Foreign Currency Exchange Rates

Foreign currency exchange rate is an important part of doing business all over the world today. Payment for products and services should be delivered in the local currency where you’re doing business. Foreign currency exchange rate is affected by the law of supply and demand. Dollar value will go up as demand exceeds supply. The opposite happens once the supply exceeds demand. Foreign currency exchange rate converters will provide changes on a day to day basis.

A Foreign currency exchange rate is the number you use to convert an amount of money from one country's currency to another. This entry mostly discusses the various sources of foreign currency exchange rate. Several foreign currency exchange rate converters are pre-programmed with foreign currency exchange rate so it can automatically do the conversions for you without the normal hassles.

Sources of Foreign Currency Exchange Rates

The published foreign currency exchange rates of the Federal Reserve are treated as the more-or-less "official" foreign currency exchange rates in the U.S. The Fed's main publication is a periodical called Federal Reserve Statistical Release: Foreign Exchange Rate, which has the "noon closing rates" and other data. This release and many others are posted on the Statistics: Releases and Historical Data page of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors' website.

The same data is also posted in the Foreign Exchange section by the New York Federal Reserve Bank. The Historical information on noon rates goes back to 1994 (10AM rates back to 1993), and there's a tremendous amount of other information. The New York site will link you to FRED, the St. Louis Federal Reserve's database for historical rates. You might also want to try checking on the foreign currency exchange rate then.

Obtaining Fed’s Exchange Rate

For today's Foreign Currency Exchange Rate, call the Federal Reserve after 1PM or check the Statistics section of the New York Federal Reserve's Web Page after 1:30 (www.ny.frb.org).

To find the highest and lowest noon rates between the U.S. and one other for a given period of time, check the "Weekly" section Federal Reserve's Foreign Currency Exchange Rate page, which lists all the historical daily noon rates between countries. Print out the whole thing, and then look for the high and low. This is also a good way to get the noon buying rate of the last day of the month for substantial number of months.

For more information on the Federal Reserve's published Currency Exchange of various foreign rates, call the NY Federal Reserve's Public Information line (212-720-6130).

If there is a need, you can send someone to the Federal Reserve in D.C. to check on the public Foreign Currency Exchange Rates. Alternatively, the New York Public Library gets most the Federal Reserve's publications, and the NYPL Express researchers can look through the materials and fax you copies.

Rates other than Federal Reserve’s

There are several sources for foreign currency exchange rates other than the Federal Reserve. The Pacific Exchange Rate Service posts current and historical rates between a wide array of currencies. The 164 Currency Converter provides a historical interbank, cash and credit card rate table that goes back to January 1, 1990.

If you're willing to pay for something tried-and-true use SunGard (formerly Tradeline) data, which gives you the Reuters "spot" rates of various banks at 4 p.m. GMT, which works the opposite way from the Federal Reserve rates (e.g., if the Federal Reserve gives you Franks to Dollars, Tradeline gives you Dollars to Franks). SunGard is can be accessed through Lexis and the Dialog (TRADELINE).

Rates from Newspapers

You can also get rates from the newspapers like Wall Street Journal and Financial Times, but they are NOT necessarily the official rates. They may be preliminary rates or estimates; therefore, they are not appropriate for all purposes, although they are usually close enough for some. New Foreign Currency Exchange Rates are posted on the Web sites sponsored by several newspapers. These are expected to be as reliable as the figures in the print editions.

Rates from IMF & from Other Sources

For rates from countries not covered above, try the IMF's International Financial Statistics, which is always a bit behind but will give you historical Foreign Currency Exchange Rate information and an estimated figure for the present.

An easy, fast but relatively expensive way to get this Foreign Currency Exchange Rate information is to contact DRI/McGraw-Hill (800-933-3374). DRI is an online service that gives a multitude of financial statistics, including the noon closing rate, and probably including any other kind of exchange rate you need. They can also manipulate their data (e.g., to find the highlights and lowlights for the year). Information will be faxed for non-subscribers ASAP, but their minimum charge is $500.

Finally, the super-source for foreign currency exchange rate is Datastream, which is now owned by Thomson Financial. Datastream is a subscription-based service with a substantial annual fee.

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