Foreign exchange market

The distant exchange market (forex, FX, or currency market) is a worldwide, worldwide-decentralized financial market for trading currencies. In a typical foreign exchange transaction, a party purchases a quantity of one currency by paying a quantity of another currency. The modern foreign exchange market began forming during the 1970s after three decades of government restrictions on foreign exchange transactions (the Breton Woods system of monetary management established the rules for commercial and financial relations among the world's major industrial states after World War II), when countries gradually switched to floating exchange rates from the previous exchange rate regime, which remained fixed as per the Breton Woods system. The foreign exchange market assists international trade and investment, by enabling currency conversion. For example, it permits a business in the United States to import goods from the United Kingdom and pay pound sterling, even though its income is in United States dollars. It also supports direct speculation in the value of currencies, and the carry trade, speculation on the change in interest rates in two currency. As such, it has been referred to as the market closest to the ideal of perfect competition, notwithstanding currency intervention by central banks. According to the Bank for International Settlements, as of April 2010, average daily turnover in global foreign exchange markets is estimated at $3.98 trillion, a growth of approximately 20% over the $3.21 trillion daily volume as of April 2007. Some firms specializing on foreign exchange market had put the average daily turnover in excess of US$4 trillion.