Characteristics of the Foreign

Exchange Market | Forex

Management
The following points highlight the top seven characteristics of
foreign exchange market. The characteristics are: 1. Most Liquid
Market in the World 2. Most Dynamic Market in the World 3.
Twenty-Four Hour Market 4. Market Transparency 5. International
Network of Dealers 6. Most Widely Traded Currency is the Dollar 7.
“Over-The-Counter” Market with an “Exchange-Traded” Segment.

Characteristic # 1. Most Liquid Market in the World:

Currency spot trading is the most popular FX instrument around
the world, comprising more than 1/3 of the total activity. It is
estimated that spot FX trading generates about $1.5 trillion a day in
volume, making it the largest most liquid market in the world.

Compare that to futures $437.4bn and equities $191bn and you will
see that foreign exchange liquidity towers over any other market.
Even though there are many currencies all over the world, 80% of
all daily transactions involve trading the G-7 currencies i.e. the
“majors.”

When compared to the futures market, which is fragmented

between hundreds of types of commodities, and multiple exchanges
and the equities market, with 50,000 listed stocks (the S&P 500
being the majority), it becomes clear that the futures and equities
provides only limited liquidity when compared to currencies.

Liquidity has its advantages, the primary one being no

manipulation of the market. Thin stock and futures markets can
easily be pushed up or down by specialists, market makers,
commercials, and locals. Spot FX on the other hand takes real
buying/selling by banks and institutions to move the market. Any
attempted manipulation of the spot FX market usually becomes an
exercise in futility.
Among the various financial centers around the world, the largest
amount of foreign exchange trading takes place in the United
Kingdom, even though that nation’s currency—the pound sterling—
is less widely traded in the market than several others. The United
Kingdom accounts for about 32 percent of the global total; the
United States ranks a distant second with about 18 per cent and
Japan is third with 8 percent. Thus, together, the three largest
markets—one each in the European, Western Hemisphere, and
Asian time zones—account for about 58 percent of global trading.
After these three leaders comes Singapore with 7 percent.

The large volume of trading activity in the United Kingdom reflects

London’s strong position as an international financial center where
a large number of financial institutions are located. In the 1998
foreign exchange market turnover survey, 213 foreign exchange
dealer institutions in the United Kingdom reported trading activity
to the Bank of England, compared with 93 in the United States
reporting to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

In foreign exchange trading, London benefits not only from its

proximity to major Eurocurrency credit markets and other financial
markets, but also from its geographical location and time zone. In
addition to being open when the numerous other financial centers
in Europe are open, London’s morning hours overlap with the late
hours in a number of Asian and Middle East markets; London’s
afternoon sessions correspond to the morning periods in the large
North American market.

Thus, surveys have indicated that there is more foreign exchange

trading in dollars in London than in the United States, and more
foreign exchange trading in marks than in Germany. However, the
bulk of trading in London, about 85 percent, is accounted for by
foreign-owned (non-U.K. owned) institutions, with U.K.-based
dealers of North American institutions reporting 49 percent, or
three times the share of U.K.-owned institutions there.

Characteristic # 2. Most Dynamic Market in the World:

Foreign exchange market is the most dynamic market in the world.
Regardless of which instrument you are trading – be it stocks,
municipal bonds, U.S. treasuries, agricultural futures, foreign
exchange, or any of the countless others – the attributes that
determine the viability of a market as an investment opportunity
remain the same.

Namely, good investment markets all possess the following

characteristics- liquidity, market transparency, low transaction
costs, and fast execution. Based upon these characteristics, the spot
FX market is the perfect market to trade.

Characteristic # 3. It is a Twenty-Four Hour Market:

During the past quarter century, the concept of a twenty-four hour
market has become a reality. Somewhere on the planet, financial
centers are open for business, and banks and other institutions are
trading the dollar and other currencies, every hour of the day and
night, aside from possible minor gaps on weekends. In financial
centers around the world, business hours overlap; as some centers
close, others open and begin to trade. The foreign exchange market
follows the sun around the earth.

The International Date Line is located in the western Pacific, and

each business day arrives first in the Asia-Pacific financial centers—
first Wellington, New Zealand, then Sydney, Australia, followed by
Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Singapore. A few hours later, while markets
remain active in those Asian centers, trading begins in Bahrain and
elsewhere in the Middle East.

