StrikeAndYield crib sheet · information and education only

Foreign Exchange

The deepest market in the world: exchanging one currency for another, today or at a date in the future.

The shelf — 7 instruments

Exchanging one currency for another, settled in two days — the deepest market humanity has built.

Dual Currency Deposit	A deposit with a headline rate several times the going one, which the bank may repay in a currency you did not want.
FX Forward	Lock an exchange rate for a future date — the corporate world's everyday currency hedge.
FX Future	The exchange-traded twin of the FX forward — same economics, public prices, a clearing house instead of a credit line.

Cross-Currency Swap	Swap debt from one currency into another for years at a time — principal, interest and all.
FX Swap	Borrow one currency against another: the invisible funding machine underneath global finance, and the one nobody sees.
Non-Deliverable Forward	A forward for currencies you can't take home — settled in dollars against an official fixing.

Interest-rate differentials — Money moves toward the higher yield until it does not
Terms of trade — A commodity exporter's currency moves with what it exports
Central bank intervention and regime — A managed rate is flat until it is not
Positioning — It is a zero-sum market, so somebody is always the other side
Cross-border flow — Trade, hedging and portfolio flows all clear here
The dollar as a global funding currency — In stress everything is a dollar shortage

Daily, on the hour	Fixing windows
Monthly	Inflation and labour releases
Six to eight times a year	Policy meetings
Month end	Rebalancing flows
Quarter end	Balance-sheet dates

Counted from the same table each product page prints. Not a rating and not a ranking: there is deliberately no total.