Re: [Lingo] FX

[s smith <sjs@example.com>]

On 01/21/2012 05:20 PM, CL wrote:

FX may not be the most highly popular way to lose money today, but it 
has grown considerably over the past decade with the deregulation of 
trading and the elimination of the need to buy a trading license in 
order to post trading.  Also coincides with the rise of day trading.

The character 銭　is used to denote any fractional part of a yen and is 
most common in commodities and currency trading where margins per unit 
can be razor thin but the difference is made up on the number of units 
purchased.  It's use is usually accompanied by the notation that 
Japanese financial rounding is employed (up or down at 3 or 7 [never 5 
in Japanese GAAP] depending on who is logging the loss or gain: log to 
buyer's account or seller's).

Interesting...  I hadn't heard of this before.

HTH

Ah -- now it starts to make sense.  We're talking about currency speculation, then.  Do they actually buy the money or buy options to buy the money or both?  Seems to me one of the big banks (UBS?) lost a few billion dollars a few months back betting on the swiss frank.

I received a note from someone looking for a perl programmer to work on a site allowed users to bet on stocks, as if the market itself wasn't a big enough gamble.  To me these seem like really strange times...


Thank you very much.  Seems the more I learn the less I know :)

Steve S.