Multi-Currency & Exchange Rates
Reference for multi-currency support in Tradeways — automatic daily rate sync, manual rate overrides, and cross-currency P&L conversion.
When Multi-Currency Matters
Multi-currency situations arise whenever an instrument's P&L currency differs from the trading account's settlement currency. Common examples:
- Trading EUR/USD (P&L in USD) in a GBP-denominated account.
- Trading DAX futures (P&L in EUR) in a USD-denominated account.
- Trading BTCUSDT (P&L in USDT) in a EUR-denominated account.
- Receiving a swap adjustment in JPY on a USD account.
Tradeways detects these mismatches automatically and converts P&L values using the appropriate exchange rate.
Automatic Daily Rate Sync
Tradeways fetches daily exchange rates from the European Central Bank (ECB) via the Frankfurter API. Rates are published once per business day with EUR as the base currency.
From the EUR-based rates, Tradeways derives any currency pair through cross-rate calculation. For example, to convert USD to GBP: USD/GBP = (EUR/GBP) / (EUR/USD).
Weekend and Holiday Handling
Markets may close trades on dates when the ECB does not publish rates (weekends, holidays). To handle this, the rate lookup walks backwards up to 5 calendar days to find the most recent available rate. A Friday trade closing will use Friday's rate if available, otherwise Thursday's, and so on.
Manual Rate Overrides
You can set manual exchange rates for any currency pair and date. Manual rates are user-scoped — they never affect other users.
Manual rates take priority over automatic rates. This is useful when:
- The ECB rate does not cover a specific currency or stablecoin (e.g. USDT, USDC).
- Your broker used a specific conversion rate that differs from the ECB mid-market rate.
- You want to correct a historical rate for accurate P&L reporting.
Rate Resolution Order
When Tradeways needs an exchange rate for a currency pair on a specific date, it follows this resolution chain:
| Priority | Source | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | User manual — direct | Exact pair match from your manual rates |
| 2 | User manual — inverse | Inverse pair from your manual rates (1 / rate) |
| 3 | Global — direct | ECB-sourced rate for the exact pair |
| 4 | Global — inverse | ECB-sourced rate for the inverse pair |
| 5 | EUR cross-rate | Derived from two EUR-based rates |
| 6 | Backward-date fallback | Repeat steps 1-5 for up to 5 previous days |
If no rate is found after exhausting all steps, the P&L value remains unconverted and a missing-rate indicator is shown.
Where Conversion Applies
Exchange rate conversion is used in several places:
- Trade P&L — gross P&L is converted from the instrument's P&L currency to the account currency when computing net monetary P&L.
- Trade adjustments — each adjustment carries its own currency and is converted individually using the rate for its applied date.
- Account transactions — deposits, withdrawals, fees, and interest in a foreign currency are converted when computing account balance.
- Aggregated views — dashboard totals, daily/weekly/monthly summaries, and the equity curve all use converted values.
See Also
- Instrument Configuration — how the instrument's P&L currency is determined
- Trade Adjustments — cross-currency adjustment handling
- Account Transactions — cross-currency transaction handling