The currency rate is always
stated as quoting prices in terms of
units of the domestic currency per unit of foreign currency
Recall that in pricing equity
forwards, we always reduced the stock price by the present value of the
dividends and then compounded the resulting value to the expi- ration date. We
can view currencies in the same way. The stock makes cash payments that happen
to be called dividends; the currency makes cash payments that happen to be
called interest. Although the time pattern of how a stock pays dividends is
quite different from the time pattern of how interest accrues, the general idea
is the same. After reducing the spot price or rate by any cash flows over the
life of the contract, the resulting value is then compounded at the risk-free
rate to the expiration day.
In international financial
markets, however, this formula has acquired its own name: interest rate parity
(sometimes called covered interest rate parity). It expresses the equivalence,
or parity, of spot and forward exchange rates, after adjusting for differences
in the interest rates in the two countries.

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