What is forex?
Forex is the international market for the free trade of currencies. Traders place orders to buy one currency with another currency. For example, a trader may want to buy Euros with US dollars, and will use the forex market to do this.
The forex market is the world's largest financial market. Over $4 trillion dollars worth of currency are traded each day. The amount of money traded in a week is bigger than the entire annual GDP of the United States!
The main currency used for forex trading is the US dollar.
When did forex start?
As the world continued to tear itself apart in the Second World War, there was an urgent need for financial stability. International negotiators from 29 countries met in Bretton Woods and agreed to a new economic system where, amongst other things, exchange rates would be fixed.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was established under the Bretton Woods agreement, and started to operate in 1949. All exchange rates changes above 1% had to be approved by the IMF, which had the effect of freezing these rates.
By the late 1960's the fixed exchange rate system started to break down, due to a number of international political and economic