FXCM Research Team

Spread betting is a speculative strategy in which participants make bets on the price movements of a security. At its most basic level, this kind of speculation involves placing wagers on the bid and ask prices provided by a spread-betting company. Because spread betting does not involve buying or selling the underlying asset, it is a type of financial derivatives trading. Participants are able to target a vast array of…

Modern investors have a variety of choices for acquiring securities and are accustomed to making trades swiftly with transparent pricing. Trading of well-known securities often takes place on formal exchanges, which are large institutions that follow a series of rules for helping to assure an active market, liquidity of assets traded and robust supply and demand. Trading, however, can also take place on the alternative "over-the-counter" market, or OTC. It's…

An ETF (exchange-traded fund) is an equity security that provides exposure to an index, a basket of assets, a commodity or an investment strategy.

The Paris Stock Exchange, historically known as the Paris Bourse or the Bourse de Paris, is the largest exchange in France.

The S&P/TSX Composite Index is the headline index for the Canadian equity market based on data from the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX).

The Swedish krona is the monetary unit of many countries, including Denmark, Norway and Sweden is symbolized by kr and has a currency code of SEK

One of the most popular ways in which an individual can participate in the financial markets is through the purchase of "stock." A stock is an equity investment in a corporation which entitles the owner to a portion of that corporation's earnings and assets. Stocks are denominated in "shares," with each share representing a small portion of ownership in a company. When one purchases a share of a specific company's…

Day traders come in all shapes and sizes, with the aspiration of profit often being the only common ground among them.

Companies generally pay dividends as a share of their profits each quarter, annually, or at a moment determined by the company's board of directors.

The foreign exchange market, known as forex (FX), is an over-the-counter market where international currencies are bought and sold. With a daily traded volume near US$5 trillion, forex is the largest marketplace in the world. Forex participants are as diverse as the currencies they trade. Commercial banks, multinational corporations, central banking authorities and individual investors are active players in the market. Whether a country's central bank is actively managing inflationary…

The economic similarities between the United States of America and Japan are numerous and substantial in nature.