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Market Data Widget

A compact market board: where the rand sits against six currencies, and how far it has moved in thirty days.

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BasketRand vs six currencies
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30 daysChange per pair
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FreeCommercial use allowed

i In short

Most market data widgets are built for American audiences and show the Dow, the S&P and a handful of tech shares. If your readers care about the rand, none of that tells them anything. This widget puts the currency pairs that matter to a South African audience at the top, adds the thirty-day change for each, and summarises the lot into a single basket figure that answers the question readers actually ask: has the rand got stronger or weaker lately?

The basket reading is an equally weighted average of the rand's thirty-day move against the dollar, euro, pound, Australian dollar, yen and yuan. It is calculated on the page rather than taken from an index provider, and the widget says so, because presenting a home-made number as though it were an official index would be misleading. What it gives you is a single honest figure that is far more informative than USD/ZAR alone, since USD/ZAR moves as much on dollar strength as on anything happening in South Africa.

A second tab covers the six major pairs with the same thirty-day framing, which is useful when the story is about the dollar rather than the rand. The whole board is built from one network request per tab, so it is light enough for a sidebar.

As with the rest of the set: no API key, no registration, no cookie, no tracker, and a clear statement on the widget itself that these are mid-market reference levels rather than dealing prices.

Try the Market Data Widget

Live previewThis is exactly what your readers will see

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Free for any site, including commercial ones. Keep the small credit line at the bottom of the widget so readers can find the full version. Nothing is stored about the people who use it. See the disclaimer.

How to add it to your site

  1. Copy the code above Use the copy button so nothing is lost to line wrapping. It is a single iframe tag and it does not need anything else.
  2. Open the page you want it on In WordPress add a Custom HTML block, in Wix use the Embed HTML element, in Squarespace use a Code block, and on a hand-built site paste it straight into your HTML.
  3. Paste and publish The widget appears immediately. If you see an empty space instead, your editor has stripped the iframe tag, which the HTML embed guide explains how to work around.
  4. Adjust the look if you want to Add the parameters in the table below to the iframe URL to change the theme, the accent colour or the height. Nothing needs to be configured on our side.

Customisation options

ParameterValuesWhat it does
themeauto, light, darkDefault follows the reader's own system setting, so the widget looks right on a dark site and a light one without you choosing.
accentSix hex digits, e.g. accent=1A56DBRecolours the header bar and the primary button to match your brand.
header1 or 0Set to 0 to hide the title bar when your page already has a heading above the widget.
breakdown1 or 0Set to 0 to hide the calculation breakdown for a more compact block.
corners1 or 0Set to 0 for square corners if your design has no rounding anywhere else.
widthfullRemoves the 520px maximum so the widget stretches to its container.

Parameters are added to the iframe URL as a normal query string, for example /embed/position-size-calculator.html?theme=dark&accent=1A56DB&header=0. The widget builder lets you set all of them visually and hands you the finished code.

What the widget calculates

For each pair the widget shows the current reference level and the percentage change over roughly thirty days, derived from daily closes. Rises and falls are signed and colour-coded, with the sign carrying the meaning so colour is never the only cue.

The basket figure at the top inverts each rand pair so that a positive number always means a stronger rand, which avoids the common confusion where USD/ZAR falling is good news for the rand but looks like a decline on a chart.

Who this widget suits

Business and financial news

A market summary block that is about your readers' currency rather than someone else's index.

Economics and policy blogs

Thirty-day framing suits commentary better than a live tick, because it matches the timescale of the argument.

Investor relations and country pages

A neutral, ad-free snapshot of currency conditions that needs no maintenance.

Related widgets

The full library of free trading widgets has more than seventy tools, and the widget builder lets you preview and configure any of them before you copy the code.

Frequently asked questions

What exactly is the rand basket figure?

It is the average thirty-day percentage move of the rand against six currencies, weighted equally, calculated in your reader's browser from daily closing reference rates. A positive number means the rand strengthened on average over that period.

It is not an official index and the widget does not claim it is. Trade-weighted indices published by the SARB use actual trade weights and a different methodology, and will not match this figure exactly.

Why thirty days rather than today's move?

A single day's move in a currency is mostly noise, and a widget that headlines it invites readers to draw conclusions from nothing. Thirty days is long enough to reflect a genuine shift and short enough to still be current. If you want the daily change instead, the live quotes widget shows that.

Does it include JSE indices or commodities?

No. JSE index data is licensed by the exchange and cannot be redistributed in a free widget, and free commodity price sources are not reliable enough to put on someone else's site. The widget covers currencies, where genuinely free and dependable reference data exists.

How current is the data?

It is based on daily closing reference rates, with the date of the most recent close shown under the table. It is a market summary rather than a live feed, which is the right resolution for a thirty-day view.

Can I embed just the basket number without the table?

Not as a separate parameter at present. Hiding the title bar with header=0 and setting a fixed height will crop the widget in most layouts, though the cleaner option is to use the full widget in a sidebar where the table has room.

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