Currency Trading For Dummies®

Because of the overlap between North American and European trading sessions, the trading volumes are much more significant. Some of the biggest and most meaningful directional price movements take place during this crossover period. On its own, however, the North American trading session accounts for roughly the same share of global trading volume

Instead, national governments are active in the forex market for routine funding of government operations, making transfer payments, and managing foreign currency reserves. The first two functions have generally little impact on the day-to-day forex market, so we won’t bore you with the details. But the last one has taken on increased prominence in

There is no officially designated starting time to the trading day or week, but for all intents the market action kicks off when Wellington, New Zealand, the first financial center west of the international dateline, opens on Monday morning local time. Depending on whether daylight saving time is in effect in your own time zone, it roughly correspo

Another daily feature of the spot market is the 10 a.m. ET option expiry, when options due to expire that day that finish out of the money cease to exist. Any related hedging that was done for the option then needs to be unwound, though this is likely to have been done prior to the expiry if the option is well out of the money. Traders need to foll

Currency trading today is largely concentrated in the hands of about a dozen major global financial firms, such as UBS, Deutsche Bank, Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, and Royal Bank of Scotland, to name just a few. Hundreds of other international banks and financial institutions trade alongside the top banks, and all contribute l

At its heart, currency trading is about speculating on the value of one currency versus another.

On most Sunday opens, prices generally pick up where they left off on Friday afternoon.

Most of the time, when you hear someone talking about the fundamentals of a currency, he’s referring to the economic fundamentals. Economic fundamentals are based on: * Economic data reports * Interest rate levels * Monetary policy * International trade flows * International investment flows

Currency trading volumes in the Asia-Pacific session account for about 21 percent of total daily global volume, according to the 2004 BIS survey. The principal financial trading centers are Wellington, New Zealand; Sydney, Australia; Tokyo, Japan; Hong Kong, and Singapore.