A quick rundown of why exchange rates are behaving like this lately
The news talks about the USD/KRW exchange rate every day, but the conclusion always ends at "the dollar is strong," which was frustrating, so I looked into it a bit.
Broadly, there are three factors: with U.S. interest rates staying high for a long time, money is flowing toward the dollar; Korea's exports aren't bad, but foreign funds are leaving the stock market; and geopolitical risks are increasing preference for safe-haven assets.
The general view is that until the direction of interest rates changes, things won't shift much. Of course, I don't have the confidence to make money with exchange-rate investing either, so I'm just going to keep doing regular savings/investing.
9 answers
Agreed — in the end, it’s all about interest rates.
The summary is clean. But the second factor feels a bit lumped together—many people see foreign capital outflow as a domestic stock market supply-demand issue rather than an exchange rate issue. The causality is confusing: is it that the exchange rate rises, so they sell stocks and leave, or that they sell stocks and leave, so the exchange rate rises?