Anyone new to the foreign exchange market, through no fault of his own, will have a hard time understanding what it is all about. The foreign exchange market after all, is the world's largest financial sector, involving an average of $1.8 trillion cash value traded per day.

The foreign exchange market is actually a vast market composed of many-tiered levels and many participants. Online traders contribute only 2% of the total cash value traded. This shows just how intricate the foreign exchange market really is.

What makes foreign exchange even more problematic is that it has developed a jargon all on its own such that its terms are no longer what they mean in common parlance. Although the task of understanding what the foreign exchange market is, is overwhelming, it is not impossible.

The Big Picture

A large company in South Africa ordered tons of marble from a small company from a province in Taiwan. In the old days, the company in South Africa would have a hard time paying for the marble as it not only would have to ship millions of South African money to Taiwan but it would also have to pay the small company in Taiwan in its own currency or else, the money will be useless.

With the foreign exchange market, paying for goods and services rendered by one country to another is no longer difficult. Through computers, there is no longer any need to ship money. All the South African company would have to do is to go to a bank and pay that bank in whatever currency and that bank will transfer the amount to a bank in Taiwan which will pay in whatever currency the small company in Taiwan wants. For profit, the bank will ask the South African company to buy the currency at a slightly higher price and pay the small Taiwan company using the current exchange rate.

The Small Picture

On the computer, a 21-year old jobless fresh graduate earned $10,000 in a few months. In April, he bought Euros to try out his luck in currency trading and to his surprise, the price of Euros soared by June and continued to soar until December. By December, he sold all his Euros, on a tip-off by an online friend that most of the European countries involved in the war in Iraq will be boycotted by those countries not in favor of the war. The tip-off was correct and in less than a month, the Euro's value slipped lower than its original value when this jobless fresh graduate first bought them.

Many people have found, just like this jobless fresh graduate, how simple it is to earn through currency trading. Even a dollar capital can snowball into thousands of dollars if you know when to buy and when to sell. Etched in stone, all currency traders have but one motto: buy low and sell high. The jobless fresh graduate took a risk by buying Euros. He held on to the currency until it gained value and, as soon as he realized the value might lessen, he sold the currency for another.