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In finance, an exchange rate 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 relation to another currency. For example, an interbank exchange rate of 114 Japanese yen to the United States dollar means that ¥114 will be exchanged for each US$1 or that US$1 will be exchanged for each ¥114. In this case it is said that the price of a dollar in relation to yen is ¥114, or equivalently that the price of a yen in relation to dollars is $1/114.The government has the authority to change exchange rate when needed.
A hedge is an investment position intended to offset potential losses or gains that may be incurred by a companion investment. A hedge can be constructed from many types of financial instruments, including stocks, exchange-traded funds, insurance, forward contracts, swaps, options, gambles, many types of over-the-counter and derivative products, and futures contracts.
In finance, a spot contract, spot transaction, or simply spot, is a contract of buying or selling a commodity, security or currency for immediate settlement on the spot date, which is normally two business days after the trade date. The settlement price is called spot price. A spot contract is in contrast with a forward contract or futures contract where contract terms are agreed now but delivery and payment will occur at a future date.
A swap, in finance, is an agreement between two counterparties to exchange financial instruments or cashflows or payments for a certain time. The instruments can be almost anything but most swaps involve cash based on a notional principal amount.
The foreign exchange market is a global decentralized or over-the-counter (OTC) market for the trading of currencies. This market determines foreign exchange rates for every currency. It includes all aspects of buying, selling and exchanging currencies at current or determined prices. In terms of trading volume, it is by far the largest market in the world, followed by the credit market.
Foreign exchange reserves are cash and other reserve assets held by a central bank or other monetary authority that are primarily available to balance payments of the country, influence the foreign exchange rate of its currency, and to maintain confidence in financial markets. Reserves are held in one or more reserve currencies, nowadays mostly the United States dollar and to a lesser extent the euro.
In finance, a foreign exchange option is a derivative financial instrument that gives the right but not the obligation to exchange money denominated in one currency into another currency at a pre-agreed exchange rate on a specified date. See Foreign exchange derivative.
The impossible trinity is a concept in international economics which states that it is impossible to have all three of the following at the same time:
Covered interest arbitrage is an arbitrage trading strategy whereby an investor capitalizes on the interest rate differential between two countries by using a forward contract to cover exchange rate risk. Using forward contracts enables arbitrageurs such as individual investors or banks to make use of the forward premium to earn a riskless profit from discrepancies between two countries' interest rates. The opportunity to earn riskless profits arises from the reality that the interest rate parity condition does not constantly hold. When spot and forward exchange rate markets are not in a state of equilibrium, investors will no longer be indifferent among the available interest rates in two countries and will invest in whichever currency offers a higher rate of return. Economists have discovered various factors which affect the occurrence of deviations from covered interest rate parity and the fleeting nature of covered interest arbitrage opportunities, such as differing characteristics of assets, varying frequencies of time series data, and the transaction costs associated with arbitrage trading strategies.
The Mundell–Fleming model, also known as the IS-LM-BoP model, is an economic model first set forth (independently) by Robert Mundell and Marcus Fleming. The model is an extension of the IS–LM model. Whereas the traditional IS-LM model deals with economy under autarky, the Mundell–Fleming model describes a small open economy. Mundell's paper suggests that the model can be applied to Zurich, Brussels and so on.
Interest rate parity is a no-arbitrage condition representing an equilibrium state under which investors will be indifferent to interest rates available on bank deposits in two countries. The fact that this condition does not always hold allows for potential opportunities to earn riskless profits from covered interest arbitrage. Two assumptions central to interest rate parity are capital mobility and perfect substitutability of domestic and foreign assets. Given foreign exchange market equilibrium, the interest rate parity condition implies that the expected return on domestic assets will equal the exchange rate-adjusted expected return on foreign currency assets. Investors then cannot earn arbitrage profits by borrowing in a country with a lower interest rate, exchanging for foreign currency, and investing in a foreign country with a higher interest rate, due to gains or losses from exchanging back to their domestic currency at maturity. Interest rate parity takes on two distinctive forms: uncovered interest rate parity refers to the parity condition in which exposure to foreign exchange risk is uninhibited, whereas covered interest rate parity refers to the condition in which a forward contract has been used to cover exchange rate risk. Each form of the parity condition demonstrates a unique relationship with implications for the forecasting of future exchange rates: the forward exchange rate and the future spot exchange rate.
