The
forex is unique among financial markets in a number of ways. One of these is that it was not traditionally used as an investment vehicle. It had, and still maintains to some extent, a somewhat more utilitarian purpose. In today’s globalized economy, most businesses have some international exposure, creating the need to exchange one currency for another in order to complete transactions. For example, Honda builds its cars in Japan and exports them to the United States, where an eager American buyer exchanges his dollars for a brand new Honda. Some of this money has to make its way back to Japan to pay the factory workers that built the car, but first those dollars have to be exchanged for Japanese yen, since that is the currency the Japanese factory workers are paid in. Transactions such as this are facilitated by international banks and are done through a mechanism known as the foreign exchange market, or forex. Since banks are used to facilitate these cross-border transactions, they naturally want to be paid for their services.