When you are thinking about sending money abroad, an international money transfer provider is a great option. They can help you with the whole process, provide useful online tools and most importantly bank-beating exchange rates and low or zero fees.
This is the current USD-KRW mid-market exchange rate. The Total Cost of each foreign transfer in the above table is calculated as the sum of all fees and the exchange rate margin, which is the difference between the provider's exchange rate and the mid-market USD-KRW exchange rate.
Whenever you are interested in an exchange rate you are actually interested in two currencies due to the fact that the value of a currency must always be quoted in comparison to a second currency.
So it follows that if you are determining the best time to transact, in this case the USD vs KRW, you should pay attention to both United States Dollar and South Korean Won news and forecasts.
26-January-19: 2018 was a reasonable year for the dollar. Measured by the US Dollar Index, the greenback appreciated by 4 percent, which was much better than 2017’s 10 percent loss. It was, though, something of a stuttering end to 2018 and the dollar has had mixed fortunes in early 2019.
In December, after lifting US interest rates to 2.25-2.5 percent, the Fed lowered its expectations for future hikes due to so-called “cross currents” (China, Brexit, trade wars etc.). Skepticism among analysts over future Fed hikes has for some time been the main reason for dollar pessimism for 2019, but now, there is also the prospect of a US economic slowdown to contend with.
“A slowdown in the economy is likely to weigh on USD particularly in the second half of this year,” a CIBC researcher said in January.
Of the same opinion was an expert at ING, who argued that the dollar is soon to “embark on a gradual long-term bearish trend.”
January’s extended US government shutdown also has dollar-negative ramifications. Not only is the shutdown likely to hit first-quarter GDP growth, disagreements within Congress bode poorly for the future of potentially inflationary fiscal spending.
28-January-19: 2018 was a mixed year for the South Korean won: it lost 4.4 percent of its value against the US dollar, gained roughly 6 percent against the Australian dollar and barely changed at all relative to the euro.
The won is a peculiar currency, preferring to trade in ranges. Since last summer the won has been contained, for the most part, between 1110 and 1140 to the dollar. The current range developed after June’s violent break from a previous range that existed between 1060 and 1085 in the first half of 2018. That range, too, preceded a sharp break from yet another range that developed in 2017.
Any intensification in US-China trade tensions could weigh heavily on the won in 2019. Trade tensions act to reduce the risk appetite of investors and to lower expectations for Chinese economic growth, which greatly affects the broader Asia-Pac region. A slower pace of US interest rate hikes (as was projected by the Fed itself in December) would be won supporting.
