Foreign Exchange Prices

Foreign Exchange Prices
Foreign exchange markets and prices are mainly influenced by international trade flows and investment flows. The FX markets are also influenced, but to a lesser extent, by the same factors that influence the equity and bond markets: economic and political conditions especially interest rates, inflation, and political instability. Those factors usually have only a short-term impact, which makes Forex attractive as it offers some of the diversification necessary to protect against adverse movements in the equity and bond markets.
Foreign Exchange prices, or quotes, include a "Bid" and "Ask" similar to other financial products:Bid: Price at which Dealer is willing to Buy and Traders can Sell CurrencyAsk: Price at which Dealer will Sell and Traders can Buy Currency
The difference between the Bid and Ask is called the "Spread", which is the Trader's cost of the transaction. For more information on the Spreads offered by FX Solutions click here.
Currencies are usually quoted to four decimal places, such as the Euro/US Dollar trading at 1.2400/1.2403, with the last decimal place referred to as a point or "pip". A pip for most currencies is 0.0001 of an exchange rate; the one exception is the USD/JPY quote in which each pip is equal to 0.01.