A binary option is a financial exotic option in which the payoff is either some fixed monetary amount or nothing at all. The two main types of binary options are the cash-or-nothing binary option and the asset-or-nothing binary option. The former pays some fixed amount of cash if the option expires in-the-money while the latter pays the value of the underlying security. They are also called all-or-nothing options, digital options, and fixed return options (FROs).
The foreign exchange market is a global decentralized or over-the-counter (OTC) market for the trading of currencies. This market determines foreign exchange rates for every currency. It includes all aspects of buying, selling and exchanging currencies at current or determined prices. In terms of trading volume, it is by far the largest market in the world, followed by the credit market.
A currency future, also known as an FX future or a foreign exchange future, is a futures contract to exchange one currency for another at a specified date in the future at a price that is fixed on the purchase date; see Foreign exchange derivative. Typically, one of the currencies is the US dollar. The price of a future is then in terms of US dollars per unit of other currency. This can be different from the standard way of quoting in the spot foreign exchange markets. The trade unit of each contract is then a certain amount of other currency, for instance €125,000. Most contracts have physical delivery, so for those held at the end of the last trading day, actual payments are made in each currency. However, most contracts are closed out before that. Investors can close out the contract at any time prior to the contract's delivery date.
A currency pair is the quotation of the relative value of a currency unit against the unit of another currency in the foreign exchange market. The currency that is used as the reference is called the counter currency, quote currency, or currency and the currency that is quoted in relation is called the base currency or transaction currency.
Foreign exchange fraud is any trading scheme used to defraud traders by convincing them that they can expect to gain a high profit by trading in the foreign exchange market. Currency trading became a common form of fraud in early 2008, according to Michael Dunn of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
In foreign exchange markets, a percentage in point (pip) is a unit of change in an exchange rate of a currency pair.
The interbank market is the top-level foreign exchange market where banks exchange different currencies. The banks can either deal with one another directly, or through electronic brokering platforms. The Electronic Broking Services (EBS) and Thomson Reuters Dealing are the two competitors in the electronic brokering platform business and together connect over 1000 banks. The currencies of most developed countries have floating exchange rates. These currencies do not have fixed values but, rather, values that fluctuate relative to other currencies.
Retail foreign exchange trading is a small segment of the larger foreign exchange market where individuals speculate on the exchange rate between different currencies. This segment has developed with the advent of dedicated electronic trading platforms and the internet, which allows individuals to access the global currency markets. As of 2016, it was reported that retail foreign exchange trading represented 5.5% of the whole foreign exchange market.
dbFX was Deutsche Bank’s online margin foreign exchange trading platform and service for individual and institutional investors including financial institutions, hedge funds, corporations, asset managers, money managers, commodity trading advisors, broker-dealers, brokerage firms, high net worth individuals, and sophisticated and professional traders, which operated from 2006-2011.
Matchbook FX was an internet-based electronic communication network for trading currency online in the Spot-FX or foreign exchange market. It operated between 1999 and 2002.
ZuluTrade is a Greek financial technology company that operates an online and mobile social and copy trading platform. The platform allows users to copy other traders in the forex. As of 2014 ZuluTrade had around one million users and an executed trading volume of over $800 billion.
FXCM, also known as Forex Capital Markets, is a retail foreign exchange broker for trading on the foreign exchange market. FXCM allows people to speculate on the foreign exchange market and provides trading in contract for difference (CFDs) on major indices and commodities such as gold and crude oil. It is based in London.
Currensee was a financial services company based in Boston to serve as a social network for foreign exchange traders. The company provided mirror trading services to its clients that allowed them to make trading decisions based on other traders actions. The company was acquired by Oanda in 2013, which decided to close down the service a year later in October 2014.
GAIN Capital is a US-based provider of online trading services, headquartered in Bedminster, New Jersey. The company provides market access and trade execution services in foreign exchange, contracts for difference (CFDs) and exchange-based products to retail and institutional investors. Trading is provided via one of two electronic trading platforms, its own proprietary FOREXTrader PRO, or MetaTrader 4. GAIN Capital allows retail and institutional clients to speculate on global foreign exchange markets in what is known as ‘margin forex trading’.
MRC Markets is an Austrian financial brokerage firm offering on-line trading in Forex and contracts for difference. It has membership of the Vienna Stock exchange and licensed in Russia and Lithuania. It has offices in Russia, the UK and India.
Mirror trading is a trading selection methodology that can be carried out in both the foreign exchange and the stock markets; however, this is much more common in trading in the foreign exchange market.
CitiFX Pro was Citigroup's online foreign exchange market trading platform for retail and small institutional traders including commodity trading advisors, broker-dealers, money managers, and hedge funds. CitiFX Pro discontinued offering services to clients in June 2015 and sold all U.S. accounts to FXCM, and international accounts to Saxo Bank.
The Wall Street Journal Dollar Index is an index of the value of the U.S. dollar relative to 16 foreign currencies.
In foreign exchange market, synthetic currency pair or synthetic cross currency pair is an artificial currency pair which generally is not available in market but one needs to trade across those pairs. One highly traded currency, usually United States dollar, which trades with the target currencies, is taken as intermediary currency and offsetting positions are taken on target currencies. The use of synthetic cross currency pairs has become less common with wide availability of most common currency pairs in the market.
Forex Club is a group of companies based in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines participating in the retail market of Contract for difference, Foreign Exchange Trading. The company uses the Libertex web and mobile trading platform in addition to MT4 and its structure includes financial and educational companies.
