The foreign exchange market – also known as forex or the FX market – is the world’s most traded market, with a turnover of $5.1 trillion per day.

To put this into perspective, the U.S. stock market trades around $257 billion a day; quite a large sum, but only a fraction of what forex trades.

Forex is traded 24 hours a day, 5 days a week across by banks, institutions and individual traders worldwide. Unlike other financial markets, there is no centralized marketplace for forex, currencies trade over the counter in whatever market is open at that time.