Forex participants

Forex participants according to the BIS study Triennial Central Bank Survey 2004

53% of the transactions were interbank or interdealer strictly

33% of the transactions dealt with a fund manager or an kind of financial institution not associated with banks and a dealer (like bank for instance).

14% were held between non financial organizations and dealers.

Commercial banks take the majority of currency deals. Accumulating the markets exchange conversion cumulative needs due to clients' operations as well as means accommodation or attraction and their movement to other banks are the main bank activities. Banks can carry out their independent deals for their own purpose aside from customers. Large international banks such as Deutsche Bank, Barclays Bank, Union Bank of Switzerland, Citibank, Chase Manhattan Bank, Standard Chartered Bank affect the exchange markets in the world considerably by the daily operations at the amount of billions dollars. Such dramatic volumes can have an influence on the currency price or the quotation. Such large players usually contain the groups of bulls and bears.

The interbank market deals with the commercial turnover majority as well as speculative trading considerable amounts carried out daily. Billions of dollars is possible turnover for a large bank. Besides the customers' transactions, the majority of the operations are made for the bank's own account and by proprietary desks.

The exchange brokers from abroad led the major part of their business by creating low-paid anonymous counterparts and facilitating interbank transactions some time ago. Recently the majority of this business got down to using such electronic systems as EBS, Reuters Dealing 3000 Matching (D2), the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Bloomberg and TradeBook(R). The traders are still listening in on ongoing interbank trading through the brokers squawk box but the trading amount got much smaller lately.

"Bulls" is the name for the participants of the Forex market who try to make the currency price higher.

Bears are supposed to be concerned with the currency price reduction in the Forex market. The common market process is a balance between bulls and bears market and in case of a currency price change it is mostly not very significant. Though when either bulls or bears take the lead the exchange prices may change dramatically.

Commercial companies are one of the key financial players as far as they are interested in foreign exchange in order to pay for goods produced or services provided. These companies usually deal with small trading amount comparable with the banks or speculators but can have a brief effect on the market rates. Still, the streams of foreign trade are the important factors affecting the permanent currency rates. The exposures of some multinational companies happened due to covering very large positions can have a strong effect of the market in case the players are not aware of these processes.

Investment Management Firms. They usually deal with considerable accounts being the assets of such customers as pension funds and endowments. are quite important players for the exchange market as far as they use it to make the transactions of their foreign securities easier. For instance in order to pay for and redeem foreign equities purchases and sales the manager of an investment company having an international equity portfolio will have to deal with the certain market that will force him to sell or buy foreign currencies. The purpose of such transactions is profit increase and they are not considered as speculative, being secondary for the investment decisions. There are special Currency Overlay units included in the investment management firms that try to make profit of customers' assets with a minimum risk using currency operations. These transactions may have an affection on large trades as far as the number of the dedicated currency managers in not high whether amount of their AUM (assets under management) is considerable.

Companies with foreign investments: These companies use Forex market for their foreign trading operations. The companies being the participants of international Forex market such as regarding importers have a stable foreign currency demand whether the exporters have large amounts of the currency on offer. Both these kinds of the companies have short-term deposits to hold their currency. That's why these companies don't use the Forex market directly due to using commercial banks for conversion and depositary operations.

The companies carrying out foreign investments of assets, such as Investment Funds, International Corporations, Money Market Funds. These kinds of companies contain a number of international investment funds that are following the policy of their investments diversification by placing the assets in various governmental and company securities. Georges Soros's "Quantum", and " Dean Witter" fund are well-known funds of this kind. Xerox, Nestle, General Motors, British Petroleum and others are the kind of companies that deal with the international industrial investments for purposes of joint ventures, creating branches and others.

Hedge Funds: These funds, known due to George Soros's Quantum fund, have raised their importance during the 1990s currency speculation in an aggressive form. Billions of dollars at the disposal of these funds along with the billions that can be borrowed make Hedge Funds the possible better support for the currencies of the countries welcoming Hedge Funds than central banks are.

The reputation of the Hedge Funds has raised due to their recent aggressive currency speculations. As far as the amounts of money in such funds are increasing they are very attractive for foreign exchange markets. These markets can speculate with tens billions of dollars due to their leverage so consolidation of the players known as the "herd instinct" of these funds can be very unpleasant. Though, these funds are not thought to be successful without the strategy that sounds. It is also thought that the actual functioning of these funds is instable financial weakness using and uncovering for the purpose of returning the normal values to realignment.

Speculation: Currency speculators and the influence they cause to the currencies depreciations are widely and regularly disputed. Thought the speculators are considered to carry out such important functions as supporting hedgers for the market and entrusting the risks with suitable people from the point of view of some economists like Milton Friedman. Others (for instance Joseph Stiglitz) consider this not an economical approach, but mostly a political or dedicated to the free market one.

The key speculators provided by professionals are the well-capitalized "position traders" as well as the major hedge funds.

Many countries are quite suspicious to such operations as currency speculations. From this point of view, the traditional forms of investment including stocks and bonds bring more effective economic rise by supplying the capital unlike currency speculations. This is considered just as gambling that often doesn't go along with the economic policy. The currency speculations obliged the Central Bank of Sweden make a short-term rise of the interest rates up to the value of 150% a year that has been followed by krona devaluation. One of the most determined advocates of this point of view, Mahathir Mohamad who used to be the Prime Minister of Malaysia, called George Soros and other speculators the main culprits of the Malaysian ringgit devaluation in 1997.

The follower of the opposite opinion, Gregory Millman, argues that speculators make the international agreements to be "enforced" as well as forecast the consequences of the main economic "law" for the purpose of making profit being compared to "vigilantes".

Simply speaking, the speculators of the forex market just accelerate the economical process bringing the economy to an unavoidable collapse in case the instable financial masses occur or the economy is carried out badly. A soon collapse is supposed to be better way out than a prolonged depression. Thus, it is supposed that in order to distract the public attention from putting the economy into decline Mahathir Mohamad along with the other critics blame the speculators.