Wednesday, March 5, 2008

What is Floating Currency?

A floating currency is a currency that uses a floating exchange rate as its exchange rate regime. A floating currency is contrasted with a fixed currency.

What is Floating Exchange Rate?

A floating exchange rate or a flexible exchange rate is a type of exchange rate regime wherein a currency's value is allowed to fluctuate according to the foreign exchange market. A currency that uses a floating exchange rate is known as a floating currency. The opposite of a floating exchange rate is a fixed exchange rate

Definition of Retail Forex

In financial markets, the retail forex (retail currency trading or retail FX) market is a subset of the larger foreign exchange market. This "market has long been plagued by swindlers preying on the gullible," according to The New York Times. It's commonly thought that about 90% of all retail FX traders lose money

What is Forex Scam?

A forex scam is any trading scheme used to defraud individual traders by convincing them that they can expect to gain a high profit by trading in the foreign exchange market. Currency trading "has become the fraud du jour," according to Michael Dunn of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. But "the market has long been plagued by swindlers preying on the gullible," according to the New York Times . "The average individual foreign-exchange-trading victim loses about $15,000, according to CFTC records" according to The Wall Street Journal. The North American Securities Administrators Association says that "off-exchange forex trading by retail investors is at best extremely risky, and at worst, outright fraud."The forex market is a zero-sum game , meaning that whatever one trader gains, another loses, except that brokerage commissions and other transaction costs are subtracted from the results of all traders, technically making forex a "negative-sum" game.

Fixed Exchange Rate

A fixed exchange rate, sometimes (less commonly) called a pegged exchange rate, is a type of exchange rate regime wherein a currency's value is matched to the value of another single currency or to a basket of other currencies, or to another measure of value, such as gold. As the reference value rises and falls, so does the currency pegged to it. In addition, fixed exchange rates deprive governments of the use of an independent domestic monetary policy to achieve internal stability.

Who are The Bond Market Participants?

Bond market participants are similar to participants in most financial markets and are essentially either buyers (debt issuer) of funds or sellers (institution) of funds and often both.Participants include:
Institutional investors;
Governments;
Traders; and
Individuals

What aer the Types of Bond Market?

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association classifies the broader bond market into five specific bond markets.
Corporate
Government & Agency
Mortgage Backed, Asset Backed, and Collateralized Debt Obligation
Funding

What is Bond Market?

The bond market (also known as the debt, credit, or fixed income market) is a financial market where participants buy and sell debt securities, usually in the form of bonds. As of 2006, the size of the international bond market is an estimated $45 trillion, of which the size of the outstanding U.S. bond market debt was $25.2 trillion

Definition of Capital Market

The capital market is the market for securities, where companies and the government can raise long-term funds. The capital market includes the stock market and the bond market. Financial regulators, such as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, oversee the capital markets in their designated countries to ensure that investors are protected against fraud. The capital markets consist of the primary market, where new issues are distributed to investors, and the secondary market, where existing securities are traded

What is Foreign Exchange Market?

The foreign exchange (currency or forex or FX) market exists wherever one currency is traded for another. It is by far the largest financial market in the world, and includes trading between large banks, central banks, currency speculators, multinational corporations, governments, and other financial markets and institutions. The average daily trade in the global forex and related markets currently is over US$ 3 trillion

What is Capital Gain?

In finance, a capital gain is profit that results from the sale or exchange of a capital asset over its purchase price. If the price of the capital asset has declined instead of appreciated, this is called a capital loss. Capital gains occur in both real assets, such as property, as well as financial assets, such as stocks or bonds. For equities, according to each national or state legislation, a large array of fiscal obligations must be respected regarding capital gains, and taxes are charged by the state over the transactions, dividends and capital gains on the stock market. However, these fiscal obligations may vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction because, among other reasons, it could be assumed that taxation is already incorporated into the stock price through the different taxes companies pay to the state, or that tax free stock market operations are useful to boost economic growth

Definition of a Market Maker

A market maker is a firm who quotes both a buy and a sell price in a financial instrument or commodity, hoping to make a profit on the turn or the bid/offer spread.In foreign exchange trading, where most deals are conducted Over-the-Counter and are, therefore, completely virtual, the market maker sells to and buys from its clients. Hence, the client's loss is the market-maker firm's profit and vice versa. Most foreign exchange trading firms are market makers and so are many banks, although not in all currency markets

What is Financial services?

Financial services refers to services provided by the finance industry. The finance industry encompasses a broad range of organizations that deal with the management of money. Among these organizations are banks, credit card companies, insurance companies, consumer finance companies, stock brokerages, and some government sponsored enterprises. As of 2004, the financial services industry represented 20% of the market capitalization of the S&P 500 in the United States.

What is Financial Market?

