The Forex trade or Foreign currency trade is the trading of one counties monies for another. The market fluctuates and those that can read the trends stand to make some money in those exchanges.

Recent trends in currency trading - Below are the graphs of the markets movement for a few of the worlds traded currencies as compared to the US dollar.

Last 6 month trends:

Japan’s Yen last 6 months

Euro last 6 months:

Israeli Shekel 6 month change

Mexican Peso 6 month forex trend

SWISS-  Swiss Franc 6 month trend

Kuwait Dinar 6 month trend

Argentina 6 month currency exchange trend

Now we’re trading one county’s money for another region’s money because You can see by the graphs above that one countries currency may not be equal to anothers. The Forex or fx trade is a market that allows people to buy and sell currencies from different countries in an almost 24 hour a day marketplace.

Fx is traded on a World clock, the trading day starts in Sydney, Australia and steps from time zone to time zone around the world until it reaches New York City, the last marketplace to open each day. And it does these five days a week. The Forex market does close on weekends.

Every county has its own currency that it trades and for the most part the ups and downs are measured against the US dollar even though there may be some other standards.

Typically, when getting exchange rates, especially in the US, those rates are measured against the US dollar. But in other countries and on some websites it may be other currencies they are measured against. Below are a few sample figures for Jan 7 2010.

As of Jan 7 2010, the currency market for that day looked like this for major currencies.
EUR/USD +0.217 %
CAD/USD +0.162 %
JPY/USD +0.112 %
AUD/USD +0.211 %
GBP/USD -0.474 %
GBP/EUR -0.689 %
JPY/EUR -0.105 %
GBP/AUD -0.683 %
JPY/AUD -0.098 %