Buying and Selling Currencies

With the increasingly widespread availability of electronic trading networks, trading on the currency exchanges is now more accessible than ever. The foreign exchange market, or FOREX, is notoriously the domain of government central banks and commercial and investment banks, not to mention hedge funds and massive international corporations

At first glance, the presence of such heavyweight entities may appear rather daunting to the individual investor. But the presence of such powerful groups and such a massive international market can also work to the benefit of the individual trader. FOREX offers trading 24-hours a day, five days a week, and the daily dollar volume of currencies traded in the currency market exceeds $1.4 trillion, making it the largest and most liquid market in the world Trading Opportunities

The sheer number of currencies traded serves to ensure a rather extreme level of volatility on a day-to-day basis. There will always be currencies that are moving rapidly up or down, offering opportunities for profit (and commensurate risk) to astute traders.

Yet, like the equity markets, FOREX offers plenty of instruments to mitigate risk and allows the individual to profit in both rising and falling markets. FOREX also allows highly-leveraged trading with low margin requirements relative to its equity counterparts. Perhaps best of all, FOREX charges zero dealing commissions!

Many of the instruments utilized in FOREX--such as forwards and futures, options, spread betting, contracts for difference, and the spot market--will appear similar to those used in the equity markets. Since the instruments on the FOREX often maintain minimum trade sizes in terms of the base currencies (the spot market, for example, requires a minimum trade size of 100,000 units of the base currency), the use of margin is absolutely essential for the person trading these instruments.

Buying and Selling Currencies
Regarding the specifics of buying and selling on FOREX, it is important to note that currencies are always priced in pairs. All trades result in the simultaneous purchase of one currency and the sale of another. This necessitates a slightly different mode of thinking than what you might be used to. While trading on the FOREX, you would execute a trade only at a time when you expect the currency you are buying to increase in value relative to the one you are selling. If the currency you are buying does increase in value, you must sell the other currency back in order to lock in a profit. An open trade (or open position), therefore, is a trade in which a trader has bought or sold a particular currency pair and has not yet sold or bought back the equivalent amount to close the position.