Market Size

The Forex market is the largest financial market in the world. (See
Figure 1.1.) Nearly $2 trillion change hands every day. To give you
an idea of what an awesome number that is, the New York Stock
Exchange experienced record volume during the third quarter of
1998 and cleared only $1.9 trillion in volume—60 times less than the
Forex market clears in a quarter. Being the largest financial market
in the world is advantageous; it makes buying and selling currencies
extremely easy because there are so many buyers and sellers out
there. Imagine that you are trying to sell your home, and you had
thousands of people standing at your front door—cash in hand—
ready to buy the house. It wouldn’t be too tough to sell the house.
The second advantage of the size of the Forex market is that
investors are unable to manipulate it. Since potential manipulation
is virtually nonexistent, you can be confident that the prices you
are getting in the Forex market are fair prices.