Forex!

 foreign exchange market

The foreign exchange market (forex, FX, or currency market) is a form of exchange for the global decentralized trading of international currencies. Financial centers around the world function as anchors of trading between a wide range of different types of buyers and sellers around the clock, with the exception of weekends. EBS and Reuters' dealing 3000 are two main interbank FX trading platforms. The foreign exchange market determines the relative values of different currencies.





The foreign exchange market assists international trade and investment by enabling currency conversion. For example, it permits a business in the United States to import goods from the European Union member states especially Eurozone members and pay Euros, even though its income is in United States dollars. It also supports direct speculation in the value of currencies, and the carry trade, speculation based on the interest rate differential between two currencies.


In a typical foreign exchange transaction, a party purchases some quantity of one currency by paying some quantity of another currency. The modern foreign exchange market began forming during the 1970s after three decades of government restrictions on foreign exchange transactions (the Bretton Woods system of monetary management established the rules for commercial and financial relations among the world's major industrial states after World War II), when countries gradually switched to floating exchange rates from the previous exchange rate regime, which remained fixed as per the Bretton Woods system.
The foreign exchange market is unique because of the following characteristics:

• its huge trading volume representing the largest asset class in the world leading to high liquidity;
• its geographical dispersion;
• its continuous operation: 24 hours a day except weekends, i.e., trading from 20:15 GMT on Sunday until 22:00 GMT Friday;
• the variety of factors that affect exchange rates;
• the low margins of relative profit compared with other markets of fixed income; and
• the use of leverage to enhance profit and loss margins and with respect to account size.

As such, it has been referred to as the market closest to the ideal of perfect competition, notwithstanding currency intervention by central banks. According to the Bank for International Settlements, as of April 2010, average daily turnover in global foreign exchange markets is estimated at $3.98 trillion, a growth of approximately 20% over the $3.21 trillion daily volume as of April 2007. Some firms specializing on foreign exchange market had put the average daily turnover in excess of US$4 trillion

From 1899 to 1913 holdings of countries foreign exchange increased by 10.8%, while holdings of gold increased by 6.3%. At the time of the closing of the year 1913, nearly half of the world's forexes were being performed using sterling. The number of foreign banks operating within the boundaries of London increased in the years from 1860 to 1913 from 3 to 71. In 1902 there were altogether two London foreign exchange brokers. In the earliest years of the twentieth century trade was most active in Paris, New York and Berlin, while Britain remained largely uninvolved in trade until 1914. Between 1919 and 1922 the employment of a foreign exchange brokers within London increased to 17, in 1924 there were 40 firms operating for the purposes of exchange. ^[24] During the 1920s the occurrence of trade in London resembled more the modern manifestation, by 1928 forex trade was integral to the financial functioning of the city. Continental exchange controls, plus other factors, in Europe and Latin America, hampered any attempt at wholesale prosperity from trade for those of 1930's London.During the 1920s foreign exchange the Kleinwort family were known to be the leaders of the market, Japhets, S,Montagu & Co. and Seligmans as significant participants still warrant recognition. ^[26] In the year 1945 the nation of Ethiopias' government possessed a foreign exchange surplus.