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Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Forex Trading: A Brief History

By Bart Icles

The foreign exchange or forex market is perhaps the biggest market in the world. With the leverage, high liquidity, and availability it offers - not to mention its low dealing costs, more and more people are becoming interested in engaging in forex trading. Although the forex or currency trading market is largely the sphere of financial institutions, practically anyone who is interested in forex trading can learn the basics, engage in the market activities, and earn the benefits.

So how did the foreign exchange come to be? One can say that it all started with the introduction of minted coins to trading. As years passed, stable governments introduced paper as "I owe yous" and gained popular acceptance during the middle ages. These paper "I owe yous" later became the foundation of what we know today as currencies.

With the rise of banks and central banks came the concept of the convertibility of currencies into gold. Prior to World War I, exchanging paper money for gold did not happen often. On several occasions, the failure to print paper money in proportion with a government's gold reserves led to inflation that in turn resulted to political instability. To counteract these devastating results and protect local national interests, governments started to agree on foreign exchange controls to keep market forces from reproving monetary irresponsibility.

After World War II, countries faced the biggest challenges on monetary inflation. To address this, governments have reached the Bretton Woods agreement that suggested a currency exchange system built on the US dollar. This resulted in a system that dealt with fixed exchange rates that reinstated the gold standard to a certain degree, fixed the value of the US dollar, and fixed the value of other main currencies to the dollar.

In the 1960s, national economies moved in different directions that placed the Bretton Woods agreement under increasing pressure. For quite some time, several realignments helped keep the system alive but the Bretton Woods agreement finally collapsed in the early 70s when President Nixon suspended gold convertibility in August 1971. However, governments continued to trade currencies based on fixed rates, and even set off regional efforts to stabilize the monetary volatility.

The European Economic Community or EEC introduced another system based on fixed exchange rates. This came to be known as the European System of 1979. Although this modern system almost met its end in 1993, efforts to stabilize currency continued in the region and it has successfully renewed the attempts to fix currencies and replace many of these currencies with the Euro.

Today, the foreign exchange market remains to be one of the most lucrative and dynamic trading markets in the world. It continues to exist not only to facilitate trade and investment, but also to place appropriate value on multifarious international currencies. - 23212

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