For the near future, most certainly. One cannot, of course, foretell the future, but with as much money as is being made daily in Forex trading, it is doubtful that most people who are taking part would want to quit. When you add in the fact that many organizations simply cannot drop out of the market since they have so many assets tied up in it, you have a market that doesn’t show any sign of weakening. The only way the Forex market will die any time soon is if one or more of the current major trading countries has a huge economic downfall.

With so much money involved in the Forex Market, one can certainly understand that worry. The Forex Market, however, is not like the stock market. In the stock market, people purchased ownership of companies. If the companies suddenly stopped doing well, then the market collapsed. In Forex trading, however, people are investing in the hope of foreign economies remaining stable. The likelihood that an economy would collapse to such a state as to render their money worthless in a short enough time to cause real financial harm is next to impossible. An organization may lose some money in the market should a currency devalue, but it will never be enough to cause financial ruin.

There are a few factors, yes. The main one is in the way currencies are purchased. In order to make their own profit, the people who perform the actual trades charge a certain amount extra beyond just the exchange rate. The more money you can trade at once, the smaller that difference is, until you get to the top tier of trading where the difference is literally thousandths and hundred thousandths of cents. Most organizations and most individuals can’t trade that much money at once, so the differences that they are charged are much more, which in turn makes the draw of Forex trading less lucrative.

Basically, only large financial organizations. This boils down to multi-national banks and companies. There are some allowances for individuals to trade, but this must be done through a broker (and often leaves people open to fraud). There are a few reasons for this. First, the amount of money that is needed to make a viable profit is generally more than a single individual can invest. Secondly, the way most trades are set up tend to make most of the money “on paper”, which means that while there is profit, it’s not usually profit you can take and directly put into your pocket. These two things alone make the Forex Market fairly unappealing to individuals.

The market started in 1971. Prior to that, there was an agreement between most economic powers of the time that prevented speculation in the currency market. The agreement was created in 1945 with the intent of stabilizing international currencies. Most currency was set against the US Dollar, which was set at thirty-five dollars per ounce of gold. Prior to that, the Gold Standard was used, which kept kings and dictators from arbitrarily lowering or raising the price of gold in order to trigger inflation. It was considered a good way to keep economies stable and it worked for a while.