Trade Forex Following Triennial Central Bank Survey of Forex Market

LONDON, April 30, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

Those choosing to trade forex with City Index will be interested to know that the Bank of International Settlement (BIS) - considered the central bankers' bank - recently published its quarterly review of the forex market.

As part of any comprehensive trading plan; investors look to both technical and fundamental forms of analysis to ensure that they place logical positions on their chosen market, such as foreign exchange.

Below, we look at what the BIS' review told us about the state of the forex market and how you can use fundamental analysis as part of a trading strategy to place trades whilst also limiting your risk.

Central Bank Survey 2012 (BIS)

The review, released by the Bank of International Settlement (BIS) in March 2012, focuses on the volume of the forex market during the financial crisis, up until now.

Using information from surveys conducted by global forex committees - as well as settlement data from CLS Bank - BIS analysed how global forex market activity had been affected by the recent financial crisis.

Whilst the review reflected that the forex market volume had "fallen considerably into early 2012"; the global currency market continued to grow more than 20 per cent over the past three years.

The Basel-based BIS estimate that overall global forex trading peaked in October 2011 at approximately $4.7 trillion per day - a $700 billion improvement from BIS' last triennial forex survery in April 2010.

The next survey is scheduled for April 2013, with preliminary results being published around August 2013.

Fundamental Analysis

Unlike Technical Analysis - which looks at price action and trends - Fundamental Analysis looks at economic and environmental data, including financial news, to assess the future price movement of an asset.

Fundamental analysts utilise all areas of available data to help them gauge the strength of the forex market, for example; fundamental analysts pay particular attention to the release of key economic data and reports such as unemployment, GDP data, interest rate announcements and in this example, triennial Central Bank reviews of the forex market.

Investors can use this data to help them determine the future direction of a country's currency against another.

For instance, positive figures indicate a strengthening economy and would therefore imply that the country's currency is likely to appreciate, while negative data would indicate growing pressure on stocks and currencies; pulling prices downwards.

Trade Forex with City Index

Through forex trading provider City Index, investors can benefit from flexible leverage scaled from 20:1 to 400:1 on over 37 spot forex markets.

As a leveraged product, forex trading can result in losses greater than your initial deposit making it imperative that investors fully understand the risks involved.

About City Index:

Today more and more individual traders are discovering the benefits of derivatives, and many of them are discovering them through a City Index trading platform.

As a group, we transact in excess of 1.5 million trades every month in over 50 countries worldwide. We provide access to a wide range of instruments including margined foreign exchange, CFD trading and, in the UK, financial spread betting with City Index.