The foreign exchange market is the largest globally, with an average of $5.3 trillion traded per day. The history of this industry dates back to ancient times when people used bartering for goods and services as a form of trade. Nowadays, it has become more complex, with brokers being involved in helping make transactions easier and safer.
Foreign Exchange Brokers are financial institutions specializing in trading currencies at the wholesale level for businesses or individuals who want to trade in larger quantities than what would be possible over-the-counter. This blog post will explore how Foreign Exchange Brokers came about, their history, and how they have evolved through time.
-The financial institution that was one of the first Foreign Exchange Brokers, WM. Ridding and Co. was established in 1869. They were involved with purchasing stocks on behalf of customers and then selling them when prices rose to profit their clients.
The company had other foreign currencies, such as the Japanese Yen, under consideration, but they didn’t start dealing in these until 1914 because, at this time, it wasn’t popular enough to sell in. Then, in 1922, another company called House of Morgan started trading in dollars against French francs.
-In 1971, an American brokerage firm known as Spear Leeds & Kellogg became the first to provide online access through its New York office from terminals located at 60 Wall Street – allowing many people to trade at the same time. In 1974, it was reported that more than $100 million worth of foreign currency transactions were completed by Spear Leeds & Kellogg alone in a single day – this would be equal to around $600 million today!
-The first-ever computerized forex trading took place on September 27th, 1986, when Reuters developed and bought software from COURIER Corporation for their use. The program allowed them to make trades through the then Number One Forex Exchange Tokyo Commodity Exchange (TOCOM).
-In 1989, NYSE Euronext started offering exotics such as Canadian Dollars against Euros or British Pounds against Yen which became very popular with traders because they enjoyed diversifying their portfolios.
-It wasn’t until the early 1990s, when brokers started appearing on TV, that people realized exotics were a way to diversify their investment portfolios and make more money – nowadays, with forex being so accessible from different platforms such as apps or websites, it’s even easier for anyone to profit from currency investing.
-In 2005, Deutsche Börse Group bought NYSE Euronext to create one of the largest Foreign Exchange trading venues, which was then called Eurex. They reinstated exotics trades like Canadian Dollars against Euros, but they also added other exotics, including Mexican Pesos against British Pounds. The result created an impressive portfolio of currencies for traders who invest in Forex Markets, and this has allowed exotics to become more popular.
-In 2017, the top two forex brokers in terms of revenue were exness and FXCM, which amounted to $883 million and $702 million respectively – this is predicted to be a relatively split market with exness leading slightly due to its company size being nearly four times that of FXCM.
