Back to: Introduction to Forex

●       24-Hour Market

The forex market is a seamless 24-hour market. Most brokers are open from Sunday at 4:00 pm EST10pm (CAT) until Friday at 4:00 pm EST, with customer service usually available 24/7. With the ability to trade during the U.S., Asian and European market hours, you can customize your own trading schedule.

●       Execution of Market Orders

Trades are instantly actualized under usual market conditions. Under these conditions, usually the price shown when you execute your market order is the price you get. You’re able to execute directly off real-time streaming prices. Many brokers only guarantee stop, limit, and entry orders under normal market conditions. Trading during a massive alien invasion from outer space would not fall under “normal market” conditions. Fills are instantaneous most of the time, but under extraordinarily volatile market conditions, like during Martian attacks, order execution may experience delays.

●       Market Structure

For the sake of comparison, let us first examine a market that you are probably very familiar with: the stock market. This is how the structure of the stock market looks like: By its very nature, the stock market tends to be very monopolistic. There is only one entity, one specialist that controls prices. All trades must go through this specialist. Because of this, prices can easily be altered to benefit the specialist, and not traders. How does this happen? In the stock market, the specialist is forced to fulfill the order of its clients. Now, let’s say the number of sellers suddenly exceed the number