Later still, when it is late in the business day in Tokyo, markets in

Europe open for business. Subsequently, when it is early afternoon
in Europe, trading in New York and other U.S. centers start. Finally,
completing the circle, when it is mid- or late-afternoon in the
United States, the next day has arrived in the Asia-Pacific area, the
first markets there have opened, and the process begins again.

The twenty-four hour market means that exchange rates and

market conditions can change at any time in response to
developments that can take place at any time. It also means that
traders and other market participants must be alert to the
possibility that a sharp move in an exchange rate can occur during
an off hour, elsewhere in the world.

The large dealing institutions have adapted to these conditions, and

have introduced various arrangements for monitoring markets and
trading on a twenty- four hour basis. Some keep their New York or
other trading desks open twenty-four hours a day, others pass the
torch from one office to the next, and still others follow different
approaches.

However, foreign exchange activity does not flow evenly. Over the
course of a day, there is a cycle characterized by periods of very
heavy activity and other periods of relatively light activity. Most of
the trading takes place when the largest number of potential
counterparties is available or accessible on a global basis.

Market liquidity is of great importance to participants. Sellers want

to sell when they have access to the maximum number of potential
buyers/ and buyers want to buy when they have access to the
maximum number of potential sellers.
Business is heavy when both the U.S. markets and the major
European markets are open—that is, when it is morning in New
York and afternoon in London. In the New York market, nearly two
thirds of the day’s activity typically takes place in the morning
hours. Activity normally becomes very slow in New York in the mid-
to late afternoon, after European markets have closed and before
the Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Singapore markets have- opened.

Given this uneven flow of business around the clock, market

participants often will respond less aggressively to an exchange rate
development that occurs at a relatively inactive time of day, and will
wait to see whether the development is confirmed when the major
markets open. Some institutions pay little attention to
developments in less active markets.

Nonetheless, the twenty-four hour market does provide a

continuous “real-time” market assessment of the ebb and flow of
influences and attitudes with respect to the traded currencies, and
an opportunity for a quick judgment of unexpected events. The
foreign exchange market provides a kind of never-ending beauty
contest or horse race, where market participants can continuously
adjust their bets to reflect their changing views.

Characteristic # 4. Market Transparency:

Price transparency is very high in the FX market and the evolution
of online foreign exchange trading continues to improve this, to the
benefit of traders. One of the biggest advantages of trading foreign
exchange online is the ability to trade directly with the market
maker. A reputable forex broker will provide traders with
streaming, executable prices. It is important to make a distinction
between indicative prices and executable prices.

Indicative quotes are those that offer an indication of the prices in

the market, and the rate at which they are changing. Executable
prices are actual prices where the market maker is willing to
buy/sell. Although online trading has reached equities and futures,
prices represent the LAST buy/sell and therefore represent
indicative prices rather than executable prices.

Furthermore, trading online directly with the market maker means

traders receive a fair price on all transactions. When trading
equities or futures through a broker, traders must request a price
before dealing, allowing for brokers to check a trader’s existing
position and ‘shade’ the price (in their favor) a few pips depending
on the trader’s position.

Online trading capabilities in FX also create more efficiency and

market transparency by providing real time portfolio and account
tracking capability. Traders have access to real time profit/loss on
open positions and can generate reports on demand, which provide
detailed information regarding every open position, open order,
margin position and generated profit/loss per trade.

Characteristic # 5. International Network of Dealers:

The market is made up of an international network of dealers. The
market consists of a limited number of major dealer institutions
that are particularly active in foreign exchange, trading with
customers and (more often) with each other. Most, but not all, are
commercial banks and investment banks. These dealer institutions
are geographically dispersed, located in numerous financial centers
around the world. Wherever located, these institutions are linked to,
and in close communication with, each other through telephones,
computers, and other electronic means.

There are around 2,000 dealer institutions whose foreign exchange

activities are covered by the Bank for International Settlements’
central bank survey, and who, essentially, make up the global
foreign exchange market. A much smaller sub-set of those
institutions accounts for the bulk of trading and market-making
activity. It is estimated that there are 100- 200 market-making
banks worldwide; major players are fewer than that.

At a time when there is much talk about an integrated world

economy and “the global village,” the foreign exchange market
comes closest to functioning in a truly global fashion, linking the
various foreign exchange trading centers from around the world
into a single, unified, cohesive, worldwide market.

