Why did the Singapore Dollar Witness Such Sharp Occasional Spikes Against the Rand?

External question — Personal Finance Stack Exchange Author: Della Original post: https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/164234 License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. I have a business trip to South Africa coming up (first time), so was just looking at their currency out of curiosity, and as an estimate of costs and the plot had some surprise for me. It seems against my home currency (Singapore dollar) the rand stayed stable (~13 rand/sgd for now), except for a few massive spikes that sends the exchange rate soaring through the sky. What do these indicate? Can any event be that short lived to have a sudden spike and then everything returns to normal? Or, even if it is a few traders trying something funny (shorting or liquidating a huge position) can they really influence the market that much without fundamentals?