In this question, we are dealing with a foreign exchange (forex) quotation for USD/CHF, where USD stands for United States Dollar and CHF stands for Swiss Franc.
A listed quote such as 1.4481/88 provides us with two key pieces of information:
- The first part of the quote "1.4481" is the bid price.
- The second part of the quote "1.4488" is the ask price.
The bid price (1.4481) is essentially the price at which the market is willing to buy USD from you in exchange for CHF. Conversely, the ask price (1.4488) is the price at which the market is willing to sell USD to you in exchange for CHF.
Since we want to determine how many Swiss francs it costs to buy 1 U.S. dollar, we need to look at the ask price. This is because the ask price indicates how many Swiss francs you need to pay to obtain 1 U.S. dollar.
Hence, the correct answer to the question "How many Swiss francs does it cost to buy 1 U.S. dollar?" is:
D. 1.4488