Foreign exchange trading takes place among dealers and other

market professionals in a large number of individual financial
centers— New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, London, Tokyo,
Singapore, Frankfurt, Paris, Zurich, Milan, and many, many others.
But no matter in which financial center a trade occurs, the same
currencies, or rather, bank deposits denominated in the same
currencies, are being bought and sold.

A foreign exchange dealer buying dollars in one of those markets

actually is buying a dollar-denominated deposit in a bank located in
the United States, or a claim of a bank abroad on a dollar deposit in
a bank located in the United States. This holds true regardless of the
location of the financial center at which the dollar deposit is
purchased. Similarly, a dealer buying Deutsche marks, no matter
where the purchase is made, actually is buying a mark deposit in a
bank in Germany or a claim on a mark deposit in a bank in
Germany. And so on for other currencies.
Each nation’s market has its own infrastructure. For foreign
exchange market operations as well as for other matters, each
country enforces its own laws, banking regulations, accounting
rules, and tax code, and, as noted above, it operates its own
payment and settlement systems.

Thus, even in a global foreign exchange market with currencies

traded on essentially the same terms simultaneously in many
financial centers, there are different national financial systems and
infrastructures through which transactions are executed, and within
which currencies are held.

With access to all of the foreign exchange markets generally open to

participants from all countries, and with vast amounts of market
information transmitted simultaneously and almost instantly to
dealers throughout the world, there is an enormous amount of cross
border foreign exchange trading among dealers as well as between
dealers and their customers.

At any moment, the exchange rates of major currencies tend to be

virtually identical in all of the financial centers where there is active
trading. Rarely are there such substantial price differences among
major centers as to provide major opportunities for arbitrage. In
pricing, the various financial centers that are open for business and
active at any one time are effectively integrated into a single market.

Accordingly, a bank in the United States is likely to trade foreign

exchange at least as frequently with banks in London, Frankfurt,
and other open foreign centers as with other banks in the United
States. Surveys indicate that when major dealing institutions in the
United States trade with other dealers, 58 percent of the
transactions are with dealers located outside the United States.
Dealer institutions in other major countries also report that more
than half of their trades are with dealers that are across borders;
dealers also use brokers located both domestically and abroad.

Characteristic # 6. Most Widely Traded Currency is the

Dollar:
The dollar is by far the most widely traded currency. According to
the 1998 survey, the dollar was one of the two currencies involved in
an estimated 87 percent of global foreign exchange transactions,
equal to about $1.3 trillion a day. In part, the widespread use of the
dollar reflects its substantial international role as – “investment”
currency in many capital markets, “reserve” currency held by many
central banks, “transaction” currency in many international
commodity markets, “invoice” currency in many contracts, and
“intervention” currency employed by monetary authorities in
market operations to influence their own exchange rates.

In addition, the widespread trading of the dollar reflects its use as a

“vehicle” currency in foreign exchange transactions, a use that
reinforces, and is reinforced by, its international role in trade and
finance. For most pairs of currencies, the market practice is to trade
each of the two currencies against a common third currency as a
vehicle, rather than to trade the two currencies directly against each
other. The vehicle currency used most often is the dollar, although
by the mid-1990s the Deutsche mark also had become an important
vehicle, with its use, especially in Europe, having increased sharply
during the 1980s and ’90s.

Thus, a trader wanting to shift funds from one currency to another,

say, from Swedish krona to Philippine pesos, will probably sell
krona for U.S. dollars and then sell the U.S. dollars for pesos.
Although this approach results in two transactions rather than one,
it may be the preferred way, since the dollar/Swedish krona market,
and the dollar/Philippine peso market are much more active and
liquid and have much better information than a bilateral market for
the two currencies directly against each other.

By using the dollar or some other currency as a vehicle, banks and

other foreign exchange market participants can limit more of their
working balances to the vehicle currency, rather than holding and
managing many currencies, and can concentrate their research and
information sources on the vehicle.

Use of a vehicle currency greatly reduces the number of exchange

rates that must be dealt with in a multilateral system. In a system of
10 currencies, if one currency is selected as vehicle currency and
used for all transactions, there would be a total of nine currency
pairs or exchange rates to be dealt with (i.e., one exchange rate for
the vehicle currency against each of the others), whereas if no
vehicle currency were used, there would be 45 exchange rates to be
dealt with.

In a system of 100 currencies with no vehicle currencies, potentially

there would be 4,950 currency pairs or exchange rates [the formula
is- n(n-1)/2].Thus, using a vehicle currency can yield the advantages
of fewer, larger, and more liquid markets with fewer currency
balances, reduced informational needs, and simpler operations.

