The Foreign exchange market is undoubtedly the single largest financial market today with an estimated daily turnover of over $3.2 trillion worldwide with no other sector coming anywhere close in competition. It is a market sector that has an immense appeal to a financial trader as a result of its volume which assures everyone of its liquidity. This high liquidity simply means that there is an immeasurable amount of active participants in Foreign exchange trading such that a trader can decide to trade whatever currency he wants at any time with a full guarantee that there are always people at the reverse side willing and ready to undertake the opposite action and hence complete the deed of trade.
A very outstanding attribute of the Foreign exchange Market is its non-stop business activity round the clock through 24hours everyday excluding weekends. What this implies is that unlike the stock market, Forex traders do not need to wait for permission, consent or some form of authorization before making trading choices. Foreign exchange trading is carried out principally online via the internet meaning the Forex market is virtually at your fingertips. Good Forex brokers online also provide adequate trading facilities, a phenomenal array of forex trading tools, as well as other informative and user-friendly apparatuses online which makes the act of trading quite fun and exciting. The era of making traditional phone calls has now been replaced by online Forex interfaces that execute live trades at the click of a mouse. The internet has so much revolutionized Foreign exchange trading, making the retail section of the market even more powerful than was previously experienced.
The key function of the foreign exchange market is to support international trade and investment by allowing businesses to convert one currency to another currency. Foreign exchange trading has also made foreign business easier as we see today. A UK based company for example can import American goods and pay in dollars for them even though they use pound sterling in their local transactions. The foreign exchange market is very large, highly decentralized and solely determines the values of different currencies in relation to each other.
According to reports, Foreign exchange trading increased by 38% between April 2005 and April 2006 and has more than doubled since 2001. What this simply means is that with each year that passes, more and more people are getting involved in Forex trading. Quite a sizable number of individuals trade live Forex on a full time scale after having learnt the nitty-gritty of the trade. A reasonable percentage of this category of people have also made a fortune trading Forex online.