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 a chart showing the change in the USD-KRW mid-market exchange rate over the last week. 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.
In the third week of April the Dollar Index was rallying strongly towards the mid-97s, slightly below major resistance at 97.70, a break of which would be massively positive for the greenback. The index was up 1.7 percent year-to-date.
The dollar’s strength comes in spite of a dovish surprise in March from the Federal Reserve, which ditched two interest rate hikes from its 2019 projections. Fortunately for dollar holders, the rest of the world has problems and other important central banks also turned dovish, removing much of the incentive for selling USD.
Bloomberg research warned in April of potential for a large upcoming move in the US dollar, up or down. Over the past quarter-century, three prominent troughs in the JPMorgan Global FX Volatility Index were followed by dollar moves over 6-month periods worth 10-15 percent. The index was trading in mid-April at a 5-year low.
The South Korean won has been the worst-performing Asian currency in 2019.
At the time of writing, while most emerging Asian currencies were showing year-to-date gains against the dollar, the won had lost 1.8 percent, with weakness driven by falling exports and an alarming drop in South Korean inflation, which themselves drove expectations for an interest rate cut by the Bank of Korea, even though the BoK said in March that policy easing was not yet warranted.
In early April, at 1134 to the dollar, the won was trading near the weaker boundary of its trading range, which existed between 1110 and 1140 (this having contained most price action in the July-18 to April-19 period).
In April, TradingEconomics.com predicted that USD/KRW would rise to 1164 by April 2020. That's a level last seen in January 2017.
