Question

You are the manager of a U.S. company situated in Los Angeles and manages the import/export division of the company. The company distributes (resells) a variety of consumer products imported to the U.S.A from France and also exports goods manufactured in the U.S.A. to Britain.

Therefore, your company is very much dependent on the impact of current and future exchange rates on the performance of the company.

Scenario 1:

You have to estimate the expected exchange rates one year from now between your home currency and the other currencies of the major other countries that you deal with in terms of both imports and exports. The reason is that increases in the values of other currencies compared to the U.S. Dollar may impact your imports negatively, whilst it may on the other hand, be good for exports. To do this estimate, you obtain the following spot exchange rate information:

£/$	0.76918
€/$	0.87616

You also obtain the following rates that you regard as similar to the annual risk free rates applying in the countries:

U.S.A.	2.660%
Britain	0.778%
France	0.500%

Your focus is presently to estimate the 12 month forward rates in order to consider the impact that it will have on the import and export sales of the company. Calculate the forward rates of the $ in terms of all the currencies by using simple interest rate parity e.g. 10% annual interest rate = 10/2 = 5% for six months. Do not apply effective annual interest rate compounding. Show all your workings in table 1 on the separate answer sheet by using the correct formula provided in your formula sheet.

Provide an indication about what will happen to the value of the US$ based on the forward exchange rate calculations by calculating the expected discount/premium of it for each of the currencies in Table 2 on the separate answer sheet. Also show whether the impact will be positive (P) or negative (N) for imports and exports. For example:

Exchange rate	% Discount/Premium	Import	Export
£/$	Workings by you ……………. = 1.93% premium	Positive	Negative

Answer 1

Britain

Firstly, we will calculate the 12-month forward rate for £/$.

The formula to calculate forward rates using spot rate is:

£/$ One year Forward Rate = £/$ Spot rate * (1 + Foreign Currency Annual Risk Free Rate / 1 + Domestic Currency Annual Risk Free Rate)

= 0.76918 * [(1+ 0.778%) / (1 + 2.66%)]

= 0.75508 = 0.76

Next, we will calculate the % Discount / Premium on the exchange rate.

The formula to calculate % Discount/Premium is:

[(Forward Rate- Spot Rate) / Spot Rate] *100

= [(0.75508 - 0.76918) / 0.76918] * 100 = (-1.83312%)

France

Firstly, we will calculate the 12-month forward rate for €/$.

The formula to calculate forward rates using spot rate is:

€/$ One year Forward Rate = €/$ Spot rate * (1 + Foreign Currency Annual Risk Free Rate / 1 + Domestic Currency Annual Risk Free Rate)

= 0.87616 * [(1+ 0.500%) / (1 + 2.66%)]

= 0.85773 = 0.86

Next, we will calculate the % Discount / Premium on the exchange rate.

The formula to calculate % Discount/Premium is:

[(Forward Rate- Spot Rate) / Spot Rate] *100

= [(0.85773 - 0.87616) / 0.87616] * 100 = (-2.10403%)

Exchange Rate	% Discount / Premium	Import	Export
£/$	1.83312% Discount	Negative	Positive
€/$	2.10403% Discount	Negative	Positive