ExRates BETA

Forex 101

The FOReign EXchange Market, short-termed FOREX or FX Market, is the spot (cash) market for currency.

Foreign Exchange is the simultaneous buying of one currency and selling of another. Currencies are traded in pairs, for example Euro/US Dollar (EUR/USD) or US Dollar/Japanese Yen (USD/JPY).

The forex market is the largest and most liquid financial market in the world. The daily dollar volume of currencies traded in the currency market exceeds $1.9 trillion, many times larger than the combined volume of all U.S. equities and futures markets.
Any person, firm or country may participate in this market.

There is no central marketplace for currency exchange; trade is conducted over the counter. The forex market is open 24 hours a day, five days a week, and currencies are traded worldwide among the major financial centers of London, New York, Tokyo, Zürich, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Singapore, Paris and Sydney.

While forex trading used to be executed exclusively between government central banks and commercial and investment banks, trading forex has become increasingly accessible to private investors thanks to the PC and internet.

 

Daily currency fluctuations are usually very small. Most currency pairs move less than one cent per day, representing a less than 1% change in the value of the currency. This makes foreign exchange one of the least volatile financial markets around. Therefore, many speculators rely on the availability of enormous leverage to increase the value of potential movements. In the forex market, leverage can be as much as 250:1. Higher leverage can be extremely risky, but because of round-the-clock trading and deep liquidity, foreign exchange brokers have been able to make high leverage an industry standard in order to make the movements meaningful for FX traders.