Forex trading is quite rapidly becoming the most lucrative business across the globe; Forex (foreign currency exchange) market is in fact the largest trading market in the world today.
This is a multi-trillion dollar industry; the recent unhindered growth in the forex industry clearly shows that it is unaffected by the ongoing global credit crisis. Average daily turnover in standard foreign exchange market transactions totaled a record $3.2 trillion in April 2007. Overall turnover, including non-standard foreign exchange derivatives and products traded on exchanges, averaged nearly $3.6 trillion a day.
It is a bit complicated to measure the top operatives in this industry. The forex market has different levels of access; the inter-bank market consisting of huge investment banks is at the top. The top 5 global foreign exchange banks by turnover as ranked by euro money in 2008 are: Deutsche Bank with a market share of 21.70%; UBS with market share 15.80%; Barclays Capital (9.12%); Citi (7.49%) and RBS (7.30%). The level of access is in fact based on the amount an entity is able to exchange in the market. After investment banks comes large multi-national corporations. These are important market share holders and usually exchange foreign currency for goods or services. Although the traded amount is small in comparison with the amount traded by large investment banks, but still exchanges by the multinational companies manage to have short term impact in the forex market. We have other entities in forex market like central banks, hedge funds, investment management funds and brokers.
The financial institutes and other companies working in this field (more commonly known as foreign exchange brokers) offer currency trade and payments services to private individuals and companies worldwide. It is not easy to measure their success, but few factors could be used in evaluating these forex companies; these factors are reputation, customer service and support, user friendliness of the trading platform, execution and pip spreads etc.
The development of online trading platforms has turned the individual customers segment of the forex business more competitive and has enabled the evolution of non-bank service providers.
One thing is quite evident now; this high-paced market is swiftly evolving to ride on the bandwagon of technology. The best forex trading companies [http://fxtradershub.com/Best-Forex-Trading-Company.html] in the trade are emerging who have taken forex trading online; thus providing faster and more satisfactory services. Few top ranked forex website include Oanda.com, Easy-forex.com and forex.com. These websites provide foreign currency exchange services to traders and online businesses; also provide forex charts, analysis, forecasts, news, exchange rates and forex tutorials.