Currency Trading and the Market Functions

The currency markets or other names it is known by, such as; Forex, FX or the Foreign Exchange Markets have existed since one country or region stated trading goods or services with each other. After the goods where exchanged for the currency of the local economy, the merchant needed a way to convert it back into there local currency. Thus the beginning of the Forex markets.

The present markets operate world wide in every country on the globe where currency of each and every country are bought and sold daily. The value of a particular currency can and will go up and down throughout a day based on many factors. The currency markets operate approximately 5 1/2 days a week and are open somewhere in the world at all times on those days.

Reasons to Invest in the Foreign Exchange Markets:

1. The ability to leverage relatively low amounts of investments and control large sums of currencies.
2. Most Forex brokerage firms don't charge commissions to execute a trade
3. The ability to buy and sell at will due to extremely large market.
4. Unstable markets provide conditions where knowledgeable investors can make vast sums of profits.
5. The ability to limit risk though the use of available tools.
6. It does not matter if a currency is raising or falling, you still are able to make money.

Trading In the Forex Markets:

The name of the game in any investment is to make money. In other words, you want to buy low and sell high. Investing in the FX is no different. The vast majority of the investments are made by people or institutions which have no intention of every actually taking possession of the currency. They are simply attempting to use educated guess to determine which direction a currency is going to move and make a profit from it.

Currencies are always traded in pairs. One might sell US dollars and buy Euro's or vice versa. Remember, to truly make a profit in the currency markets you must have a plan to get the profits you have made back into your own countries currency. Let's say you live in the United States and make an investment in Euro's and own them at a later date. Your next trade could be in Japanese Yen, where you also made a big profit trading the Euro's for the Yen. What do you do now; you live in the US and can't spend Yen. So, a very important long term consideration for any currency investor is how are they repatriate there profits into there home countries currency.

A very common measure of an investment is called, the Return on Investment (ROI,) Regardless of whether you're investing in currencies, real estate or a business venture this is a very important consideration that must be considered in all investment transactions. There are very safe forms of investments that are considered risk free, such as US Treasury Bonds. For an investment in a currency to be considered a good investment you should be able to receive a profit that more than marginally exceeds an investment in US bonds.

The Major Currencies and how Exchange Rates are Determined:

There are five major currencies that are traded most often. They are the US Dollar (USD,) the Euro (EUR,) the Japanese Yen (JPY,) the British Pound (GBP,) and the Swiss Frank (CHF.) There are certain foundations that also consider the Australian Dollar (AUD) a major currency. At some point in the near future, at least we hope the Chinese government will remove the restrictions presently placed on the trading of there national currency and allow it also to be freely traded.

As we mentioned earlier currencies are always traded in pairs. The initial currency in the pair is called the base currency and the next currency is named quote or counter currency. The base currency is the denominator and the counter or quote currency is thus the numerator in the ratio. The value of the base currency is always one. Thus the exchange rate is how many of the counter currency must be paid to buy the base currency.

The bid price for a counter currency is always lower than the ask price. The reason for this is that the bid price, which represents how much will be received in the counter or quote currency when selling one unit of the base currency, is always lower than the ask price, which represents how much must be paid in the counter or quote currency when buying one unit of the base currency.

An example of a trade might be the following. A trade of EUR/USD bid/ask currency rates at your bank may be 1.1015/1.2015, representing a spread of 1000 pips (also called points, one pip = 0.0001.) The smaller the spread the better for the investor. The reason for this is that in order to profit the currency needs to make a smaller movement.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Margins:

The term "Margin" is essentially a loan by a brokerage firm to an investor that is a client of that firm. As with any loans, interest is paid on that loan. The longer the loan is outstanding the higher the interest expense associated with that loan.

There are many ways the use of margins can work against a currency investor. In fact, the number one reason novice investors fail to succeed in the currency markets is there lack of knowledge of margins. The good new is that margins can also work for the investor and produce extremely large profits with a very small investment.

Learning how to make margins work for you as opposed to against you is one of the most important concepts a Forex trader must understand. Fortunately today there are many exceptional Forex courses that instruct this vital concept in detail.

An example of how this could work against is when an investor takes a long term position in a currency utilizing a large margin. If they were to hold that currency for a few months and make a small profit when they sold they could still lose money on the investment due to the interest expense associated with the borrowed funds, called margins.

It is of the utmost importance if you intend on trading the currency markets that your understanding the benefits and pitfalls of the use of margins is at the highest level. There are other techniques that can be utilized instead of margins that can also produce the same large profits with a very small investment. If for no other reason than understanding margins a new trader would be wise to enroll in a course that teaches the ins and outs of there use.

How to use Leverage to Finance your Forex Trading:
Of course the use of margins is one way to leverage a relatively small investment into large potential profits as we discussed earlier. But, the are significant risk with this method and it should be understood at its highest level to be utilized successfully.

There are other Methods you can Utilize Leverage to Increase your Earnings:

1. Forwards
2. Futures
3. Options
4. The Spot Market
5. Spread Betting
6. Contracts For Difference

The Spot Deal:

With this type of transaction an swap of currencies is made. The current market price is the spot rate, which is also some times called the benchmark price. This types of swaps are not required to resolved right away. There is a value or settlement date and is usually the second day after the deal has been made. This period permits the time required to exchange funds from one bank account to another which could be located anywhere in the world.