Daily foreign exchange rates (spot rates) can be obtained from the Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago. The data are the noon buying rates in New York City certified by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Consider the exchange rates between the U.S. dollar and the Canadian dollar, euro, U.K. pound, and Japanese yen from January 2000 to March 2004.

(a) Compute the daily log return of each exchange rate.

(b) Compute the sample mean, standard deviation, skewness, excess kurtosis, minimum, and maximum of the log returns of each exchange rate.

(c) Discuss the empirical characteristics of the log returns of exchange rates.