06/04/2025
MAJOR PLAYERS IN THE FOREX MARKETS
THE BIG BANKS.
Because the forex market is decentralized, the big banks are the ones that determine the exchange rate. Those are banks like Citi, JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, etc. As we learned, all rates are public to other Big Banks which creates huge competition. But since this market is not as regulated, not everything works smooth here and cartels can be built between traders from the Banks. Based on a Reuters report by Foo Yun Chee and Kirstin Ridley, the European Union fined several Big Banks a combined 1.07 billion Euros for rigging the multi-trillion dollar foreign exchange in 2019.
LARGE COMMERCIAL COMPANIES :- Companies, especially international companies take part in the foreign exchange. Since they’re doing business globally, they need to exchange their local currency into another currency when for example buying products for their production. Since the amounts are normally not huge, by Big Banks standard, the companies mostly deal with commercial banks to do their transactions.
GOVERNMENTS AND CENTRAL BANKS:- Both parties are also regularly involved in the forex market. Operational transactions like the international trade payments as well as handling the foreign exchange reserves need to be done on the foreign exchange. Central Banks additionally influence the exchange rates through the interest rates decisions or through direct intervention based on wanting to change the pricing of their currency.
SPECULATORS :- Speculation in the forex market involves the buying and selling of currencies with the view of making a profit from price fluctuations. In general, the large speculator category represents fund traders and professional traders who carry large positions, but they also can come in all shapes and sizes. Some have bigger pockets than others. The CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) requires large speculators and commercial traders, or hedgers, to report their net positions.This is something that can be very interesting to look at. Who doesn’t want to know if the majority of the big boys/girls are currently long or short on a specific currency pair? The positions will be published on „The Commitments of Traders (COT) reports“. We will check this out once we’ve more advanced into the course.