Forex Manual Blog

Sujoy Mukherji asked:


 

The foreign exchange market, also defined as currency market or forex or FX is the biggest and concurrently the only market without any premise, standing floor or headquarter; there is no central exchange, or clearing house.Its daily turnover is much more than 3 trillion dollars, made by transactions between large banks, central banks, currency speculators, multinational corporations, governments. If we combined daily turnovers of all equity stock exchanges on the whole world, we would have to multiply them by more than 10 in order to amount to forex volume.

The Foreign Exchange market (”Forex”), is the largest financial market in the world, the daily average turnover of which reaches US$1.2 trillion. The main essence of Foreign Exchange is the simultaneous buying of one currency and selling of another (world’s currencies are on a floating exchange rate and are always traded in pairs, e.g. Euro/Dollar or Dollar/Yen).

FX Trading is not centralized on an exchange, as with the stock and futures markets. On the contrary, Forex market is considered an Over the Counter (OTC) or ‘Interbank’ market, due to the fact that transactions are conducted between two counterparts over the telephone or via an electronic network.

Historically, Forex has been mainly dominated by banks, including central banks, commercial banks, and investment banks. However, the percentage of other market participants is rapidly growing, and now includes large multinational corporations, global money managers, registered dealers, international money brokers, futures and options traders, and private speculators.

One of the main advantages of Forex is that it is a true 24-hour market that begins each day in Sydney, and moves around the globe as the business day begins in each financial center, first to Tokyo, then London, and New York. Unlike any other financial market, investors can respond to currency fluctuations caused by economic, social and political events at the time they occur - day or night.

For example, if you buy the shares of company XYZ at N10 per share and the share appreciates to N15 and you sell it, you will make N5 of each share bought with the company shares exchange rate. Same vein, if you buy USD$ at N120 and $ appreciates to N125, and you sell, you will make N5 of each $ you bought, but unlike stocks, interest exchange rate can appreciate within 1 minute of purchase.

Traders can reduce their risks in forex trading by implementing forex buy and sell signal generator softwares. These tools require minimum human interaction and thus allow pragmatic decision making. This reduces the chances for financial loss and enable better forecasting patterns.

For the institutional investor, absolute consistency is not a problem, since they have an array of personnel and resources at their disposal. For individual investors, there are three groups. Those who trade without consistency, those who trade with manual consistency, and those who trade with automated consistency. The novice, of course, is the trader who thrashes from trade to trade. The individual investor who uses consistent discipline or automation as the foundation of his trading activity maximizes his level of sophistication.

Successful trading in forex demands being a sophisticated investor, who would be operating with awareness of their environment, and that awareness informs their trading plan.



YASUDA

Andrew Daigle asked:


Online trading has caused a major paradigm shift in investing. At the turn of the millennium, there are over 6 million online investment accounts, up from 1.5 million in 1997. As a result, start-up firms now compete directly with financial institutions to serve investors in the new Economy, and the clear winner is the customer. The competition between the brick and mortar institutions and the Internet-based companies has dramatically lowered the costs of investing, and empowered the individual investor to take control of their own investment strategy.

On-line trading will revolutionize the currency markets by making it accessible to the small and medium sized investor. For the first time, these investors have the ability to execute transactions of between $100,000 and $10,000,000 at the same prices the Interbank market offers for deals well over $10,000,000. This benefits both those who wish to speculate on the direction of the currency markets for profit, as well as the money manager or corporate treasurer looking to hedge against unwanted exposure to future price fluctuations in the currency markets. I am going to discuss the Benefits of Trading Forex.

Very few on-line brokers are able to offer their clients real-time bid/ask quotes, which facilitates instantaneous deal execution - no missed market opportunities. Real-time prices also allow investors to compare an on-line broker’s dealing spread with that of other pricing services, to ensure they are receiving the best possible price on all their Forex transactions.

Many on-line Forex brokers require their clients to request a price before dealing. This is disadvantageous for a number of reasons, primarily because it significantly lengthens the execution process from just a few seconds to possibly as long as a minute. In a fast paced market, this could make a significant difference in an investor’s profit potential. Also, some of the more unscrupulous brokers may use the opportunity to look at an investor’s current position. Once they have determined whether the investor is a buyer or a seller, they ’shade’ the price to increase their own profit on the transaction.

Timing is everything in the fast-paced Forex market. On-line trades are executed and confirmed within seconds, which ensures that traders do not miss market opportunities. Even the incremental extra time it takes to complete a transaction over the phone can mean a big difference in profit potential. Introduction simply, executing trades electronically reduces manual effort, thereby lowering the costs of doing business. On-line brokers are then able to pass along the savings to their client base. The fast-paced nature of the Forex market compels traders to execute multiple trades each day. It is vital for each client to have real-time information about their current position in order to make well-informed trading decisions.

Access to timely and relevant information is critical. Professional traders pay thousands of dollars each month for access to major information providers. However, the very nature of the Internet affords users free access to reliable market information from a variety of sources, including real-time price quotes, international news, government-issued economic indicators and reports, as well as subjective information such as expert commentary and analysis, trader chat forums etc.

The main advantage of the Forex market over any exchange-traded instruments is that the Forex market is a true 24-hour market. Whether it’s 6pm or 6am, somewhere in the world there are always buyers and sellers actively trading Forex so that investors can respond to breaking news immediately. In the currency markets, your portfolio won’t be affected by after hours earning reports or analyst conference calls. The ECNs (Electronic Communication Networks) exist to bring together buyers and sellers when possible.



HADDIX