Market participants in foreign exchange market

Question

Who are market participants within the foreign exchange market?

Answer 1

Market participants which include FX market are categorized in the five groups:  international banks, non-bank dealers, bank customers, central banks, and FX brokers.  

International banks offer core of the FX market.  Around 700 banks globally make the market in the foreign exchange, which means that they are willing for buying or selling foreign currency for their own account.  Such international banks serve their retail clients, bank customers, in accomplishing the foreign commerce or making the international investment in the financial assets which needs foreign exchange. Non-bank dealers are huge non-bank financial institutions, like investment banks, whose frequency and size of the trades make it cost- effective in order to creating their own dealing rooms for trading directly within the interbank market for their foreign exchange needs.

Most of the interbank trades are arbitrage or speculative transactions in which market participants try to correctly monitor the future direction of price movements in one currency against the other or attempt to gain from the temporary price discrepancies in currencies between the competing dealers.

FX brokers match dealer orders in the order to sell and buy currencies for a fee; however don’t take any position themselves.  Interbank traders utilize a broker mainly to disseminate as rapidly as possible a currency quote to several other dealers.

Central banks rarely interfere within the foreign exchange market in order to influence its currency price against that of the major trading partner, or country which it “fixes” or “pegs” its currency against.  Intervention is the procedure of using the foreign currency reserves to purchase one’s own currency to decrease its supply and consequently increase its value within the foreign exchange market, or otherwise, selling one’s own currency for the foreign currency to increase its supply and to lower its price.