The Spot, Cash or Money market is the biggest market. You probably heard about futures, options and forwards which are derivatives of the main Cash Market.

The word FOREX is derived from Foreign Exchange and is the most largest financial market in the world. Unlike many markets the FX market is open 24 hours per day and has an estimated $2.0 Trillion in turnover every day. This tremendous turnover is more than the combined turnover of all the wordls´ stock markets on any given day. This tends to lead to the most liquid market and thus makes it a very interesting market to trade. The Forex Market is an OTC Market (Over The Counter), meaning it doesn´t have to be traded on an exchange.

The FX market does not have a fixed exchange. Nobody can claim having the right price but the high liquidity of this market makes it autoregulated. It is primarily traded through banks, brokers, dealers, financial institutions and private individuals. Trades are still executed through phone and increasingly through the Internet as the Internet penetration is growing drastically. It is only in the last few years that the smaller investor has been able to gain access to this market, around year 2000. Previously the large amounts of deposits required precluded the smaller investors and the monopoly of the big institution enabled a lot of cheating. With the advent of the Internet and growing competition it is now easily in the reach of most investors and the margin of the institution reduced automatically.

Today's market comments

(See News for historical data)