What is FOREX?
Welcome to Currency Trading. This short video provides you with
some key facts about the FOREX market, how it works, and who the main players are.
The Foreign exchange market, better known as FOREX, is the most traded financial market in the world.
Every trading day, over 4 trillion dollars worth of currencies are traded across the globe by banks, institutions, and individual investors.
The trading week for FOREX begins Monday morning at 10am in Sydney, Australia, and follows the sun westward as the world's major financial capitals open and close,
from Tokyo to London, and finally closing at 5pm eastern time on Friday evening in New York.
Unlike other markets you may be familiar with, there is no centralized marketplace for FOREX.
Instead, currencies simply trade over the counter in whatever major market is open at that time.
This unique opportunity gives FOREX traders the chance to trade 24 hours a day, 5 days a week.
Traders invest in currencies for many reasons, some of which may already be familiar to you.
For example, if you've vacationed overseas and exchanged money, you sold your home country's currency to purchase some of the foreign currency.
When you came home, you did the reverse; sold the foreign currency to buy your home currency back.
As exchange rates fluctuate, you may have noticed the difference in the buying power of your money.
FOREX traders attempt to take advantage of these fluctuations by buying or selling individual currencies to speculate on the future value of one currency relative to another.
Almost every day, new economic reports and data are released that affect the values of currencies traded worldwide.
A great way to familiarize yourself with currency trading is to experience it first-hand with a FOREX.COM practice account.
See how currency prices change at different times of the day, get a sense how the FOREX market reacts to new information,
and access all of the resources and tools available to help you trade the market, including charts, news, research and more.
Continue your FOREX learning with the next video in this series.
