More choice in currencies: Yuan, Rupee, Ruble, Real, Won...

Hi,

I'm looking for brokers that offer competitive spreads on the lesser traded currencies in the retail market: USD/CNY, USD/INR, USD/Ruble, USD/BRL, maybe even the korean Won. I've seen Oanda does it, but are there more brokers out there?

As a relative newbie with less than two years experience in this business, I am aware that the most traded pair by far is EUR/USD, none the less I am wondering why most brokers offer all these comparativly little pairs with norwegian crown, polish zloty, Singapore dollar, even NZD, etc while by and large ignoring the BRIC-currencies. Maybe one of the more experienced members here can explain?

Thanks in advance,

LD

Good question. I've seen some brokers who offer aggregated feeds from muliple banks and dealer: some feeds with Hotspot or Integral. But i think without real interbank access you won't get the best conditions for these pairs. I also think trading the USD/CNY is restricted and not open yet for the average trader. The chinese central bank only allows an intraday deviation of +- 1% I've heard the next big thing was that China and Japan agreed to exchange their currencies directly without converting every transaction first into USD. The max. intraday deviation will be fixed to +- 3%.

Beside Oanda, FXDD offers USD/KRW, USD/CNY, USD/INR and USD/RUB.

Admiral Markets UK has also some very exotic pairs like USD/Vietnamese Dong & USD/Malaysian Ringgit.

The reason why you don't see those pairs often is because the countries have restrictions and intervention is more common. Thus, the interbank market for those pairs differs alot from the very liquid ones like EUR/USD, GBP/USD.

Trading USD/CNY, you actually trade a derivate product and not Spot FX.

USD/BRL is not offered yet on the retail level. They have been some rumours OANDA might add in the future, but there is nothing concrete yet. It's only tradeable at interbank currently.

it doesn't matter so much coz almost all pairs are closely corellated to eurusd.

So what?

It is wise to diversify especially when you have a situation where USD strength may be slowed down because of weaker economic data.

These days I'm looking too at short EUR/SGD and EUR/CAD.

If you try to find uncorrelated currencies (below 0.3) is nearly impossible ....corellation is the equivalent of the new financial AIDS.
In time you'll find our for yourself.

Thank you for all replies, will definitly look into the mentioned borkers.
Correlation: true, but it's grades of correlation that are interesting. EUR/USD is the most liquid, but both currencies have their problems. I'd like to have the choice to trade currencies of other big economies out there. I agree that the possibility of central bank intervention is rather high, but just have a look at JPY or CHF...

It does matter. Trading non-majors has its advantages. If you trade imbalances withing different "exotic" crosses it makes sense a lot. Suppose you get very good conditions. ;-)

On the exotics, a few brokers do offer some, but not all. And on the USD/INR, maybe but given the current situation, expect INR to get strong in the next few weeks with their central bank stepping in and with Crude losing steam.