Forex - A Look at Foreign Currency Trading

Forex is an abbreviation for Foreign Exchange. It is similar to the stock trading business except you are trading a different commodity. In the stock market, you trade in the shares of publicly listed companies, while in the Forex, your one and only product or commodity is money.

Of course, there are different kinds of money from the different countries around the world. Usually the kind of money you would trade in would be the top currencies of the world.

These top currencies are the US Dollar (USD), the Great Britain Pound (GBP), European Euro (Euro), Japanese Yen (JPY), Swiss Franc (CHF), Australian Dollar (AUD), and the Canadian Dollar (CAD). Each currency is given its own distinct code to help distinguish one from the other. The codes are an abbreviation of the country plus the kind of currency they use.

For instance, since the US uses the dollar, its code is USD while the code for Great Britain is GBP which stands for Great Britain pound.

That's not to say that other currencies are not given any importance. It's just that these top currencies are the prime commodities since they come from the highly developed countries of the world. Their currencies are relatively safe to bank on. So much so that traders are willing to invest their funds in the currency and have a bigger chance of making a profit.

More than a decade ago, only the multibillion companies and banks were allowed to do Forex transactions, but all this has changed over the years. Today, even small traders are allowed to handle Forex trading with as small as a $100 investment.

The amount of Forex transactions around the globe reach an average of $1.5 trillion dollars every day which makes Forex the largest financial trading market in the world. Since it is an electronically controlled business with no specific location, operating 24 hours a day for 5 days a week, at any point within a day, there are thousands of Forex transactions being consummated at any one point around the world.

The beauty of a Forex transaction is that it is so vibrant. The market is constantly adjusting and changing.

If an economy halfway around the world suddenly experiences a political crisis, its currency will drop in value, and this will affect Forex trading around the world especially if the country in question is one of high visibility and rank.

Forex trading is always done in pairs. You buy a currency and you sell another currency. Brokers usually are the middlemen in a Forex transaction. There are several advantages of Forex trading over stock market trading. Some of them are:

1. The business hours of Forex is non stop 5 days a week. Since trading is done internationally, time zones are not an issue.

2. The brokers of Forex trading do not receive a commission. What happens is that they earn from the difference between the buying and the selling price, which is normally about 1% of the transaction

3. In Forex trading, there is Margin Trading. This is when you can trade using money that is mostly borrowed. The only requirement is that you upfront at most 4% of the transaction. The rest of the capital can be money from another source. This is a great advantage to have because you don't get to tie up all your funds in one transaction only.

Forex transactions are done in lots. The smaller lots will have to be done through a dealer and they are called micro or mini lots. Otherwise the usual amount of a lot is around $100,000.

4. Corruption in Forex trading is very minimal compared to stock market trading. You would have a very difficult time influencing the rate of a currency since it is not really under one one's control. In addition, the amount of Forex transactions is so large, trying to influence the Forex market would be near impossible.