Day Trader

Ever notice how strange things will interest you? Part of my job at Hitachi was to do analysis on the hard drive market and the status of the company's profits per product. I used to really enjoy seeing if my predictions proved true or not and how the market was faring. Since coming to Hungary, I haven't been able to do this anymore, which I kinda miss. However, I realized today as I was walking around town that I have replaced my fascination over the hard drive market health with my fascination with the exchange rate of the dollar versus the Hungarian Forint. It's quite exciting to see how the market reacts to things happening around the world. I find myself checking my iGoogle page at least five times a day so as to see how the forint is doing.

The sad part is it isn't only a passing interest. When the dollar is really doing bad, I get less money from the ATM per dollar, which really stinks. Other times, like the past few months, the forint is really bad and I get more per dollar. The interesting thing is you don't really feel the effects of this movement until you have to change money between the two. For us missionaries, it can be a really stressful thing (when we forget who is providing for us in the first place) or a really huge time of blessing. In the chart above, you can see how last summer it went down to 140 forints per dollar, and just a few months ago, went up to 250! Too bad it's going down again. The sad part is it helps Hungary when the dollar is down, but chokes us who depend on the dollar doing well. We want Hungary to prosper, but we also want to prosper ourselves. It's a strange place to be in. Anyways, I just thought I would share this random thought. God bless!