Historical Daily USD and Most Tradable Currencies FX Rates since 1971
Use
Historical daily exchange rates for 35 foreign currencies relative to the U.S. Dollar and most tradable currencies based on Federal Reserve data since 1971

Applications
- Fundamental financial and economic analysis
- Back-testing investment and risk-return hypothesis
- Historical reference of how a currency pair has traded in the past
- Help forex traders to discern the direction of a given currency pair
DOCUMENTATION
Historical Daily USD and Most Tradable Currencies FX Rates since 1971
Overview
Updated weekly, this data product provides Historical Daily Foreign Exchange (FX) Rates for 35 foreign currencies relative to the U.S. Dollar based on Federal Reserve System (FED) data since 1971.
FED is the central banking system of the United States of America. It was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, after a series of financial panics led to the desire for central control of the monetary system in order to alleviate financial crises.
On top of the USD FX rates data from FED, ALTADATA calculates and provides FX and inverse rates for the other
Top-8 Most Tradable Currencies.
The foreign exchange market (also known as forex, FX or the currency market) is an over-the-counter (OTC) global marketplace that determines the exchange rate for currencies around the world. Participants are able to buy, sell, exchange and speculate on currencies. Foreign exchange markets are made up of banks, forex dealers, commercial companies, central banks, investment management firms, hedge funds, retail forex dealers and investors.
Although the foreign exchange market is often billed as a banker's game, currencies can sometimes be great diversification for a portfolio that might have hit a bit of a rut. Here are the Top-8 Most Tradable Currencies according to Investopedia:
- U.S. Dollar (USD)
- European Euro (EUR)
- Japanese Yen (JPY)
- British Pound (GBP)
- Swiss Franc (CHF)
- Canadian Dollar (CAD)
- Australian Dollar (AUD)
- South African Rand (ZAR)
Currency Coverage
This data product covers 35 currencies, as listed in below table:
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(1) For the EU countries adopted Euro, you can find more info at the "EU Countries and the euro" like the adoption dates and rates.
(2) The European Currency Unit (ECU) was a unit of account used by European Economic Community composed of a basket of member country currencies. The ECU came in to operation on 13 March 1979, and was assigned the ISO 4217 code. The ECU replaced the European Unit of Account (EUA) at parity in 1979, and it was later replaced by the by euro (EUR) at parity on 1 January 1999.
(3) For the following countries, earliest available data at FED varies, such as: 1973 (India, Sri Lanka), 1981 (P. R. of China, Hong Kong, Mexico, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand), 1983 (Taiwan), 1993 (Mexico), 1995 (Brazil, Venezuela)
Data Collection Methodology
The given exchange rates are certified by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for customs purposes as required by section 522 of the amended Tariff Act of 1930. These rates are also those required by the SEC for the integrated disclosure system for foreign private issuers. The information is based on data collected by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from a sample of market participants.
- The daily exchange rates are collected weekly from the Federal Reserve System (FED)
- Using FED's USD data, other Top-8 Most Tradable Currencies are calculated and provided by ALTADATA
- All the currency exchange rates are cleansed and organized to provide a ready for analysis dataset for the investors
- Historical and current FX rates are standardized for every country, with the added inverse currency exchange rates
Related Data Products
Key Features
- Daily FX rates and inverse rates data updated weekly
- Rates for USD and other top-8 most tradable currencies
- Covers 35 countries' monetary units
- Historical data goes back to 1971
Data Provider
Alta Bering
Until a few decades ago majority of us were employed in real world businesses. Alta Bering came out of a history of production technology and reconciled it with sophisticated algorithmic math, an after-thought in enterprise system functionality.We believe efficiency is key to mitigating scarcity economics. In the early 2000s, we set our sights on helping companies achieve higher efficiency and growth, not just growth.Today we enable advanced prescriptive analytics for data scientists and enterprise cloud platforms. Our goal is to help business analysts step up to corporate responsibility.Contact us for more about how we deliver our predictive analytics consulting to large and medium sized clients.