Exchange Rates Data

Historical exchange rates data is convenient to use to test a trading system and its usefulness. Many of the providers of historical data charge high fees for their data, but there are also providers of free forex data.

There are sources for both historical spot market data and futures forex data. These sources include:

• FXHistory from OANDA.com
• www.ECB.de (European Central Bank)
• FederalReserve.gov (U.S. Federal Reserve

Exchange Rates Data – FXHistory

From the service, you can obtain the historical rates with the desired rate (cash, interbank, or credit card), in ASCII, CSV, or HTML format.

Once you’ve done the selections, click “get table” to obtain the historical currency rates in the format of your choosing.

Exchange Rates Data – www.ECB.de

As part of the financial service to the public, European Central Bank offers historical forex rates online. The data section is located in the Euro Area Statistics - Downloads section, which also has other financial data to be downloaded.

The data is in a CSV (Comma Separated Values) format. The data is easy to import into Excel format.

Exchange Rates Data – FederalReserve.com

As is the case with ECB, the U.S. Federal Reserve offers free historical forex rates as part of their public service.

The part of their site containing the data is located under the Federal Reserve Statistical Releases page.

The forex rates are available from early 1971 for most major currencies against the USD. The historical rates are available in either ASCII format or in Screen Reader format. The ASCII data especially is easy to convert into Excel format.


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