foriegn exchange, exchange rate quotation

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MECHANICS OF CURRENCY DEALING Currency trading is a 24-hour market that is only closed from Friday evening to Sunday evening, but the 24-hour trading sessions are misleading. There are three sessions that include the European, Asian and United States trading sessions. Although there is some overlap in the sessions, the main currencies in each market are traded mostly during those market hours. This means that certain currency pairs will have more volume during certain sessions. Traders who stay with pairs based on the dollar will find the most volume in the U.S. trading session. Currency is traded in various sized lots. The micro lot is 1,000 units of a currency. If your account is funded in U.S. dollars, a micro lot represents $1,000 of your base currency, the dollar. A mini lot is 10,000 units of your base currency and a standard lot is 100,000 units. Pairs and Pips All currency trading is done in pairs. Unlike the stock market, where you can buy or sell a single stock, you have to buy one currency and sell another currency in the forex market. Next, nearly all currencies are priced out to the fourth decimal point. A pip or percentage in point, is the smallest increment of trade. One pip typically equals 1/100 of 1%. Retail or beginning traders often trade currency in micro lots, because one pip in a micro lot represents only a 10 cents move in the price. This makes losses easier to manage if a trade doesn't produce the intended results. In a mini lot, one pip equals $1 and that same one pip in a standard lot equals $10. Some currencies move as much as 100 pips or more in a single trading session making the potential losses to the small investor much more manageable by trading in micro or mini lots. Far Less Products

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Page 1: foriegn exchange, exchange rate quotation

MECHANICS OF CURRENCY DEALINGCurrency trading is a 24-hour market that is only closed from Friday evening to Sunday evening, but the 24-hour trading sessions are misleading. There are three sessions that include the European, Asian and United States trading sessions. Although there is some overlap in the sessions, the main currencies in each market are traded mostly during those market hours. This means that certain currency pairs will have more volume during certain sessions. Traders who stay with pairs based on the dollar will find the most volume in the U.S. trading session.

Currency is traded in various sized lots. The micro lot is 1,000 units of a currency. If your account is funded in U.S. dollars, a micro lot represents $1,000 of your base currency, the dollar. A mini lot is 10,000 units of your base currency and a standard lot is 100,000 units.

Pairs and Pips

All currency trading is done in pairs. Unlike the stock market, where you can buy or sell a single stock, you have to buy one currency and sell another currency in the forex market. Next, nearly all currencies are priced out to the fourth decimal point. A pip or percentage in point, is the smallest increment of trade. One pip typically equals 1/100 of 1%.

Retail or beginning traders often trade currency in micro lots, because one pip in a micro lot represents only a 10 cents move in the price. This makes losses easier to manage if a trade doesn't produce the intended results. In a mini lot, one pip equals $1 and that same one pip in a standard lot equals $10. Some currencies move as much as 100 pips or more in a single trading session making the potential losses to the small investor much more manageable by trading in micro or mini lots.

Far Less Products

The majority of the volume in currency trading is confined to only 18 currency pairs compared to the thousands of stocks that are available in the global equity markets. Although there are other traded pairs outside of the 18, the eight currencies most often traded are the U.S. dollar (USD), Canadian dollar (CAD), euro (EUR), British pound (GBP), Swiss franc (CHF), New Zealand dollar (NZD), Australian dollar (AUD) and the Japanese yen (JPY). Although nobody would say that currency trading is easy, having far less trading options makes trade and portfolio management an easier task.

Moves Currency

An increasing amount of stock traders are taking interest in the currency markets because many of the forces that move the stock market also move the currency market. One of the largest is supply and demand. When the world needs more dollars, the value of the dollar increases and when there are too many circulating, the price drops.

Other factors like interest rates, new economic data from the largest countries and geopolitical tensions, are just a few of the events that may affect currency prices.

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The Bottom Line

Much like anything in the investing market, learning about currency trading is easy but finding the winning trading strategies takes a lot of practice. Most forex brokers will allow you to open a free virtual account that allows you to trade with virtual money until you find strategies that work for you.

EXCHANGE RATE

An exchange rate (also known as a foreign-exchange rate, forex rate, ER, FX rate) between two currencies is the rate at which one currency will be exchanged for another. It is also regarded as the value of one country’s currency in terms of another currency. For example, an interbank exchange rate of 119 Japanese yen (JPY, ¥) to the United States dollar (US$) means that ¥119 will be exchanged for each US$1 or that US$1 will be exchanged for each ¥119. In this case it is said that the price of a dollar in terms of yen is ¥119, or equivalently that the price of a yen in terms of dollars is $1/119.

