What Is the Forex Market?
A plain-English introduction to the foreign exchange market: what it is, who trades it, when it is open, and why prices move.
Read the explainer →Library
All articles
27 explainers, organised by topic. Start with The Basics if you're new.
The Basics
See all 8 →How Currency Pairs Work
Currencies are always traded in pairs. Here is how to read a quote: base and quote currency, bid, ask, the spread, and what going long or short really means.
Read the explainer →What Are Pips and Lots?
A pip is how a price moves; a lot is how much you trade. Together they decide how much money is on the line. Here is how both work, with examples.
Read the explainer →How to Read a Forex Chart
Line charts, candlestick charts, the anatomy of a single candle, and timeframes: how to actually read what a price chart is telling you, and what it can't.
Read the explainer →What Moves Exchange Rates?
Interest rates, inflation, economic data, and risk sentiment: the real forces behind currency moves, and why markets react to expectations rather than facts.
Read the explainer →Trading Costs Explained
Spreads, swaps, commissions, slippage, and last-look execution: the costs that sit between you and your trade, with worked examples and the math of what they add up to.
Read the explainer →Forex Order Types Explained
Market, limit, stop, stop-loss, take-profit, trailing, OCO: what each order type does, what it guarantees, and the things stops can quietly fail to protect against.
Read the explainer →What Are Forex Signals (and Why This Site Doesn't Sell Them)
What forex signals actually are, how the signal-seller business model really works, the regulator-disclosed loss-rate data, and why a high win rate can lose money. The honest take.
Read the explainer →Currency Pairs
See all 3 →EUR/USD: The Fibre
The world's most-traded currency pair: what drives it, why it dominates DXY, the sessions and liquidity, ECB-Fed rate differentials, and how the euro side of the quote actually works.
Read the explainer →GBP/USD: Cable
The original transatlantic pair: where the 'Cable' name comes from, why GBP/USD is structurally more volatile than EUR/USD, BoE-Fed dynamics, UK-specific risk, and the practical pair pattern.
Read the explainer →USD/JPY and the Bank of Japan
Why USD/JPY tracks US real yields more closely than any other pair, the BOJ's decades-long policy regime, the yen as carry funding currency, MOF intervention history, and how to read the pair.
Read the explainer →Market Analysis
See all 3 →The Dollar Index (DXY): The Driver Behind Every USD Pair
What DXY actually measures, the six currencies in the basket, why it sets the macro tone for every dollar-quoted pair, and the difference between DXY and a trade-weighted dollar.
Read the explainer →Fundamental vs Technical Analysis
What each kind of analysis actually does, what the academic evidence says about each in FX, and why almost every professional uses both rather than picking a side.
Read the explainer →What Are ICT Methods? An Honest Assessment
Inner Circle Trader (ICT) methodology, what it actually teaches, which concepts overlap with established market microstructure, and what an evidence-based reader should and shouldn't take from it.
Read the explainer →Risk & Money Management
See all 3 →Leverage and Margin Explained
Leverage lets you control a large position with a small deposit. Here is how margin works, why leverage cuts both ways, and how accounts get wiped out.
Read the explainer →Risk Management Basics
Position sizing, fixed-percent risk, R-multiples, expectancy, and the brutal math of drawdown: the framework that decides whether a strategy survives long enough to be tested.
Read the explainer →Currency Correlation and Hidden Risk
Why two 'different' pairs can be the same bet, the standard FX correlation patterns, the DXY factor that drives most of them, and what crisis-regime correlation breakdown does to retail accounts.
Read the explainer →Strategy
See all 4 →Why Most Retail Trading Systems Fail
Survivorship bias, selection bias, transaction-cost neglect, regime change, and the regulator-disclosed loss rates: the structural reasons most retail systems do not survive a real market.
Read the explainer →Trend Following: The Long-Run Evidence
The academic record on currency trend strategies, why the effect is real but smaller than the marketing suggests, the drawdown cost of capturing it, and what it means for retail.
Read the explainer →Carry Trades and Tail Risk
The long-run carry premium in currencies, the negative skewness that comes with it, the academic evidence on currency crashes, and the August 2024 yen unwind as the canonical recent case study.
Read the explainer →Scalping vs Day Trading vs Swing Trading
The three time-horizon styles compared honestly: what each requires, the friction arithmetic that makes higher frequency structurally harder, and who each style actually suits.
Read the explainer →Glossary
See all 6 →Spread
The gap between the bid and the ask. The first cost of any forex trade, paid the moment a position is opened, with worked examples and the conditions that make it widen.
Read the explainer →Swap / Rollover
The overnight interest charge or credit on a forex position. What it is, how it is calculated, why Wednesdays are triple-swap nights, and why 'swap-free' accounts are rarely free.
Read the explainer →Slippage
The gap between the price you intended to trade at and the price you actually got. Why it is rarely zero, why it is rarely in your favour, and where it shows up most.
Read the explainer →Drawdown
The peak-to-trough decline of an account's equity. Why the recovery math is asymmetric, why it gets non-linear fast past 30%, and what the curve implies for position sizing.
Read the explainer →R-Multiple
The risk-normalised unit for measuring trade outcomes. Why expressing wins and losses as multiples of risk makes strategies comparable across account sizes, position sizes, and time.
Read the explainer →Expectancy
The average R-multiple per trade, the single most important number to evaluate a strategy on, and the metric the trading-marketing layer prefers not to lead with.
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