FOREX INTRO Chapter 3

Chapter 3

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Trading characteristics

Most traded currencies[1] Currency distribution of reported FX market turnover
Rank	Currency	ISO 4217 code (Symbol)	% daily share (April 2007)
1	United States dollar	USD ($)	86.3%
2	Euro	EUR (€)	37.0%
3	Japanese yen	JPY (¥)	16.5%
4	Pound sterling	GBP (£)	15.0%
5	Swiss franc	CHF (Fr)	6.8%
6	Australian dollar	AUD ($)	6.7%
7	Canadian dollar	CAD ($)	4.2%
8-9	Swedish krona	SEK (kr)	2.8%
8-9	Hong Kong dollar	HKD ($)	2.8%
10	Norwegian krone	NOK (kr)	2.2%
11	New Zealand dollar	NZD ($)	1.9%
12	Mexican Peso	MEX ($)	1.3%
Other			16.8%
Total			200%

There is no unified or centrally cleared market for the majority of FX trades, and there is very little cross-border regulation. Due to the over-the-counter (OTC) nature of currency markets, there are rather a number of interconnected marketplaces, where different currencies instruments are traded. This implies that there is not a single exchange rate but rather a number of different rates (prices), depending on what bank or market maker is trading, and where it is. In practice the rates are often very close, otherwise they could be exploited by arbitrageurs instantaneously. Due to London's dominance in the market, a particular currency's quoted price is usually the London market price. A joint venture of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Reuters, called FxMarketSpace opened in 2007 and aspires to the role of a central market clearing mechanism.

The main trading center is London, but New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore are all important centers as well. Banks throughout the world participate. Currency trading happens continuously throughout the day; as the Asian trading session ends, the European session begins, followed by the North American session and then back to the Asian session, excluding weekends.

There is little or no 'inside information' in the foreign exchange markets. Exchange rate fluctuations are usually caused by actual monetary flows as well as by expectations of changes in monetary flows caused by changes in GDP growth, inflation, interest rates, budget and trade deficits or surpluses, large cross-border M&A deals and other macroeconomic conditions. Major news is released publicly, often on scheduled dates, so many people have access to the same news at the same time. However, the large banks have an important advantage; they can see their customers' order flow.

Currencies are traded against one another. Each pair of currencies thus constitutes an individual product and is traditionally noted XXX/YYY, where YYY is the ISO 4217 international three-letter code of the currency into which the price of one unit of XXX is expressed (called base currency). For instance, EUR/USD is the price of the euro expressed in US dollars, as in 1 euro = 1.5465 dollar. Out of convention, the first currency in the pair, the base currency, was the stronger currency at the creation of the pair. The second currency, counter currency, was the weaker currency at the creation of the pair.

The factors affecting XXX will affect both XXX/YYY and XXX/ZZZ. This causes positive currency correlation between XXX/YYY and XXX/ZZZ.

On the spot market, according to the BIS study, the most heavily traded products were:

· EUR/USD: 27 %

· USD/JPY: 13 %

· GBP/USD (also called sterling or cable): 12 %

and the US currency was involved in 86.3% of transactions, followed by the euro (37.0%), the yen (16.5%), and sterling (15.0%) (see table). Note that volume percentages should add up to 200%: 100% for all the sellers and 100% for all the buyers.

Trading in the euro has grown considerably since the currency's creation in January 1999, and how long the foreign exchange market will remain dollar-centered is open to debate. Until recently, trading the euro versus a non-European currency ZZZ would have usually involved two trades: EUR/USD and USD/ZZZ. The exception to this is EUR/JPY, which is an established traded currency pair in the interbank spot market. As the dollar's value has eroded during 2008, interest in using the euro as reference currency for prices in commodities (such as oil), as well as a larger component of foreign reserves by banks, has increased dramatically. Transactions in the currencies of commodity-producing countries, such as AUD, NZD, CAD, have also increased.

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} Triennial Central Bank Survey (December 2007), Bank for International Settlements.
2. ^ Source: Euromoney FX survey FX Poll 2008: The Euromoney FX survey is the largest global poll of foreign exchange service providers.'
3. ^ http://www.ifsl.org.uk/upload/CBS_Foreign_Exchange_2007.pdf (December 2007), International Financial Services, London.
4. ^ Alan Greenspan, The Roots of the Mortgage Crisis: Bubbles cannot be safely defused by monetary policy before the speculative fever breaks on its own. , the Wall Street Journal, December 12, 2007
5. ^ McKay, Peter A. (2005-07-26). "Scammers Operating on Periphery Of CFTC's Domain Lure Little Guy With Fantastic Promises of Profits", The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones and Company. Retrieved on 2007-10-31.
6. ^ Egan, Jack (2005-06-19). "Check the Currency Risk. Then Multiply by 100", The New York Times. Retrieved on 2007-10-30.
7. ^ The Sunday Times (UK), 16 July 2006
8. ^ Safe haven currency
9. ^ John J. Murphy, Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets (New York Institute of Finance, 1999), pp. 343–375.
10. ^ Investopedia
11. ^ Sam Y. Cross, All About the Foreign Exchange Market in the United States, Federal Reserve Bank of New York (1998), chapter 11, pp. 113–115.
12. ^ Michael A. S. Guth, "Profitable Destabilizing Speculation," Chapter 1 in Michael A. S. Guth, SPECULATIVE BEHAVIOR AND THE OPERATION OF COMPETITIVE MARKETS UNDER UNCERTAINTY, Avebury Ashgate Publishing, Aldorshot, England (1994), ISBN 1856289850.
13. ^ What I Learned at the World Economic Crisis Joseph Stiglitz, The New Republic, April 17, 2000, reprinted at GlobalPolicy.org
14. ^ http://www.iht.com/articles/1992/09/17/perc.php
15. ^ ^{a b} Gregory J. Millman, Around the World on a Trillion Dollars a Day, Bantam Press, New York, 1995.