The U.S. dollar took on a major vehicle currency role with the
introduction of the Bretton Woods par value system, in which most
nations met their IMF exchange obligations by buying and selling
U.S. dollar to maintain a par value relationship for their own
currency against the U.S. dollar.

The dollar was a convenient vehicle, not only because of its

widespread use as a reserve currency, but also because of the
presence of large and liquid dollar money and other financial
markets, and , in time, the Euro-dollar markets where dollars
needed for (or resulting from) foreign exchange transactions could
conveniently be borrowed (or placed).

Changing conditions in the 1980s and 1990s altered this situation.

In particular, the Deutsche mark began to play a much more
significant role as a vehicle currency and, more importantly, in
direct “cross trading.” As the European Community moved toward
economic integration and monetary unification, the relationship of
the European Monetary System (EMS) currencies to each other
became of greater concern than the relationship of their currencies
to the dollar.

An intra-European currency market developed, centering on the

mark and on Germany as the strongest currency and largest
economy. Direct intervention in members’ currencies, rather than
through the dollar, became widely practiced. Events such as the
EMS currency crisis of September 1992, when a number of
European currencies came under severe market pressure against
the mark, confirmed the extent to which direct use of the DEM for
intervening in the exchange market could be more effective than
going through the dollar.

Against this background, there was very rapid growth in direct cross
rate trading involving the Deutsche mark, much of it against
European currencies, during the 1980s and ’90s. (A “cross rate” is
an exchange rate between two non-dollar currencies —e.g., DEM/
Swiss franc, DEM/pound, and DEM/yen).

There are derived cross rates calculated from the dollar rates of each
of the two currencies,- and there are direct cross rates that come
from direct trading between the two currencies—which can result in
narrower spreads where there is a viable market.

In a number of European countries, the volume of trading of the

local currency against the Deutsche mark grew to exceed local
currency trading against the dollar, and the practice developed of
using cross rates between the DEM and other European currencies
to determine the dollar rates for those currencies.

With its increased use as a vehicle currency and its role in cross
trading, the Deutsche mark was involved in 30 percent of global
currency turnover in the 1998 survey. That was still far below the
dollar (which was involved in 87 percent of global turnover), but
well above the Japanese yen (ranked third, at 21 percent), and the
pound sterling (ranked fourth, at 11 percent).

Characteristic # 7. “Over-The-Counter” Market with an

“Exchange-Traded” Segment:
Until the 1970s, all foreign exchange trading in the United States
(and elsewhere) was handled “over-the-counter,” (OTC) by banks in
different locations making deals via telephone and telex. In the
United States, the OTC market was then, and is now, largely
unregulated as a market.
Buying and selling foreign currencies is considered the exercise of
an express banking power. Thus, a commercial bank or Securities &
brokerage firms in the United States do not need any special
authorization to trade or deal in foreign exchange.

There are no official rules or restrictions in the United States

governing the hours or conditions of trading. The trading
conventions have been developed mostly by market participants.
There is no official code prescribing what constitutes good market
practice.

However, the Foreign Exchange Committee, an independent body

sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and composed
of representatives from institutions participating in the market,
produces and regularly updates its report on Guidelines for Foreign
Exchange Trading. These Guidelines seek to clarify common market
practices and offer “best practice recommendations” with respect to
trading activities, relationships, and other matters.

Although the OTC market is not regulated as a market in the way

that the organized exchanges are regulated, regulatory authorities
examine the foreign exchange market activities of banks and certain
other institutions participating in the OTC market.

As with other business activities in which these institutions are

engaged, examiners look at trading systems, activities, and
exposure, focusing on the safety and soundness of the institution
and its activities. Examinations deal with such matters as capital
adequacy, control systems, disclosure, sound banking practice, legal
compliance, and other factors relating to the safety and soundness
of the institution.

The OTC market accounts for well over 90 percent of total U.S.
foreign exchange market activity, covering both the traditional (pre-
1970) products (spot, outright forwards, and FX swaps) as well as
the more recently introduced (post-1970) OTC products (currency
options and currency swaps). On the “organized exchanges,” foreign
exchange products traded are currency futures and certain currency
options.
Steps are being taken internationally to help improve the risk
management practices of dealers in the foreign exchange market,
and to encourage greater transparency and disclosure.