In the equities market, fundamental analysis looks to measure a company's true value and to base investments upon this type of calculation. To some extent, the same is done in the retail forex market, where forex fundamental traders evaluate currencies, and their countries, like companies and use economic announcements to gain an idea of the currency's true value. All of the news reports, economic data and political events that come out about a country are similar to news that comes out about a stock in that it is used by investors to gain an idea of value.

This value changes over time due to many factors, including economic growth and financial strength. Fundamental traders look at all of this information to evaluate a country's currency. Given that there are practically unlimited forex fundamentals trading strategies based on fundamental data, one could write a book on this subject. To give you a better idea of a tangible trading opportunity, let's go over one of the most well-known situations, the forex carry trade.

To read some frequently asked questions about currency trading, see Common Questions About Currency Trading.

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A Breakdown of the Forex Carry Trade The currency carry trade is a strategy in which a trader sells a currency that is offering lower interest rates and purchases a currency that offers a higher interest rate. In other words, you borrow at a low rate, and then lend at a higher rate. The trader using the strategy captures the difference between the two rates. When highly leveraging the trade, even a small difference between two rates can make the trade highly profitable.

Along with capturing the rate difference, investors also will often see the value of the higher currency rise as money flows into the higher-yielding currency, which bids up its value.

Real-life examples of a yen carry trade can be found starting in , when Japan decreased its interest rates to almost zero.

Investors would capitalize upon these lower interest rates and borrow a large sum of Japanese yen. The borrowed yen is then converted into U. Treasury bonds with yields and coupons at around 4.

Since the Japanese interest rate was essentially zero, the investor would be paying next to nothing to borrow the Japanese yen and earn almost all the yield on his or her U. But with leverage, you can greatly increase the return.

However this strategy only works if the currency pair's value remains unchanged or appreciates. Therefore, most forex carry traders look not only to earn the interest rate differential, but also capital appreciation. While we've greatly simplified this transaction, the key thing to remember here is that a small difference in interest rates can result in huge gains when leverage is applied.

Most currency brokers require a minimum margin to earn interest for carry trades. However, this transaction is complicated by changes to the exchange rate between the two countries.

If the lower-yielding currency appreciates against the higher-yielding currency, the gain earned between the two yields could be eliminated. The major reason that this can happen is that the risks of the higher-yielding currency are too much for investors, so they choose to invest in the lower-yielding, safer currency.

Because carry trades are longer term in nature, they are susceptible to a variety of changes over time, such as rising rates in the lower-yielding currency, which attracts more investors and can lead to currency appreciation, diminishing the returns of the carry trade.

This makes the future direction of the currency pair just as important as the interest rate differential itself. To clarify this further, imagine that the interest rate in the U. Assuming no currency changes, the 25, rubles grows to 27, and, if converted back to U.

However, imagine that there was another crisis in Russia , such as the one that was seen in when the Russian government defaulted on its debt and there was large currency devaluation in Russia as market participants sold off their Russian currency positions. Another good example of forex fundamental analysis is based on commodity prices. To read more about this, see Commodity Prices And Currency Movements. You should now have an idea of some of the basic economic and fundamental ideas that underlie the forex and impact the movement of currencies.

The most important thing that should be taken away from this section is that currencies and countries, like companies, are constantly changing in value based on fundamental factors such as economic growth and interest rates. You should also, based on the economic theories mentioned above, have an idea how certain economic factors impact a country's currency.

We will now move on to technical analysis , the other school of analysis that can be used to pick trades in the forex market. Dictionary Term Of The Day. A measure of what it costs an investment company to operate a mutual fund. Latest Videos PeerStreet Offers New Way to Bet on Housing New to Buying Bitcoin?

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Reading a Forex Quote and Understanding the Jargon Forex Tutorial: Foreign Exchange Risk and Benefits Forex Tutorial: Forex History and Market Participants Forex Tutorial: We go over some of the things you need to understand before you can trade currencies. The forex market has a lot of unique attributes that may come as a surprise for new traders. Every currency has specific features that affect its underlying value and price movements in the forex market.

This strategy can provide returns even if the currency pair doesn't move a cent.

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Knowing the factors and indicators to watch will help you keep pace in the competitive and fast-moving world of forex. With a long list of risks, losses associated with foreign exchange trading may be greater than initially expected.

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