The starting point for almost every macro FX trade is a rate differential. Before you look at technicals, before you look at positioning, before you look at growth data — you look at what each central bank is doing and where its policy rate sits relative to the other side of the pair.
But tracking 20 central banks manually is genuinely painful. Rates change on different schedules. Meeting calendars overlap and shift. Real rates — the rate that actually matters for exchange rate theory, which adjusts the nominal policy rate for inflation — require pulling CPI data separately and doing the arithmetic. Bilateral differentials for each pair require yet another calculation. By the time you have done all of this across all pairs, conditions have moved.
What CbRates Solves
The CbRates monitor maintains all of this in real time, updated automatically when any central bank moves. The main view shows each of the 20 central banks with their current policy rate, the date of their most recent decision, and the date of their next scheduled meeting. Rate changes appear immediately.
The bilateral differential view is the core tool for FX analysis. For any pair you care about — EUR/USD, USD/JPY, GBP/USD — you get the current policy rate differential, the real rate differential (adjusting for each country's current CPI), and a historical view of how the differential has moved over the past 12 months.
The carry screener ranks all tracked pairs by the size of their nominal differential, giving you a quick view of where the yield pickup is largest. Cross-reference this with the risk environment from the FX dashboard to determine which carry opportunities are in a favorable regime.
How to Use It Alongside the FX Dashboard
The CbRates monitor and the FX dashboard are designed to be used together. The monitor gives you the rate differential context — the structural baseline. The dashboard gives you the full transmission chain assessment — whether that structural baseline is being reinforced or offset by risk conditions, growth signals, and commodity factors.
A wide rate differential in favor of the dollar means little if global risk conditions are deteriorating and the VIX is spiking. The differential sets the structural force; the FX dashboard tells you whether the current environment allows that force to express itself in price. The rate differentials article covers this interaction in depth, and the 2-year yield article explains why market-implied rate expectations often move before central banks do.
The Real Rate Layer
One detail worth highlighting: the real rate differential is often more informative than the nominal one, especially in environments where inflation regimes diverge between countries. When the US is running 3% inflation and Japan is running 1%, the same nominal rate differential implies very different real rates on each side. The CbRates real rate column does this calculation for you continuously, so you always have both the nominal and real differential in view.
High real rate differentials are a stronger structural support for a currency than nominal differentials alone, because they reflect genuine purchasing power dynamics rather than just the nominal yield gap.