exchange rates
What's almost as good as a pay raise? When your salary is a constant C in yen, and the exchange rate is hovering at 115-120 yen per dollar... and then the exchange rate plummets below 100 yen per dollar. Effectively my salary is up 15%.
The question is, do I trade now, or do I wait for it to sink further? If I trade now I'll make about 2500 dollars over a couple weeks ago. Historically after the rate drops sharply it slowly increases over the next month or so as people make their trades to equilibrium. But if I trade and it drops again sharply I'll be kicking myself. And it's still falling.
Incidentally, this means my expenditures within Singapore just got a lot cheaper, since their dollar seems to be closely linked to ours. Very interesting.
March 19th, 2008 at 12:13 am
We just faced the same thing selling that house. Prices are dropping, so do we take this offer or wait? Don't you wish you had a time machine? Well, maybe not!
March 24th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
It was at 96.88 yen to the dollar on March 17th. It's back up a bit now though.