The retail forex market provides individual investors desiring to earn speculative profit with the opportunity to buy
and sell foreign currencies in small quantities, all supported by a range of services previously enjoyed
only by large financial institutions.
Affordable. Small size transactions.
A retail forex trading account can be opened with as little as $2,500 and this places forex trading within reach
of those having only a modest amount of risk capital. Most forex trading platforms allow
flexible
transaction sizes with the smaller sizes having smaller risk and, therefore, smaller margin requirements. The trader
has the flexibility in selecting a transaction size that is appropriate for their amount of trading capital and tolerance for risk.
Low margin. High leverage.
The margin
for a forex transaction is usually just several percent of the market value of the currency position
and can even approach just one percent. With such low margin, only a relatively small amount of capital is required to
buy and sell currencies in the forex market. Furthermore, most trading platforms automatically
close all open positions the moment that margin in the account drops below the required level, and this helps to ensure
that the forex trader does not lose more than the money that was originally deposited.
Streaming real-time quotes and news.
The streaming real-time bid and offer quotes on the forex trading platform are "dealable" meaning that a trader can
almost always
transact immediately at the quotes shown. When
combined with the real-time charts, news and technical studies provided by most trading platforms, the forex trader is
able to react immediately to market developments as they unfold.
24-hour market.
The forex market operates generally continuously from its open at 5:15 p.m. Sunday afternoon (New York time) with the Sydney-Auckland market
until its close at 4:30 p.m. Friday in New York. Forex trading follows the day around the world: from Sydney to Tokyo to London to New York.
Real-time reporting.
Forex traders can see the value of their open positions and account equity move up and down in response to
currency price changes in real time; no guesswork or personal calculations are required. Traders also have immediate access
to information on open orders and excess or usable margin based on current account equity.
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