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Thursday, September 18, 2008

Introducing Forex Trading

By Teddy Low

Currency trading has a long history and can be traced back to the ancient Middle East and Middle Ages when foreign exchange started to take shape after the international merchant bankers devised bills of exchange, which were transferable third-party payments that allowed flexibility and growth in foreign exchange dealings.

Nowadays, forex market or FX market is popular for investors. Due to great popularity, the FX market is the biggest and fastest developing market on earth. Everyday, transaction's turnover exceeds 2.8 trillion dollars. The turnover rates in FX are estimated 30 times higher than total volume of equity trades in United States. Although FX market involves an extremely high turnovers, but the market still not open to public before year 1998. Since year 1998, inter-bank units are segmented into smaller lots where more people able to invest in this market. Now, the partakers in this market are central and commercial banks, corporation, institutional investors, hedge funds, and private individuals like you. The big involvements by all parties cause the FX market's turnover even greater.

Generally, market is a platform where goods are traded, and the same goes with FX. In FX market, the 'goods' are the currencies of various countries. For example, you might buy Japanese Yen for Canadian Dollars, or you might sell Dollars for Euro. It's as basic as one currency for another.

In FX market, large international banks take part in contributing largest portion in daily FX market transaction. Each day, these large scale international banks contribute more than 70% trades in currency market. Among all the key players, Deutsche Bank is one of the top currency traders. Besides, other international banks like UBS, Citi Group, HSBC, Barclays, J. P. Morgan Chase, Coldman Sachs, ABN Amro, Morgan Stanley, and Merril Lynch also some of the key banks in controlling currency trading.

Commonly, when you plan to deal with currency dealers for currency trading, you may easily notice the following facts - two-sided quote. What is two-sided quote? Actually, this quote comprise of 'bid' and 'ask' price, which the prices are listed clearly on dealers' panel. The 'bid' price is the price you will receive when you sell off the base currency, whereas the 'ask' price is the price you need to pay when you intend to buy the base currency. Let me show an easy example, EUR/USD 1.2385/1.2390. The value 1.2385 represents the 'bid' price, whereas the value 1.2390 represents the 'ask' price.

From the example just now, you can clearly notice that two-sided quote will make you loss when you buy and sell at the same time. You are required to shell out higher price than the selling one. The higher premium that you paid is actually the commission fee as currency dealers usually will not request any commission fees from you as in usual.


Final piece of advice
Do you know 7 out of 10 traders keep losing money in Forex market? That's right, 70% of individual FX traders keep losing their hard-earned money in the market; while the rest of the 30% work freely at home and earn millions annually.

Wonder what differs between the losing 70% and the winning 30%? Forex trading skills and the trading system! If you wish to make some serious money in Forex market, be very sure that the road is long and you need to study hard and smart to learn what it takes. The Forex market is definitely not a game for newbie and you need to brush up your skills before getting your hands wet.

Article by Teddy Low.
Best FX learning : Go Learn Forex.

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