FX Swap vs FX Spot + FX Forward

[daveyc82]

Are they effectively the same? What about in terms of risk profile? which is has greater risk in general?

 

[ami44]

A FXSwap can always be split into a FXSpot (the near leg) and a FXForward (the far leg). Both representations are equivalent in every way.

Of course that doesn’t mean that every pair of FXSpot and FXForward are equivalent to some FXSwap.

Also keep in mind, that a FXSpot and a FXForward are essentially the same thing, only differing in the time to settlement. So a forward FXSwap would actually split into two FXForwards.