Forex Market Hours

The Currency Forex Market hours will please most traders used to traditional stock trading. Unlike with stock markets, trading occurs all day long. Forex traders work 24-hours a day, five days a week. No more waiting to make trades after the weekend, or trading according to a market's hours -- the currency Forex market is never closed.

With a daily dollar volume of $3 trillion in 2007, according to the 2007 Triennial Central Bank Survey of Foreign Exchange and Derivative Market Activity, the Forex capital markets are the largest and most liquid markets in the world. The number of currencies traded during Forex market trading will ensure a high level of what currency traders call "volatility" on a day-to-day basis. In layman's terms, this means there will always be currencies that are moving rapidly up or down, offering opportunities for profit (and of course for risk) to currency market traders. Thankfully, just like the more standard equity markets, Forex offers financial instruments to moderate risk for traders, and to allow the individual to profit in both rising and falling markets. Forex also allows highly leveraged (or "credit") trading with low margin requirements -- much lower than stock market trading. The best news of all for day traders used to the stock market, Forex market trading requires nodealing commission payments.

Many of the trading moves utilized in Forex capital markets, such as spread betting, forwards and futures, options, the spot market, and contracts for difference, are very similar to those used in more traditional stock trading markets. Since the "financial instruments" of the Forex capital markets tend to maintain minimum trade sizes relative to a base currency, the use of "margin trading" is absolutely essential for the person trading these instruments. For example, the spot market requires a minimum trade size of 100,000 units of the base currency. That's a ton of margin.