Forex Exchange Market History, Growth and Development

After the Second World War most European economies were destroyed. The only country that came out with no scars was USA. In 1944 after Brenton Woods Accord and IMF, the US dollar become reserve the currency for all capitalist countries of the world and the rest of the currencies, gold and crude oil were compared against it. We can say it was the beginning of foreign exchange market.

For many years only central banks and big financial corporations had access to international currency trading. After free currency trade become accessible to individual traders around the seventies, forex experienced a dynamic burst of daily turnover which reached $5bilion in 1977, it reached $600bilions in 1987 and went as high as $1 trillion in September 1992.

It is only recently that individual investor can simply invest his capital on the international foreign exchange market. In old days there were a few requirements to be a successful trader like minimum of investment, quick access to prices or ability to place trades on an hourly bases. That was not always possible in times where the internet was only a dream of engineers and the only way to communicate between the markets was a cable or telex. This is why we still call Pound Sterling a Cable.
Forex market took the name OTC (Over the counter) which means that transactions are made mostly by internet or telephone and there is no trading place as such. There is no need for one.

Fast technology development such as internet and telecommunication equipment allowed many individual investors and also small and medium corporations to gain profits from other sources like exchange markets. Free currency float, stock market performance, central banks activities and market speculations move forex on hourly bases creating opportunities for profit. Easy access to information and training programs made traders smarter and transactions bigger. Today the foreign exchange market has reached $1.5 trillion of turnover every single trading day. The main reason for such a huge spike in turnover on the forex market is mainly due to easy access information. Traders become good businessmen. They have a way more knowledge and information now than they used to have twenty years ago. Telecommunication then was not developed as much and market update was accessible only for few. That made trading more difficult and effected in smaller amount of transactions on the market.

Thanks to all the tools and equipment we can access nowadays the forex market is the biggest source of income to many experience traders .It is thanks to them and the electronic technology of our century we have seen such progress in the foreign exchange market development over the last twenty years. It is fast, dynamic and there is no time wasted on the foreign exchange markets .As we know technology advances every day. Every day electronic devices are better and with bigger abilities. Computer software industry develops at a tremendous pace. It is hard to say where the foreign exchange market will be within the next twenty years?