Exchanging for Yen

[Wasabista]

you could probably try and Google it to find out if you gave a fuck... I don't unless you persist to disagree...

Tenchu, can you discuss ANY topic at all without getting insulting? I should remember to stick to my decisions when i decide to ignore someone.

The yen was as high as $1.07 a couple of days ago. The trend has been strictly endaka since the collapse of Bretton Woods and has been accelerating recently.

Recession and currency moves are two different things. I can explain further if anyone's interested, but the info is readily available on the interwebs.

The chart below extends to 2007 and does not include the yen's recent rise.

[blimp]

Originally Posted by Tenchu

Buy notes (the bank buys Australian money from you) = 1 AUD - 30 THB
Sell notes (the bank sells Australian money to you) = 1 AUD - 28 THB

tenchu, that is a fantastic bank u got there.
i will let the bank (bank of siam) buy my 1 AUD and get 30 THB. then i will let the bank sell me AUD, i will hand over my previously exchanged 30 THB and get voila 1 1/14 AUD back. this i will do over and over again, until i am a very rich man. arbitrage worthy of its name.

kind of reminds me of the first thing i learnt to program in basic.

10 print "rich man"
20 repeat 10
run

come to think of it, i don't remember basic very well, so i might be remembering it incorrectly. were u supposed to write "30 run" or?

[Firebird]

Originally Posted by Tenchu

My apologies, I got it around the wrong way. Here is a chart with it around the right way so you can see what I mean:



From this you can see it is better to change foreign currency in a country than to buy foreign currency in a country. I am sure it would be the same everywhere.

Thank you very much, thats what i meant. Bassicly you´ll always get more for selling your own money to a bank in a foreign country than when buying foreign money in your own countries bank. Up till now that worked in most places. I must say that selling weak currencies after you come home might not work so well, that happend for example with the leftover thai baht when i came back to Germany. But if you have the Euro or Dollar youll be fine anywhere finding a good exchange rate. In China and Southamerika you will even get better rates than official if you sell privatly.

Cheers

[Wasabista]

Okay here's a f'rinstance of what I'm talking about.
I just returned to Thailand from Japan today. At Narita I was offered this rate:
1 baht = ¥3.15
At Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok I exchanged at this rate:
¥1 = 0.3621
Inverting this, we get:
1/.3621 = 2.762

So one baht would have cost me ¥3.15 if I'd bought in Japan, but I waited till I got to Bangkok and paid only ¥2.76 for the same one baht.

So change your money before you arrive in Japan, not after.

[blimp]

edit: not aimed at u wasabita

i am afraid u got a wee bit wrong.
u don't get more money either way. let's take the rates posted by tenchu.

when the bank (or if its a financial institute or exchange bureau) buys USD from you, you will get 33.3456 TBH for every one (1) USD they r buying from u.

when they bank sells USD to you, you will have to pay 33.6911 TBH for each USD you buy.

I fail to see how u get more money either way. now, in some countries there is better competition among "currency exchanging companies", which usually gives u better rates compared to currency exchanging companies" in other countries. that's why it might be better to exchange money in for instance ghana then in peru. but that says nothing of it being better to buy or sell. think of it more as an exchange, hence "foreign exchange", "forex", or "FX". on very rudimentary way of comparing exchage rates between different banks is to look at the "spread", the difference between "buy" and "sell". the bigger spread is, the worse rate for u as a customer. this can be done even with different base currency, however, remember to re-calculate!

more on forex

any future replies by me in this thread will be done as updates in this post since i don't want to put this post on the first page every time i am answering in it.

firebird>>
because u have two (2) rates, one for sell and one for buy. wasabita brought up one of them, if u want to do the opposite, which u r referring to, u have to look at the other rate, which will be different. therefore u can't make the assumption u did.

example: wasabita sold yen, lets call this the sell rate. this means that if u want to buy yen, u will exchange money according to the buy rate, which is not the same as the sell rate. note "spread". only top-traders gets to trade at a practical "no-spread" rate.

wasabita>>
a man of many trades i see

[Firebird]

Originally Posted by Wasabista

Okay here's a f'rinstance of what I'm talking about.
I just returned to Thailand from Japan today. At Narita I was offered this rate:
1 baht = ¥3.15
At Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok I exchanged at this rate:
¥1 = 0.3621
Inverting this, we get:
1/.3621 = 2.762

So one baht would have cost me ¥3.15 if I'd bought in Japan, but I waited till I got to Bangkok and paid only ¥2.76 for the same one baht.

So change your money before you arrive in Japan, not after.

??? you got better money selling your yen in Thailand than if you wouldve bought Baht in Japan, right? So why are you suggesting that one should buy yen in their homecountry if they will also get a better rate in Japan???
I think what you are talkign about is changing back.... Because youd better sell the yen in your country than buying USD or euro or whatever inside Japan.

So ill still stick to: change your money in the country of your choice and not at home! There might be one exception wich is: The exchangerates are changing rapidly now, so if you feel that the rate is very good for you now, than you should exchange at home.

[Wasabista]

Reason: wasabita types faster than i do

One of my only skills!

[Wasabista]

Firebird, I'll see how it works when I go to Canada. But I suspect there's more competition there than in Japan, so the result will be similar. Anyway, yes, change your money at the destination, not in Japan.

[Firebird]

Originally Posted by Wasabista

Firebird, I'll see how it works when I go to Canada. But I suspect there's more competition there than in Japan, so the result will be similar. Anyway, yes, change your money at the destination, not in Japan.

Hehe i thought of Japan as the destination as the thread-opener wanted to know if it would be better to change money in NZ (buy yen in NZ) or get the yen after arriving in Japan. So we bassicly meant the same but got mixed up somewhere on the way ^^

[dirtyroboto]

For any short, slow moving financial period you will never make any profit as the banks have that covered.
Even at the best buy rate and the best sell rate you will loose out.

The only exception is if there is a massive change in value while you have the dominant currency.

There is no money to be made by the casual traveler, you can only try to find the best rate. As many have pointed out, Japan does not have the best rates. Most if not all Japanese banks charge a massive fee that is calculated on the % of the held currency in relation to it's rate.

The best way to make your money go further is to use a direct debt card. You pay a rate set by the bank in your own country. Just hit a participating ATM in any country and you should get a fair rate.
Caution on this, as it is better to withdraw the limit, not just a few bucks as the transaction fee will be the same.