He has to make a best guess of course based on the information he has.
I’m sure GuyInTaiwan would have to agree.
I’m in the same quandary as to when to exchange USD for NT.
According to this 180-day graph, the NT has been fairly stable, but at the moment looks like it’s trending downward:
exchange-rates.org/history/TWD/USD/G/180
I buy foreign currency to try to maximize purchasing power while on vacation. (Even with the crash, I’m still of the mind that the only thing really worth investing in is real estate.) I still have euros that I purchased when they were weaker than the dollar, and pounds that I bought when they were even with the dollar.
My guess is that the NT is going to go down a bit more, so I’m going to hold off for at least a couple months. I’m also guessing that the USD is going to go down considerably as more “stimulus money” is created out of thin air and pumped into public works projects. (We’ve only disbursed 6% of the $750-billion stimulus package, and that’s going to increase in the next few months.)
Rooting around the forex sites, it looks like the NT isn’t tied to anything in particular. Am I mistaken?
Bottom line, this is a horrible time to be a foreign exchange speculator.
According to a couple of a couple of Market Oracle reports the U.K. is in deep doo doo.
marketoracle.co.uk/Article11247.html Bankrupt Britain’s Public Sector Double Dip Debt Recession on Deep Spending Cuts
marketoracle.co.uk/Article10760.html UK CPI Inflation +2.4%, RPI Deflation -1.2% Hits Forecast Target
Either do something resembling real fundamental analysis (and even then, that wouldn’t be perfect) or just admit that you might as well toss a coin in the air to decide whether now is a good or bad time to buy. Better yet, just go and exchange some money and stop sweating about it. I certainly wouldn’t be doing any kind of rudimentary technical analysis.
And yet at the same time, there’s news like this:
“Pound surges as investors bet Britain will be first out of recession”
business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/b … 481996.ece
If one takes note of the key word in that sentence then one may get a clearer picture of the U.K. economy’s foudations and what they are based upon.
A clear case of buy on the rumor is going on. We just need a few more realistic news articles and facts to bundle the rest of the U.K. into its casket.
Of course I could always be wrong when so many sheeple have kept the West inflating since the eighties based on pure speculation only.
I’m begining to wonder if the world will ever understand what hot air the U.K. and U.S. economies are based upon.
1 Like
Oh, I’m not arguing that at all. The pound IS continuing to rise though. Whether it SHOULD or not is another argument.
1 UK Pound is below 49NT today
Yes, it looks like its on the way down…ouch. British debt/gdp is 120%, extremely high.
From the Guardian today:
"Jim Rogers, the former business partner of speculator George Soros, said sterling was a potential “basket case”.
“Other currencies aren’t strong and the euro has real problems, with cracks much wider than Greece beginning to show,” Rogers said, “but it’s the pound that’s most vulnerable. In real terms, it’s already devalued against virtually every currency barring the Zimbabwean dollar and it’s especially exposed over the weeks running up to the UK election. In a basket of currencies, the pound is potentially a basket case. That will put Britain in an extremely bad position.”
Of course, being a speculator he has an interest in talking any currency he wants up or down.
Meanwhile I’m busy sending money home to pay off my UK mortgage.
The pound was doing just fine until Mervyn King opened his big fucking mouth again. He has done more damage to sterling trying to weasel his way into headlines than a hundred bank failures.
Geez-o… 47.86 today… can it go lower?
Possibly, but not much.
We are near multi-year lows, and barring major bad news coming out of the UK, I think most has been discounted in, honestly.
If it goes to say parity with the Euro, buy, and sell after David takes over in May.
Any Fiat currency is ultimately going to fail. Its the nature of the currency. It isn’t anybody’s ‘fault’ per se. Its a major design flaw in the Fiat system. Its designed to fail.
Yup any FIAT falls apart 
sooner rather then later.
Buy when you hear the cannonballs fly, sell when you hear the violins sing.
Hmm interesting - with the Euro weakening you would expect the Pound to become one of the vehicles to fly to no? I am hoping the pound weakens more - I want to pay a chunk off my mortgage in the next couple of months.
If the USvsNTD remains at about 32.00 then I’d be expecting a rate of about 45 to the pound. That’s about another 10% drop from where we are now.
Of course, if the NTD strengthens against the dollar, we might see prices under well 44. Given that the election is near, and uncertainty is rising, it might be a good time to trade the uncertainty by buying pounds.
However, there is a longer term risk if the uncertainty turns to panic, and the pound drops like a stone (say ~20%), then you’d be sitting on a minor loss. But rates under 40 would be very attractive, to say the least. I don’t see rates under 40 lasting more than a few months…
Of course, nothing goes in a straight line, so we’ll likely see jumps up in value again, but I think we’ll be seeing a weakened pound until the government (whichever party) actually DOES something about the potential crisis.
But that’s my 2p (about NTD0.95 worth).
I’ve been using my HSBC multi currency account to buy the pound recently. In the 11 years that I’ve been here, it has gone from 56 when I came, down to 47 ish up to 65ish and now back to under 50. I will continue to buy whilst it is under 50 and just use it for my trips back home! Last time I was back, I had a 2% charge on my HSBC credit card, so I’ve decided to use cash in the future.