Australia Trading Bloc

The Forex Market: A Beginner’s Guide

The foreign exchange market, more commonly called the Forex market or even the Fx market is the most widely traded financial market in the world. The original basis of the Forex markets was international trade flows, for example when a French clothing company purchases Chinese made machinery.

The market is truly global, open 24 hours a day six days a week. It is primarily a trader’s market where huge trades of hundreds of millions of dollars can be executed in a few seconds. On an average day the volume of trades exceeds $2 trillion. To put that into perspective it’s around 10 to 15 times the daily trading volume on all the world’s stock markets combined.

The vast majority of trades in the modern Forex market are speculative, vastly outweighing commercial and financial transactions. A recent poll concluded that upwards of 90% of daily trades are speculative. The vast majority of currency trading takes place in the so called major currencies, which are used by the world’s largest economies. Activity in the foreign exchange market often occurs within “currency blocs”, which consist of the US dollar bloc, Japanese yen bloc, and Euro bloc (these three blocs represent the three largest economic regions in the world.)

The market opens on Monday morning in the Asia-Pacific time zone and continue straight through to close of business on Friday in New York. At any given time depending on the time zone many financial centres such as London, New York, Tokyo or Sydney may be open. Unlike other financial markets like stock exchanges or futures exchanges currency trading doesn’t stop for holidays, with the exception of New Year’s Day (and even that depends on which day of the week it falls.)

Trading in the Asia-Pacific session accounts for around 21% of total global volume on any particular day. The largest trading centres are Wellington in New Zealand. Sydney in Australia, Tokyo in Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore.

About halfway through the Asian trading day European financial centres begin to open and trading in the European/London session begins. The European session accounts for over 50% of daily global trading volume, and London alone accounts for around one third of total daily global volume. Because the European session overlaps with both the Asian trading day and North American trading day it means that market interest and liquidity is at its peak during this session.

Later on trading in the North American session starts. Since there is an overlap between North American and European trading sessions the volumes are much more significant. Often the largest directional price movements take place during this crossover period. On its own however the North American trading session accounts for a round 21% of global trading volume (roughly the same as the Asia-Pacific session.)

About the Author

The InterShares.co.uk investment site with information on shares and shares for beginners.

The Wiley Trading Guide By Wiley Australia (COR) $48.71 Author: Wiley Australia (COR) Publication Date: 2010/10/05 Number of Pages: 348 Binding Type: Hardcover Language: English Depth: 1.00 Width: 6.50 Height: 9.50

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