When I came to Taiwan 10 years ago it was 38 NT to the pound; it rose to 42 then 45, jumped to 50, then 55, stayed there for quite a while and now it’s at 63. :help:
Anyone sending money home on a regular basis like me gets screwed. Now I am keeping my money here until it heads back down again. But will it ever? Will 60 be the new level? It’s killing me. I have to earn more and more just to make the same amount of pounds.
It doesn’t seem like it’s ever going to head back the other way. Oh for the days of low 40s!
I don’t have a particular question - just need a shoulder to cry on…
I’m (sinking) in the same boat. I don’t imagine an improvement until at least after the US election. Looks like I may even have to defer my planned return home this year.
If you wait long enough, you’ll get a rate that suits you (whether higher or lower) sooner or later. And don’t pay too much attention to the so-called experts, because they’re wrong far more often than not. How major currencies move in valuation against each other is almost totally unpredictable, largely a matter of chance, and all you can say for sure is that the movement will be in both directions in the long run.
When I came to Taiwan 18+ years ago, the exchange rate was NT$60 to the pound. So we’ve pretty much come full circle from the NT’s sharp appreciation to that under 40-1 peak and back again to the current rate. It’s quite likely that we’ll see a similar cycle recurring over the next decade or so.
While your ultimate target currency is “out of bounds” owing to a currently unfavourable exchange rate, the best thing to do is to shift into another currency that seems to have plenty of scope for appreciation in the near term (e.g., the Japanese yen or HK dollar) and hold on to that until the time is ripe to move into something else.
Sound advice, but I doubt it will return to the 40s or even the 50s for a very long time, barring some calamity. I’ve been tracking the rate for the last 4 years, and my graph shows a persistent climb from 50 at the end of 2001 to over 60 now. The only exception was a fall of around 4 points in autumn 2003.
Closet Queen, if I remember correctly, the fall in sterling you referred to was triggered by interest rate change in the UK. There was a sudden fall of almost TWD2 towards the end of last week. Any idea what caused it?
A related question. Does anyone know where the three English dailies get their currency rates from? It must be different sources. Either that or two of them are making the rates up.
I think that was largely due to the strengthening of the US dollar against the euro, yen and sterling, because it was believed that Alan Greenspan had signalled that US interest rates would probably start to rise again sooner than had previously been expected, compounded by decisions by the Bank of England and the European Central Bank to keep interest rates unchanged in their respective bailiwicks. As the NT dollar is informally more or less pegged to the US dollar (with fluctuation occurring mainly in line with the movement of the yen against the greenback), the strengthening of the US dollar against the pound and euro meant a corresponding strengthening of the NT$ against those currencies, hence the NT$ rose against the pound from 63:1 to under 61:1. However, weak US job figures at the end of the week made an impending rise of US interest rates less likely, and prompted a sudden weakening of the US dollar, so we’ll see the pound rebounding a little against the NT$.
I tracked the US/Sterling exchange rate back to 1969 today at work during one of my less busy periods. It’s been up and down like a hooer’s drawers, and is now at a ten year high. Is Sterling really this volatile, or are we looking at it as a function of US dollar rates ? It’s a bugger anyway whatever way you look at it.
Spack, fully understand, am in the same boat, but cannot delay as it is maintenance for the damned ex, unfortunately the courts dont allow for such things unless you want to spend even more in legal fees getting the values readdressed.
What i have been doing for some time is only sending enough to cover the UK expenses and anything extra - as others have suggested - i have been converting into US$, as this will only go one way long term, hopefully at the end of this year when Bubba gets replaced.
For those that might be interested large profits can be made from the currency markets, but the risk factor is also pretty high.
What you need to do is find something that is made in the U.K that Taiwanese need or “must have” and sell it to them. Just think of the money you’d make if you were earning pounds.
eh, eh, eh!
I have a deal in the works at the moment that looks really promising.
