Working with all major currencies and delivering global solutions, StateTrust's team serves clients worldwide, giving the expertise and insights that could help them manage risk and generate investment ideas.
We provide products and services that match your individual foreign exchange requirements. Additionally, we offer cutting-edge electronic capabilities, that allow us to provide the services you need.
From making investment decisions to managing risk, you need the support of a solid and global institution that can guide you through your foreign exchange activities.
Our Foreign Exchange Desk offers multicurrency execution capabilities on more than 30 markets, facilitates the trading and conversion of nearly 20 currencies, and support for spot and forward transactions and cross-currency trading. This way, our clients have the freedom of choosing what currencies to include in their portfolios to satisfy their investment goals. Clients can also choose the specific currency in which their portfolios are valued.
Currency exchange requires an understanding of the following concepts:
- Currency Benchmark –Currency exchange rates are always published in pairs. For example, the rate of the euro to the US dollar (EUR/USD 1.5600).
- Buy and sell rates.
- Amount – The nominal value of the currency the client wishes to buy or sell.
- Spread between the buy and sell rates.
- Settlement and availability of funds. For spot transactions, funds are available 48 hours after the transaction.
Through a simple phone call, StateTrust executes your investment orders in our specialized global trading desk. StateTrust assists clients to participate in the Foreign Exchange Market (Forex, FX, or currency market) which is a global decentralized over the counter financial market for trading currencies.
The primary purpose of the foreign exchange market is to assist international trade and investment, by allowing businesses to convert one currency to another currency. The modern foreign exchange market began forming during the 1970s, when countries gradually switched to floating exchange rates from the previous fixed rate regime ("Bretton Woods system").
The foreign exchange market is unique because of:
- Huge trading volume.
- Continous operation (24 hours a day except weekends).
- Multiple factors affect it (i.e. interest rate, GDP growth, other economic factors).
- Daily turnover in global foreign exchange transactions is approximately 4 trillion per day broken down as follows:
- 1.49 trillion in spot transactions, 475 billion in outright forwards, 1.765 trillion in FX swaps, 43 billion in currency swaps, 207 billion in options and other products.
| Return to local investors | Currency impact | Return to U.S investors | |
| United States | 26.5% | 0.0% | 26.50% |
| Pacific region | 19.8% | 4.6% | 24.30% |
| Japan | 9.3% | -2.9% | 6.40% |
| European region | 28.6% | 8.2% | 36.80% |
| United Kingdom | 27.7% | 15.7% | 43.40% |
| International composite | 25.4% | 7.1% | 32.50% |
Source: StateTrust’s analysis of Morningstar data. Performance shown is not indicative of the performance of any specific investment. An investor cannot invest in an index, such as the one these graphs are based on. Past returns are no guarantee of future performance. These returns are based on historical information, from sources believed to be reliable, but accuracy cannot be guaranteed, and these returns can vary in future time periods.
A strengthening dollar reduces the value of a foreign security owned by a U.S. investor, while a weakening dollar increases the value.The graphic above illustrates the impact currency exchange had on various indexes in 2009.
- Conversion of nearly 20 currencies
- Offers non-U.S. dollar execution on more than 30 markets
- Supports spot and forward transactions, and cross currency trading
- Cutting-edge electronic capabilities
- Specialized global trading desks
- Full access to global multilingual money managers