Forex, also known as FX or Foreign Exchange, is the simultaneous buying and selling of currency pairs and is the most liquid market in the world with a daily trading volume of over $4 trillion. Forex is characterized as an over-the-counter market meaning there is no centralized exchange but rather the market is made up of various participants such as brokers, banks, hedge funds, and liquidity providers. Trading in forex is done in pairs with the price of a currency pair reflected in the exchange rate between the two. For standardization trading is conducted in Lots. A standard Lot is equal to 100,000 units of the base currency. For example, 1 standard Lot of EUR/USD would be equivalent to €100,000. Forex is a 24-hour market with the main sessions being Tokyo, New York, and London.
50 Currencies (and counting)