After being quite steady at just about 41 for 6 months, in the last month the exchange rate has dropped to 40. I would be interested in the reason(s) for the change.

happens every year...

According to recent BP articles, etc., a Thaksin family sell-off of Shin Corp ownership to SingTel may be behind this. On the "transparent" surface, the idea is to remove conflicts of interest.

But speculation is that private buy-back agreements cannot be verified, so it may just be politics as usual.

At any rate, Singapore banks have been swabbing up Thai Baht, and that seems to be a major reason for the change.

Let's see what happens.

Currently 39.7 THB/USD and dropping like a stone...

http://finance.yahoo.com/currency/convert?...=THB&amt=1&t=5d

happens every year...

No, of course it doesn't. To say so is both glib and inaccurate.

As another poster pointed out, over a period of about 72 hours, a number of Singapore banks were heavy baht buyers. The unusual demand drove the rate from circa 41.5 quickly up in the direction of 39.5. Remember the law of supply and demand? Currency is just another comodity like oil or gold. Greater demand for a currency (or falling supply) means higher prices for it.

Now whether this baht buying out of Singapore is or is not the result of a SingTel deal to buy Shin Corp I have no idea. The Singapore banks are the major market makers in Thai baht so, regardless of the reason for the demand, it would probably be routed through Singapore anyway.

The more important question is whether the baht will continnue to strengthen. The excess baht demand happen to come against a background of unusual dollar weakness (the USD weakened 2% against the EUR during exactly the same period) and the odds against an early repeat of such a perfect storm are pretty good. In other words, there may be more strength in the baht, but don't count on another 2% pop anytime soon.

Currently 39.7 THB/USD and dropping like a stone...

http://finance.yahoo.com/currency/convert?...=THB&amt=1&t=5d

Coming from 41 that is not a drop.

It is a good solid RISE of 5%.

Mind you the US$ has dropped and that might be the reason.

BOT used to say they had a basket of currencies to determine the rate,

but I always thought they had all their US dollars in the same basket.

The British Pound has also nose dived the lowest for 2 years as far as I know. Is the trend down?