Certainly not the best way to keep up with currencies, but the increasingly important job of monitoring currencies can be free and easy in R using Federal Reserve FRED data.  Here is a template that can be adjusted to your favorite currencies with symbols listed here.

See my previous post on how to monitor the potential US Dollar Collapse cheaply and easily.  Also, currencies are important again, so do not ignore them when investing.  Don’t say I did not warn you and don’t make excuses that you don’t have expensive gear.

From TimelyPortfolio

From TimelyPortfolio

R code:

require(quantmod)
require(PerformanceAnalytics)

#get asian currency data from the FED FRED data series
getSymbols(“DEXKOUS”,src=”FRED”) #load Korea
getSymbols(“DEXMAUS”,src=”FRED”) #load Malaysia
getSymbols(“DEXSIUS”,src=”FRED”) #load Singapore
getSymbols(“DEXTAUS”,src=”FRED”) #load Taiwan
getSymbols(“DEXCHUS”,src=”FRED”) #load China
getSymbols(“DEXJPUS”,src=”FRED”) #load Japan
getSymbols(“DEXTHUS”,src=”FRED”) #load Thailand
getSymbols(“DEXBZUS”,src=”FRED”) #load Brazil
getSymbols(“DEXMXUS”,src=”FRED”) #load Mexico
getSymbols(“DEXINUS”,src=”FRED”) #load India
getSymbols(“DTWEXO”,src=”FRED”) #load US Dollar Other Trading Partners
getSymbols(“DTWEXB”,src=”FRED”) #load US Dollar Broad

par(mfrow=c(3, 4)) #provides 2 columns and 3 rows for charts
plot(1/coredata(DEXKOUS[“1995::2011″]),type=”l”,ylab=”Korea”)
plot(1/coredata(DEXMAUS[“1995::2011″]),type=”l”,ylab=”Malaysia”)
plot(1/coredata(DEXSIUS[“1995::2011″]),type=”l”,ylab=”Singapore”)
plot(1/coredata(DEXTAUS[“1995::2011″]),type=”l”,ylab=”Taiwan”)
plot(1/coredata(DEXCHUS[“1995::2011″]),type=”l”,ylab=”China”)
plot(1/coredata(DEXJPUS[“1995::2011″]),type=”l”,ylab=”Japan”)
plot(1/coredata(DEXTHUS[“1995::2011″]),type=”l”,ylab=”Thailand”)
plot(1/coredata(DEXBZUS[“1995::2011″]),type=”l”,ylab=”Brazil”)
plot(1/coredata(DEXMXUS[“1995::2011″]),type=”l”,ylab=”Mexico”)
plot(1/coredata(DEXINUS[“1995::2011″]),type=”l”,ylab=”India”)
plot(coredata(DTWEXO[“1995::2011″]),type=”l”,ylab=”US Dollar Other”)
plot(coredata(DTWEXB[“1995::2011″]),type=”l”,ylab=”US Dollar Broad”)

#if you prefer a prettier chart then you can use
chartSeries(to.monthly(1/DEXSIUS),theme = chartTheme(“white”),name=”Singapore Dollar/USD”,TA=”addBBands(10)”)