Guys - need some clarification on the forex notation that seems quite confusing/misleading in the CFAI material. Haven’t looked at Schweser or Stalla so please comment. In the forex markets, the notation that is generally followed is the CCY1/CCY2 where CCY1 is called the “base” currency and CCY2 is called the “counter” currency and the actual exchange rate means the number of CCY2 currency units per unit of CCY1. For e.g, USD/EUR actually means the number of EUR per USD and the “/” character is NOT used in its traditional mathematical sense. I know this is non-intuitive but this is how it works. However, the CFAI material seems to use the “/” character differently (like the mathematical division symbol) so USD/EUR is actually the number of USD per EUR. However, even this does not seem to be followed consistently in the problem section of Equities and the way the answers are being arrived at. Why is the CFAI material not using the “traditional” notation of how the real world actually works and using something different? One would assume that whatever we learn should model the real world as closely as possible, if not exactly. Any comments or thoughts appreciated.
Um, is this a problem for you?
Not a problem but just want to make sure I’m not misunderstanding the notation that they’re using. Does Schweser and Stalla use the same notation (I would assume so but not sure).
I suspect that you need to see if they are talking about a quote or a rate as the notation would likely be different depending on which you were talking about. For much of the CFA curriculum, using the rate notation would be better than using the quote notation.
Thanks for your insight Joe, appreciated as always.