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Tuesday, May 19, 2009

What Is Forex Made Easy?

By Chan Boldene

Forex (also known as Foreign Exchange or 4X) is an international exchange market in which currencies are sold and bought, bought and sold, 24 hours a day six days a week. The Forex market that we now know began in the early 1970s, when exchange rates and floating currencies were introduced.

Forex is unique because there are no external controls. With that comes the good and the bad. On the one hand, our societies all seem to be overregulated. On the other hand, the government regulators and private watchdog groups don't think we have enough regulation.

However, many people in the government and private sectors want to change all of this because they feel that an unregulated market is an extremely dangerous market where people and accounts can be wiped out in minutes by unscrupulous profiteers. More than likely regulation will occur sooner rather than later. But like anything this large, there are hundreds of thousands of players, and change is slow.

It is not easy to manipulate the Forex markets. But investors need to be cautious, however, because the "big boys" can and do manipulate the market when it's convenient for them (and normally according to a fairly obvious schedule). Therefore, it would be wise and prudent to uncover when those times are (holidays or whenever regular Joes and Janes like you and me are able to carve out a little extra time to invest).

$1.5 Trillion US Dollars. That's the amount that gets traded on the 4X markets each and every day. It is obviously the largest liquid market in the world. Think about that figure: $1.5 trillion every day. Because of the volume and breakneck-pace, one investor (or even a small team of investors) could not significantly affect the price of a major currency.

Liquidity in the markets means that traders or investors can open and close positions within a few seconds (yes, a few seconds!) as there are always willing sellers and buyers.

In Forex, there are four major currency pairs: US Dollar-Japanese Yen (USD/JPY), Euro-US Dollar (EUR/USD), US Dollar-Swiss Franc (USD/CHF), British Pound-US Dollar (GBP/USD). The first currency in the pair is known as the "base" currency. The counter currency is the second half of the pair. The Euro-US Dollar is extremely liquid and is the most traded pair on the exchange.

Currency pairs are normally traded as 100,000 base currency units. For instance, if you were buying USD/CHF at 0.98 you would be paying Swiss Francs (CHF) for US Dollars as follows: .98 X 100,000 units = $98,000 Swiss Francs for 100,000 USD, but don't worry because you will not be required to "pony up" $98,000 CHF to learn this game. It is a process called margin trading or trading on margin. That is an entirely different topic and worthy of pages and pages of instruction. Forex Made Easy is here to help and answer those questions. - 23226

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