Who trades forex?
How the market is layered, the main players and how retail trading grew.
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Lessons
- 01How is the forex market structured?Forex has no central exchange. It is an over-the-counter market: large dealer banks trade with each other at the top, liquidity providers and institutions deal with those banks, and retail brokers connect individual traders at the bottom. With no shared venue there is no single official price, and each layer down usually pays a slightly wider spread.
- 02Who are the main players in the forex market?The forex market's main players are dealer banks and non-bank liquidity providers, which quote prices, plus central banks, funds, companies and retail traders. Each trades for its own reason: dealers earn the spread, central banks pursue policy, companies hedge real payments, funds invest or speculate, and retail traders speculate in small sizes through brokers.
- 03How did retail forex trading begin?Retail forex began in the late 1990s, when internet brokers started offering currency trading to individuals. Before that, currencies were traded mainly between banks and large firms in amounts of millions. Floating exchange rates from 1973, electronic dealing, small lot sizes and leverage made it possible to trade 1,000 units from a home computer, and later a phone.