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Learn What The FOREX Is All About The free ebook will introduce the Forex market to you,
read the following short abstract.
As with many markets there are many derivative of the
central market such as futures, options and forwards.
For the purpose of this book we will only be discussing
the main market sometime referred to as the Spot or Cash
market.
The word FOREX is derived from Foreign Exchange and is
the largest financial market in the world. Unlike many
markets the FX market is open 24 hours per day and has
an estimated $1.2 Trillion in turnover every day. This
tremendous turnover is more than the combined turnover
of all the world's' stock markets on any given day. This
tends to lead to a very liquid market and thus a
desirable market to trade.
Unlike many other securities (any financial instrument
that can be traded) the FX market does not have a fixed
exchange. It is primarily traded through banks, brokers,
dealers, financial institutions and private individuals.
Trades are executed through phone and increasingly
through the Internet.
It is only in the last few years that the smaller
investor has been able to gain access to this market.
Previously the large amounts of deposits required
precluded the smaller investors. With the advent of the
Internet and growing competition it is now easily in the
reach of most investors.
You will often hear the term INTERBANK discussed in FX
terminology. This originally, as the name implies was
simply banks and large institutions exchanging
information about the current rate at which their
clients or themselves were prepared to buy or sell a
currency. INTER meaning between and Bank meaning deposit
taking institutions normally made up of banks, large
institution, brokers or even the government.
The market has moved on to such a degree now that the
term interbank now means anybody who is prepared to buy
or sell a currency. It could be two individuals or your
local travel agent offering to exchange Euros for US
Dollars. You will however find that most of the brokers
and banks use centralized feeds to insure reliability of
quote.
The quotes for Bid (buy) and Offer (sell) will all be
from reliable sources. These quotes are normally made up
of the top 300 or so large institutions. This insures
that if they place an order on your behalf that the
institutions they have placed the order with is capable
of fulfilling the order.
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