In economics, a financial market is a mechanism that allows people to easily buy and sell (trade) financial securities (such as stocks and bonds), commodities (such as precious metals or agricultural goods), and other fungible items of value at low transaction costs and at prices that reflect the efficient market hypothesis.Financial markets have evolved significantly over several hundred years and are undergoing constant innovation to improve liquidity

Exchange Rate

In finance, the exchange rate (also known as the foreign-exchange rate, forex rate or FX rate) between two currencies specifies how much one currency is worth in terms of the other. For example an exchange rate of 123 Japanese yen (JPY, ¥) to the United States dollar (USD, $) means that JPY 123 is worth the same as USD 1. The foreign exchange market is one of the largest markets in the world. By some estimates, about 2 trillion USD worth of currency changes hands every day.

What is Currency sign?

A currency sign is a graphic symbol often used as a shorthand for a currency's name. Internationally, ISO 4217 codes are used instead of currency signs, though currency signs may be in common use in their respective countries. Most currencies in the world have no specific symbol.

United States Dollars

The dollar (currency code USD) is the unit of currency of the United States. The U.S. dollar has also been adopted as the official and legal currency by the governments in a few other countries. The U.S. dollar is normally abbreviated as the dollar sign, $, or as USD or US$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies and from others that use the $ symbol. It is divided into 100 cents.

Definition of Payment

A payment is the transfer of wealth from one party (such as a person or company) to another. A payment is usually made in exchange for the provision of goods, services, or both, or to fulfill a legal obligation.The simplest and oldest form of payment is barter, the exchange of one good or service for another. In the modern world, common means of payment by an individual include money, check, debit, credit, or bank transfer, and in trade such payments are frequently preceded by an invoice or result in a receipt. However, there are no arbitrary limits on the form a payment can take and thus in complex transactions between businesses, payments may take the form of stock or other more complicated arrangements

What is Medium of Exchange?

A medium of exchange is an intermediary used in trade to avoid the inconveniences of a pure barter system.By contrast, in a barter system there must be a coincidence of wants before two people can trade the one must want exactly what the other has to offer, when and where it is offered, so that the exchange can occur. A medium of exchange permits the value of a good to be assessed and rendered in terms of the intermediary, most often, a form of money widely accepted to buy any other good

Money

Money is any token or other object that functions as a medium of exchange that is socially and legally accepted in payment for goods and services and in settlement of debts. Money also serves as a standard of value for measuring the relative worth of different goods and services and as a store of value. Some authors explicitly require money to be a standard of deferred payment

Investment

Investment or investing is a term with several closely-related meanings in business management, finance and economics, related to saving or deferring consumption. An asset is usually purchased, or equivalently a deposit is made in a bank, in hopes of getting a future return or interest from it. The word originates in the Latin "vestis", meaning garment, and refers to the act of putting things (money or other claims to resources) into others' pockets

Interest

Interest is a fee paid on borrowed capital. By far the most common form in which these assets are lent is money, but other assets may be lent to the borrower, such as shares, consumer goods through hire purchase, major assets such as aircraft, and even entire factories in finance lease arrangements. In each case the interest is calculated upon the value of the assets in the same manner as upon money. Interest can also be thought of as "rent on money

Share Holder

A shareholder (or stockholder) is an individual or company (including a corporation) that legally owns one or more shares of stock in a joint stock company. Companies listed at the stock market are expected to strive to enhance shareholder value.Shareholders are granted special privileges depending on the class of stock, including the right to vote (usually one vote per share owned) on matters such as elections to the board of directors, the right to share in distributions of the company's income, the right to purchase new shares issued by the company, and the right to a company's assets during a liquidation of the company. However, shareholder's rights to a company's assets are subordinate to the rights of the company's creditors. This means that shareholders typically receive nothing if a company is liquidated after bankruptcy (if the company had had enough to pay its creditors, it would not have entered bankruptcy), although a stock may have value after a bankruptcy if there is the possibility that the debts of the company will be restructured.Shareholders are considered by some to be a partial subset of stakeholders, which may include anyone who has a direct or indirect equity interest in the business entity or someone with even a non-pecuniary interest in a non-profit organization. Thus it might be common to call volunteer contributors to an association stakeholders, even though they are not shareholders.

Commodity Exchange Act

Commodity Exchange Act is a federal act passed in 1936 by the U.S. Government (replacing the Grain Futures Act of 1922). The act provides federal regulation of all commodities and futures trading activities and requires all futures and commodity options to be traded on organized exchanges. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) was created in 1974 as a result of the Commodity Exchange Act, which in 1982 created the National Futures Association (NFA

History of Forex Capital Market

November 2005, Forex Capital Markets (FXCM) became entrenched in the bankruptcy proceedings of Refco, Inc (OTC:RFXCQ). Refco, a big commodities brokerage that collapsed amid an accounting scandal, has been largely purchased by Man Group. At the time Refco owned a 35% share in FXCM. FXCM is currently backing a client-led lawsuit against Refco.Forex Capital Markets, LLC (FXCM) the global forex broker, announced that an agreement had been reached with Refco and its affiliates to sell at auction an outstanding non-voting minority interest in the company.