been more than 24 hours. -- Fudoreaper 06:12:38, 2005-08-28 (UTC)


[edit] External Links & NPOV...

I cleaned up the link section... just like Feco a few months ago. It seems the Foreign Exchange pages are often targeten by commercial organisations (see Feco's comments above). Yesterday a new page 'Forex trading' was created, a copy of FOREX, with one link, to GoForex.net. The same anon user then moved the GoForex link (called 'Forex trading') to the top of all the external links at all the FX related pages. This is not Wiki. For anyone who has added links or wants to add more, please read Wikipedia:External links first. Also, can people put these sights on their watchlist to make sure we catch misbehaviour quickly. On a different note, I hope Gerbon689 feels the page is more global now in outlook. ;-) DocendoDiscimus 09:43, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Indirect Quotation

Indirect Quotation is also known as "Quantity Quotation", not as "Quality" as it was stated before my edit. Canberk Araj--12:42, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Spam

It is obvious that a number of companies are trying to have their website linked to as the currency converter from this article, I have linked to http://www.xe.com/ucc/ as it is pretty good, and isn't one of the links added by spammers. Please revert any attempt to spam any more links. Martin 16:08, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

After seeing the last hidden switcheroo, I agree with the "It is obvious" I think it is also obvious that for any exchange rate info we should stick to very solid (e.g. the BBC), or official (e.g. the FED) sources. Since both of those are up there already, why do we need any more?
IF people want more sources, I'll suggest Reuters and the Financial Times

Smallbones 06:53, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed external link

May I suggest that we add the following external link:

Currency converter - exchange rates for 164 currencies

It is not commercial spam. (Actually it's on an accounting web site.) I think in some ways it's better than the other links provided because it covers a wider range of currencies. It claims to have 164. I'm an MBA student and I found this site very helpful. Too many of the other sites only covered the major currencies (USD, GBP, EUR, JPY). Info for emerging markets is important too. Thanks. 71.147.40.103 04:58, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm somewhat against this, only because it opens the door to the remarkably persistent retail forex advertisers on this page. The Reuters site gives about 40 currencies, which must cover 99.9% of the market by volume. There was a good BBC site on here(based on pounds rather than dollars) that has about 25 currencies (about 99.8% of the market). So why do we need a site that has 164 currencies most of which really don't trade. Why do we need to know the conversion of CV Escudos to Angolan Kwanzas given by the site as:

"Thursday, October 12, 2006 1 Angolan Kwanza = 1.09666 Cape Verde Escudo 1 Cape Verde Escudo (CVE) = 0.91186 Angolan Kwanza (AOA)"

I think if anybody really checked into it, this rate is an entirely meaningless number. But maybe there's an arguement for more curriencies. I'll suggest that someone find a non-commercial site if they want to include all the non-traded currencies. Smallbones 08:14, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
I agree the trading volume of Angolan Kwanza vs. Cape Verde Escudo is likely to be an extremely small portion of the overall FX market; however, that doesn't mean that it's not important or useful information. Also criticizing the usefulness of the FX rate between two minor currencies is a flawed argument; the Kwanza vs. USD rate may be very important to the Angolan economy. I think by offering exchange rates for only the most traded currencies, we are biasing the article. Ideally, Wikipedia articles are supposed to be global in perspective. Thank you. 70.131.107.95 18:59, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I have to convert currency on a daily basis and the preposed link offers interbank or spot rates I have found that Tiscali has a list of tourist rates for the travel sector industry.

I believe providing a few well-established websites that provides current foreign exchange rates would be nice. Yes, there are so many that are commercial. I suggest www.xe.com and www.oanda.com. The link above, which was posted by the very first person, has "user=jimcave" in the url and it makes me wonder if the proceeds from only unrotated ad on that page goes to a single person. Yes, both xe and oanda provides web services for a price. But at least it's not outright "use me for your e-commerce website! buy me!". As for the number of currencies, I think limiting ourselves to a subset of currencies is just unencyclopedic. And I find the 4 existing external links all restricting to the so-called "major" currencies, making them redundant among themselves. It would be nice to provide some sites that provide rates between all currencies. --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 03:59, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
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