In finance, a foreign exchange swap, forex swap, or FX swap is a simultaneous purchase and sale of identical amounts of one currency for another with two different value dates and may use foreign exchange derivatives. An FX swap allows sums of a certain currency to be used to fund charges designated in another currency without acquiring foreign exchange risk. It permits companies that have funds in different currencies to manage them efficiently.
Uncovered interest arbitrage is an arbitrage trading strategy whereby an investor capitalizes on the interest rate differential between two countries. Unlike covered interest arbitrage, uncovered interest arbitrage involves no hedging of foreign exchange risk with the use of forward contracts or any other contract. The strategy involves risk, as an investor exposed to exchange rate fluctuations is speculating that exchange rates will remain favorable enough for arbitrage to be profitable. The opportunity to earn profits arises from the reality that the uncovered interest rate parity condition does not constantly hold—that is, the interest rate on investments in one country's currency does not always equal the interest rate on foreign-currency investments plus the rate of appreciation that is expected for the foreign currency relative to the domestic currency. When a discrepancy between these occurs, investors who are willing to take on risk will not be indifferent between the two possible locations of investment, and will invest in whichever currency is expected to offer a higher rate of return including currency exchange gains or losses.
Foreign exchange risk is a financial risk that exists when a financial transaction is denominated in a currency other than the domestic currency of the company. The exchange risk arises when there is a risk of an unfavourable change in exchange rate between the domestic currency and the denominated currency before the date when the transaction is completed.
The overshooting model, or the exchange rate overshooting hypothesis, first developed by economist Rudi Dornbusch, is a theoretical explanation for high levels of exchange rate volatility. The key features of the model include the assumptions that goods' prices are sticky, or slow to change, in the short run, but the prices of currencies are flexible, that arbitrage in asset markets holds, via the uncovered interest parity equation, and that expectations of exchange rate changes are "consistent": that is, rational. The most important insight of the model is that adjustment lags in some parts of the economy can induce compensating volatility in others; specifically, when an exogenous variable changes, the short-term effect on the exchange rate can be greater than the long-run effect, so in the short term, the exchange rate overshoots its new equilibrium long-term value.
The forward exchange rate is the exchange rate at which a bank agrees to exchange one currency for another at a future date when it enters into a forward contract with an investor. Multinational corporations, banks, and other financial institutions enter into forward contracts to take advantage of the forward rate for hedging purposes. The forward exchange rate is determined by a parity relationship among the spot exchange rate and differences in interest rates between two countries, which reflects an economic equilibrium in the foreign exchange market under which arbitrage opportunities are eliminated. When in equilibrium, and when interest rates vary across two countries, the parity condition implies that the forward rate includes a premium or discount reflecting the interest rate differential. Forward exchange rates have important theoretical implications for forecasting future spot exchange rates. Financial economists have put forth a hypothesis that the forward rate accurately predicts the future spot rate, for which empirical evidence is mixed.
The international Fisher effect is a hypothesis in international finance that suggests differences in nominal interest rates reflect expected changes in the spot exchange rate between countries. The hypothesis specifically states that a spot exchange rate is expected to change equally in the opposite direction of the interest rate differential; thus, the currency of the country with the higher nominal interest rate is expected to depreciate against the currency of the country with the lower nominal interest rate, as higher nominal interest rates reflect an expectation of inflation.
The real exchange-rate puzzles is a common term for two much-discussed anomalies of real exchange rates: that real exchange rates are more volatile and show more persistence than what most models can account for. These two anomalies are sometimes referred to as the purchasing power parity puzzles.
A foreign exchange derivative is a financial derivative whose payoff depends on the foreign exchange rates of two currencies. These instruments are commonly used for currency speculation and arbitrage or for hedging foreign exchange risk.
The Peso problem in finance is a problem which arises when "the possibility that some infrequent or unprecedented event may occur affects asset prices". The difficulty or impossibility of predicting such an event creates problems in modeling the economy and financial markets by using the past.
References
- ↑ Fama, Eugene (1984), "Forward and spot exchange rates", Journal of Monetary Economics, 14 (3): 319–338, doi:10.1016/0304-3932(84)90046-1
