Posted by admin on December 15, 2011 under How To Forex | 
Traders in the foreign exchange market buy and sell currency to try to make profit. There are two prices for currency: the buy price, called the “BID”; and the sell price, called the “ASK”.
The difference between the “bid” and the “ask” is called the “spread”. The spread represents the difference between what the market maker gives to buy from a trader, and what the market maker takes to sell to a trader.
For example: the EUR/USD bid/ask rate is 1.2100/1.2200. The market maker gives $1.21 when buying from the trader, but takes $1.22 when selling to the trader. If traders buy and sell immediately without any change in the exchange rate, they lose money. This happens because of the spread – traders pay more to buy the currency than they receive when they sell in that one moment.
In fact, the spread is the leading source of income for the market maker. Like any other market, the merchant will buy at one price and sell at a higher price.
Posted by admin on under Forex Knowledge |
The Bretton Woods Agreement, established in 1944, fixed national currencies against the dollar, and set the dollar at a rate of 35USD per ounce of gold. In 1967, a Chicago bank refused to make a loan in pound sterling to a college professor by the name of Milton Friedman because he had intended to use the funds to short the British currency. The bank’s refusal to grant the loan was due to the Bretton Woods Agreement.
This agreement aimed at establishing international monetary steadiness by preventing money from taking flight across countries, and curbing speculation in the international currencies. Prior to Bretton Woods, the gold exchange standard – dominant between 1876 and World War I – ruled over the international economic system. Under the gold exchange, currencies experienced a new era of stability because they were supported by the price of gold.
However, the gold exchange standard had a weakness of boom-bust patterns. As an economy strengthened, it would import a great deal until it ran down its gold reserves required to support its currency. As a result, the money supply would diminish, interest rates escalate and economic activity slowed to the point of recession. Ultimately, prices of commodities would hit bottom, appearing attractive to other nations, who would sprint into a buying fury that injected the economy with gold until it increased its money supply, driving down interest rates and restoring wealth into the economy. Such boom-bust patterns abounded throughout the gold standard until World War I temporarily discontinued trade flows and the free movement of gold.
The Bretton Woods Agreement was founded after World War II, in order to stabilize and regulate the international Forex market. Participating countries agreed to try to maintain the value of their currency within a narrow margin against the dollar and an equivalent rate of gold as needed. The dollar gained a premium position as a reference currency, reflecting the shift in global economic dominance from Europe to the USA. Countries were prohibited from devaluing their currencies to benefit their foreign trade and were only allowed to devalue their currencies by less than 10%. The great volume of international Forex trade led to massive movements of capital, which were generated by post-war construction during the 1950s, and this movement destabilized the foreign exchange rates established in the Bretton Woods Agreement.
1971 heralded the abandonment of the Bretton Woods in that the US dollar would no longer be exchangeable into gold. By 1973, the forces of supply and demand controlled major industrialized nations’ currencies, which now floated more freely across nations. Prices were floated daily, with volumes, speed and price volatility all increasing throughout the 1970s, and new financial instruments, market deregulation and trade liberalization emerged.
The onset of computers and technology in the 1980s accelerated the pace of extending the market continuum for cross-border capital movements through Asian, European and American time zones. Transactions in foreign exchange increased intensively from nearly $70 billion a day in the 1980s, to more than $1.5 trillion a day two decades later.
Read more about the history of gold trading.
