Advantage of forex Market

Commission-free forex trading
Trade on spreads as low as 1-2 pips on the most widely traded currencies. As always, you pay no commissions at FOREX.com, only the bid/offer spread. Our fractional pip pricing is one of the most precise quoting currently available to forex traders and is designed to help you take advantage of smaller price movements

Forex training and education
Whether you need ideas for a new strategy, to brush up on platform tools, or just to learn our platform for the first time, we have the resources you need at FOREX.com. Open a free forex practice account to test your knowledge with no risk or obligation, attend a webinar, or check our schedule for a forex workshop in your area.

Quality executions
Our mission is to provide you a fair, efficient trading environment, which means quoting competitive spreads and ensuring quality executions. Traders from over 140 countries choose FOREX.com, and our total monthly trading volume currently exceeds $200 billion

Market research you can count on
Our experienced research team provides robust market analysis you won't find anywhere else, from real-time commentary to essential daily and weekly reports that summarize key market developments with an insightful perspective

Powerful trading tools
Spot and seize potential market opportunities with our forex trading platform. We designed our tools to make it easy to put your trading strategy into action with advanced order management tools, a choice of robust charting packages, and auto execution tools.

System stability and reliability
Our technology infrastructure is designed to support a 24-hour trading environment with 100% uptime. We subject our systems to rigorous testing and maintain multiple connections through internet backbones to assure connectivity for our clients around the globe.

24-hour access to licensed representatives
Reach our knowledgeable, Series 3 registered reps 24-hours a day during market hours and on Saturdays from 9am-5pm ET. Get answers quickly by phone, email or chat.

Successful firm with solid financials
FOREX.com is a division of GAIN Capital Group, LLC, a pioneer in the online foreign exchange industry. The firm is well-capitalized, with an experienced management team and strong corporate governance. GAIN's majority shareholders are six well-known U.S. venture capital and private equity firms with over $25 billion in combined assets. More awards & accolades.

Retail forex brokers

There are two types of retail brokers offering the opportunity for speculative trading: retail forex brokers and market makers. Retail traders (individuals) are a small fraction of this market and may only participate indirectly through brokers or banks. Retail forex brokers, while largely controlled and regulated by the CFTC and NFA might be subject to forex scams[6] [7]. At present, the NFA and CFTC are imposing stricter requirements, particularly in relation to the amount of Net Capitalization required of its members. As a result many of the smaller, and perhaps questionable brokers are now gone. It is not widely understood that retail brokers and market makers typically trade against their clients and frequently take the other side of their trades. This can often create a potential conflict of interest and give rise to some of the unpleasant experiences some traders have had. A move toward NDD (No Dealing Desk) and STP (Straight Through Processing) has helped to resolve some of these concerns and restore trader confidence, but caution is still advised in ensuring that all is as it is presented

Investment management firms

Investment management firms (who typically manage large accounts on behalf of customers such as pension funds and endowments) use the foreign exchange market to facilitate transactions in foreign securities. For example, an investment manager bearing an international equity portfolio needs to purchase and sell several pairs of foreign currencies to pay for foreign securities purchases.
Some investment management firms also have more speculative specialist currency overlay operations, which manage clients' currency exposures with the aim of generating profits as well as limiting risk. Whilst the number of this type of specialist firms is quite small, many have a large value of assets under management (AUM), and hence can generate large trades.

Central Banks

National central banks play an important role in the foreign exchange markets. They try to control the money supply, inflation, and/or interest rates and often have official or unofficial target rates for their currencies. They can use their often substantial foreign exchange reserves to stabilize the market. Milton Friedman argued that the best stabilization strategy would be for central banks to buy when the exchange rate is too low, and to sell when the rate is too high — that is, to trade for a profit based on their more precise information. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of central bank "stabilizing speculation" is doubtful because central banks do not go bankrupt if they make large losses, like other traders would, and there is no convincing evidence that they do make a profit trading.The mere expectation or rumor of central bank intervention might be enough to stabilize a currency, but aggressive intervention might be used several times each year in countries with a dirty float currency regime. Central banks do not always achieve their objectives. The combined resources of the market can easily overwhelm any central bank. Several scenarios of this nature were seen in the 1992–93 ERM collapse, and in more recent times in Southeast Asia.

Banks

The interbank market caters for both the majority of commercial turnover and large amounts of speculative trading every day. A large bank may trade billions of dollars daily. Some of this trading is undertaken on behalf of customers, but much is conducted by proprietary desks, trading for the bank's own account.
Until recently, foreign exchange brokers did large amounts of business, facilitating interbank trading and matching anonymous counterparts for small fees. Today, however, much of this business has moved on to more efficient electronic systems. The broker squawk box lets traders listen in on ongoing interbank trading and is heard in most trading rooms, but turnover is noticeably smaller than just a few years ago.

Market participants

Unlike a stock market, where all participants have access to the same prices, the forex market is divided into levels of access. At the top is the inter-bank market, which is made up of the largest investment banking firms. Within the inter-bank market, spreads, which are the difference between the bid and ask prices, are razor sharp and usually unavailable, and not known to players outside the inner circle. The difference between the bid and ask prices widens (from 0-1 pip to 1-2 pips for some currencies such as the EUR). This is due to volume. If a trader can guarantee large numbers of transactions for large amounts, they can demand a smaller difference between the bid and ask price, which is referred to as a better spread. The levels of access that make up the forex market are determined by the size of the “line” (the amount of money with which they are trading). The top-tier inter-bank market accounts for 53% of all transactions. After that there are usually smaller investment banks, followed by large multi-national corporations (which need to hedge risk and pay employees in different countries), large hedge funds, and even some of the retail forex-metal market makers. According to Galati and Melvin, “Pension funds, insurance companies, mutual funds, and other institutional investors have played an increasingly important role in financial markets in general, and in FX markets in particular, since the early 2000s.” (2004) In addition, he notes, “Hedge funds have grown markedly over the 2001–2004 period in terms of both number and overall size” Central banks also participate in the forex market to align currencies to their economic needs.

Market size and liquidity

The foreign exchange market is unique because ofits trading volumes, the extreme liquidity of the market, the large number of, and variety of, traders in the market, its geographical dispersion, its long trading hours: 24 hours a day except on weekends (from 5pm EST on Sunday until 4pm EST Friday), the variety of factors that affect exchange rates. the low margins of profit compared with other markets of fixed income (but profits can be high due to very large trading volumes) the use of leverage Main foreign exchange market turnover, 1988 - 2007, measured in billions of USD.As such, it has been referred to as the market closest to the ideal perfect competition, notwithstanding market manipulation by central banks. According to the Bank for International Settlements. average daily turnover in global foreign exchange markets is estimated at $3.98 trillion. Trading in the world's main financial markets accounted for $3.21 trillion of this. This approximately $3.21 trillion in main foreign exchange market turnover was broken down as follows:
$1.005 trillion in spot transactions $362 billion in outright forwards $1.714 trillion in forex swaps $129 billion estimated gaps in reporting Of the $3.98 trillion daily global turnover, trading in London accounted for around $1.36 trillion, or 34.1% of the total, making London by far the global center for foreign exchange. In second and third places respectively, trading in New York accounted for 16.6%, and Tokyo accounted for 6.0%. In addition to "traditional" turnover, $2.1 trillion was traded in derivatives. Exchange-traded forex futures contracts were introduced in 1972 at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and are actively traded relative to most other futures contracts. Forex futures volume has grown rapidly in recent years, and accounts for about 7% of the total foreign exchange market volume, according to The Wall Street Journal Europe