Banks and institutions that wish to trade currencies use the Foreign exchange market for that purpose. Going by volume, the foreign exchange market ranks as the biggest market in the world. The amount traded per day is in the vicinity of 4 trillion dollars. It dwarfs the New York Stock Exchange, which only trades around 30 billion a day. In terms of scale, if the NYSE was the moon, the foreign exchange market is a gas giant. With the advent of the internet as a popular tool for online forex trading, the market can only grow further.
Many smaller markets linked together make up the forex market. However, there are some main financial centers around the world. Financial centers include London (by far the biggest), Tokyo and New York. The foreign exchange market is a true 24 hour a day, 5 day a week market. No trading takes place on Saturday, Sunday and major international holidays. The forex market starts in Asia (Australia, Hong Kong) before it moves on to Europe (London) until it ends up in New York.
The internet allows anybody to delve in the world of stock or forex trading. Not just limited to stocks and forex, almost any security can be traded through the internet.
The vast amount of forex traders around the world congregate around popular spots online where they learn from one another and share tips. Which is great news for online forex brokers. For it is common knowledge that forex beginners are there simply to lose money in the first year. Forex trading is truly a double edged sword with huge profits and losses coming in a matter of minutes.
For those that are new to forex trading, the journey is often difficult. While the internet is rife with trading systems, it is best to begin learning from the basics onwards. Learning from the beginning means avoiding all forms of automated software and forex signals. Head on to forex factory, dailyFX and investopedia and start gleaning all you can from these excellent websites.
Vincent Khoo has been trading stocks and forex trading for the better part of the decade. He has authored for several finance portals as well as the articles on forex signals click here and click here.