Exchange rates are determined in the foreign exchange market, which is open to a wide range of different types of buyers and sellers, and where currency trading is continuous: 24 hours a day except weekends, i.e. trading from 20:15 GMT on Sunday until 22:00 GMT Friday. The spot exchange rate refers to the current exchange rate. The forward exchange rate refers to an exchange rate that is quoted and traded today but for delivery and payment on a specific future date.

In the retail currency exchange market, different buying and selling rates will be quoted by money dealers. Most trades are to or from the local currency. The buying rate is the rate at which money dealers will buy foreign currency, and the selling rate is the rate at which they will sell that currency. The quoted rates will incorporate an allowance for a dealer's margin (or profit) in trading, or else the margin may be recovered in the form of a commission or in some other way. Different rates may also be quoted for cash (usually notes only), a documentary form (such as traveller’s cheques) or electronically (such as a credit card purchase). The higher rate on documentary transactions has been justified as compensating for the additional time and cost of clearing the document. On the other hand, cash is available for resale immediately, but brings security, storage, and transportation costs, and the cost of tying up capital in a stock of banknotes (bills).

EXCHANGE RATE QUOTATIONIn the foreign exchange market, a currency pair is the quotation of the relative value of a currency unit against the unit of another currency. The quotation EUR/USD 1.3225 means that 1 Euro will buy 1.3225 US dollars. In other words, this is the price of a unit of Euro in US dollars. Here, EUR is called the "Fixed currency", while USD is called the "Variable currency".

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There is a market convention that determines which is the fixed currency and which is the variable currency. In most parts of the world, the order is: EUR – GBP – AUD – NZD – USD – others. Accordingly, in a conversion from EUR to AUD, EUR is the fixed currency, AUD is the variable currency and the exchange rate indicates how many Australian dollars would be paid or received for 1 Euro. Cyprus and Malta, which were quoted as the base to the USD and others, were recently removed from this list when they joined the Eurozone.

In some areas of Europe and in the retail market in the United Kingdom, EUR and GBP are reversed so that GBP is quoted as the fixed currency to the euro. In order to determine which is the fixed currency when neither currency is on the above list (i.e. both are "other"), market convention is to use the fixed currency which gives an exchange rate greater than 1.000. This reduces rounding issues and the need to use excessive numbers of decimal places. There are some exceptions to this rule: for example, the Japanese often quote their currency as the base to other currencies.

Quotation using a country's home currency as the price currency (for example, EUR 0.8989 = USD 1.00 in the Eurozone, USD/INR = 45.30 Rs. / 1$) is known as direct quotation or price quotation and is used in most countries.

Quotation using a country's home currency as the unit currency (for example, USD 1.11 = EUR 1.00 in the Eurozone, INR/USD = 0.0220 $ / Rs. 1) is known as indirect quotation or quantity quotation and is used in British newspapers; it is also common in Australia, New Zealand and the Eurozone.

USD is the most widely traded currency and is often used as the vehicle currency. This helps in reduction of no. of quotes in the market, as exchange rate between two currencies can be determined through their quotes against the USD. Any quote not against the USD is a Cross Quote. Availability of USD quote for all currencies can helping determining the exchange rate for any pair of currencies by using the cross rate. For e.g. Cross quote for EUR-GBP =EUR/USD * USD/GBP9.

Using direct quotation, if the home currency is strengthening then the exchange rate number decreases. Conversely, if the foreign currency is strengthening and the home currency is depreciating, the exchange rate number increases.

Market convention from the early 1980s to 2006 was that most currency pairs were quoted to four decimal places for spot transactions and up to six decimal places for forward outrights or swaps. An exception to this was exchange rates with a value of less than 1.000 which were usually quoted to five or six decimal places. Although there is no fixed rule, exchange rates numerically greater than around 20 were usually quoted to three decimal places and exchange rates greater than 80 were quoted to two decimal places. Currencies over 5000 were usually quoted with no decimal places (for example, the former Turkish Lira). e.g. (GBPOMR: 0.765432 -: 1.4436 – EUR JPY: 165.29). In other words, quotes are given with five digits. Where rates are below 1, quotes frequently include five decimal places.

In 2005, Barclays Capital broke with convention by quoting spot exchange rates with five or six decimal places on their electronic dealing platform. The contraction of spreads (the difference between the bid and ask rates) arguably necessitated finer pricing and gave the

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banks the ability to try and win transactions on multibank trading platforms where all banks may otherwise have been quoting the same price. A number of other banks have now followed this system.