Wednesday, August 8, 2012

How Does Forex Market Works?

How Does Forex Worksforex works? is the question many of us ask. well we have the answer to that, FOREX (Foreign Exchange market) began in 1971, when the U.S. announced to the world that it would no longer exchange gold for the U.S. dollars that were held in foreign reserves and shortly after the breakdown of Bretton Woods system most konsentris finally accepted the use of floating foreign exchange rates. Forex is also the biggest financial market in the world with a trading volume in excess of $4 trillion per day makes it significantly larger than all the financial markets in the world combined. The Forex market is open 24-hours a day, 5 days a week (00:00 GMT on Monday to 10:00 pm GMT on Friday). Forex market does not have centralized exchange like in stock market instead it is mainly operated in four leading cities spread around the world viz. New York, London, Sydney, Tokyo. Forex market contains investors, traders, governments, central banks, investment banks and large commercial companies. So in general whoever exchanges currencies is part of the forex market and most of the transactions happen through large international banks and other financial institutions. Being a decentralized market, Forex itself remains unregulated but the market participants are regulated by various authorities, depending on the country where the given participant resides. For example, participants from United States have to get themselves regulated by NFA (National Futures Association) and CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission). As a result of decentralized nature, there are instances when exchange rates for a currency pair vary depending on the place and the financial institution, unlike in the stock exchange where the rates are same for a particular entity. Nonetheless, the variation in rates is marginal. If you are still not getting how does forex works? then read following facts.

If you want to know how does forex works? then know these interesting facts about FOREX market:

  • It is free from external controls that mean it cannot be manipulated by any single entity even if that entity is government let alone an individual person.
  • Forex market participants have different motives, in case of investors  some are longer term hedge investors, while others utilize massive credit lines to seek large short term gains, where as large companies might just enter forex to mitigate exchange rate risks using hedging.
  • The most commonly traded currencies on the Forex market are the U.S. Dollar (USD), the Japanese Yen (JPY), the Euro (EUR), the British Pound (GPB), the Canadian Dollar (CAD), the Australian Dollar (AUD), and the Swiss Franc (CHF). And the U.S. Dollar is involved in nearly 90% of all Forex transactions. getting an idea yet? of how does forex works? keep reading.
  • Brokers in forex market offer very high leverage, sometimes up to 1:2000, meaning you can trade currencies worth $2,000,000 with account balance of just $1,000.
  • Ten financial institutions account for nearly 73% of the total Forex trading market volume.  The Top 10 most active traders include Deutsche Bank (17.0%), UBS (12.5%), Citigroup (7.5%), HSBC (6.4%), Barclays (5.9%), Merrill Lynch (5.7%), J. P. Morgan Chase (5.3%), Goldman Sachs (4.4%), ABN AMRO (4.2%), and Morgan Stanley (3.9%).

 



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