When you buy a share listed in another currency, your return depends on both the share price and the exchange rate. If the foreign currency weakens against your own, your investment is worth less in your currency even if the share price is unchanged - and the opposite when it strengthens.
Costs
Brokers usually charge a fee to exchange currency on each foreign trade. Over many small purchases this can add up; some brokers let you hold foreign currency to avoid repeated exchanges.
Companies are exposed too
Companies that sell abroad earn money in foreign currencies, so exchange rates also move their profits. A company can also report in one currency while its shares trade in another - a Danish company reports in Danish kroner, but its shares listed in New York are priced in US dollars.
How Ticker Picker shows the currencies
Every amount is shown with its currency sign, and you choose the view with the Currency selector in the screener, the financial statements and the price chart:
Raw shows each figure as it was reported: the share price in the currency of the exchange it trades on, the financial statements in the company's reporting currency. Native converts the share price into the reporting currency, so price and statements are in the same currency and can be compared directly. USD and EUR convert everything into US dollars or euros, which is handy when you compare companies from different countries.
Ratios and percentages - P/E, margins, growth - never change with the currency choice: they convert the price first, so they are correct in every view. The screener's filters and sorting always compare amounts in one currency (US dollars, or euros if you choose), so a limit such as 10 billion means the same for every share.
Historical or today's rate
When you convert, the Rate selector decides which exchange rate is used. Historical converts every figure at the rate of its own time: each day's price at that day's rate, a year's revenue at that year's average rate and the balance sheet at the rate on its closing date. That shows what the figures were really worth back then - what a share actually cost in your currency, or how big the company looked to an investor at the time.
Today converts every figure, old or new, at today's rate. That removes the currency swings, so you see the company's own development: if revenue grew in the reporting currency, it also grows in the Today view. Switching between the two shows how much of a change was the business and how much was the exchange rate - and how currency moves have changed what the investment was worth in your own money. Exchange rates are not an inflation adjustment: a figure converted at today's rate is not in today's purchasing power.
The rates are the European Central Bank's daily reference rates.
This content is general information, not investment advice.