An exchange rate is simply a score for one currency against another and represents the number of units of one currency that need to be exchanged for a single unit of another currency. The exchange rate is thus the price of one currency against another and, given the number of world currencies today, within the US alone there are literally dozens of exchange rates. Now that seems simple enough but, unfortunately, it is not quite that easy.
Quite apart from these simple exchange rates, which are sometimes referred to as ’spot’ rates, there are also a whole range of ‘trade weighted’ or ‘effective’ rates which show the movement of one currency against an average of several other currencies. There are also exchange rates which are used in markets such as the forwards markets in which delivery dates are set at some point in the future, rather than at the time of the initial transaction. In other words, there is no such thing as an exchange rate, but are in fact a series of different exchange rates depending upon the nature of the transaction.
The foreign exchange market is driven largely by supply and demand and the exchange rate between any two currencies […]
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Most countries have their own national currency such as the US dollar, the UK pound, the Japanese yen and the Thailand baht and these are of course necessary for making payments for goods and services within each country’s borders. However, in a world where we are traveling more and more and where countries are increasingly trading with one another, foreign currency is required to pay for cross-border sales of goods and services. This means that there must be some mechanism in place to provide access to foreign currencies, so that payments can be made in a form that is acceptable to the seller, and thus the need for a foreign exchange market (or forex market which is simply short for FOReign EXchange).
In its simplest form foreign exchange refers to money which is denominated in a currency other than your own. For example, if an individual exchanges his own currency for the currency of another nation then he acquires foreign exchange. Of course we often think of foreign exchange in terms of tourism and most of us will have traveled abroad either on holiday or for business and exchanged currency on arrival at our destination to pay hotel and restaurant bills […]
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Every forex (foreign exchange) transaction involved the transfer of funds between two nations and that means that it also involves the payment and settlement systems of the two countries concerned in the transaction. For this reason national payment and settlement systems play a key role in the day to day operations of the forex market.
Today there are a wide variety of payment systems which are legally acceptable within the United States and payments can be made for example in cash, by check, using an automated clearing house or using an electronic funds transfer.
In terms of the sheer number of transactions the vast majority of payments in the United States today are made in cash or by check, however, in terms of value, the greatest amount of money is paid by electronic funds transfer. For this reason the electronic funds transfer system is a key component of the Unites States payment and settlement system and it is this system which is used to make inter-bank transfers between dealers in the forex market.
There are two main electronic funds transfer systems operating in the United States today. The first is the Clearing House Inter-bank Payments System (CHIPS) which is a private system operated […]
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