icon icon Home
icon icon Accounts
icon icon Quick start
icon icon Symbols

Forex

Currency Intervention: How and Why Central Banks Step Into the FX Market

  • Currency Intervention: How and Why Central Banks Step Into the FX Market

    26 August 2026 , Walter Writes

    Currency intervention is when a central bank or monetary authority buys or sells its own currency in the foreign exchange market to influence the exchange rate. The usual aims are to calm disorderly volatility, correct a rate that has drifted far from fundamentals, or defend a peg or band. Sometimes the trade is real, and […]

  • Read more
Last Look in Forex: Why Trades Get Rejected, Asymmetric Slippage, and the FX Global Code

  • Last Look in Forex: Why Trades Get Rejected, Asymmetric Slippage, and the FX Global Code

    25 August 2026 , Abe Cofnas

    Last look is a practice in foreign exchange where a liquidity provider that streamed you a price gets a brief final window, measured in milliseconds, to accept or reject your trade request at that price after you have asked to trade on it. You clicked a price you could see. The provider then checks whether […]

  • Read more

  • The Monetary Trilemma (Impossible Trinity): Why a Country Can Only Pick Two of Three

    24 August 2026 , Walter Writes

    The impossible trinity, also called the monetary trilemma, is the principle that a country can have only two of three things at the same time: a fixed exchange rate, free movement of capital, and an independent monetary policy. Choosing any two forces it to give up the third. No amount of reserves, skill or political […]

  • Read more
Forex Settlement: Value Dates, T+2, CLS, and Why Retail Traders Roll Over Instead of Settling

  • Forex Settlement: Value Dates, T+2, CLS, and Why Retail Traders Roll Over Instead of Settling

    23 August 2026 , Abe Cofnas

    Forex settlement is the process that actually completes a trade: the exchange of the two currencies between buyer and seller. It does not happen when you click trade. It happens on the value date, which for spot forex is normally two business days later, and understanding that gap explains several things retail traders otherwise experience […]

  • Read more
Market Microstructure: How Order Books, Spreads, and Order Flow Shape Every Fill

  • Market Microstructure: How Order Books, Spreads, and Order Flow Shape Every Fill

    17 August 2026 , Abe Cofnas

    Market microstructure is the study of how trades actually happen and how prices form beneath the chart: the order book, the bid-ask spread, liquidity, order flow, the market makers who quote, and the mechanics of execution. Where conventional analysis asks whether supply exceeds demand, microstructure asks the narrower and more useful question of how a […]

  • Read more
The Economic Surprise Index (Citi CESI): How It Works, Why It Mean-Reverts, and What It Means for FX

  • The Economic Surprise Index (Citi CESI): How It Works, Why It Mean-Reverts, and What It Means for FX

    16 August 2026 , Abe Cofnas

    The Economic Surprise Index measures how economic data is arriving relative to consensus forecasts. A reading above zero means releases have on balance been beating expectations; a reading below zero means they have been missing. The best-known version is the Citigroup Economic Surprise Index, usually shortened to CESI, and it was built specifically for currency […]

  • Read more
Floating Spread vs Fixed Spread: How Each Model Prices Your Trades and Which One Costs Less

  • Floating Spread vs Fixed Spread: How Each Model Prices Your Trades and Which One Costs Less

    15 August 2026 , Abe Cofnas

    A floating spread, also called a variable spread, is a bid-ask spread that changes continuously with market liquidity and volatility. It tightens when the market is calm and deep, and widens during news releases or thin conditions. A fixed spread does the opposite: the broker quotes the same number regardless of what the market is […]

  • Read more
Forex Fixing and the London 4pm Fix: Benchmark Rates, Volatility, and How to Trade the Fix

  • Forex Fixing and the London 4pm Fix: Benchmark Rates, Volatility, and How to Trade the Fix

    15 August 2026 , Abe Cofnas

    A forex fixing is a benchmark exchange rate captured at a set time each day and used as a common reference: to value portfolios, to settle contracts, and to execute large orders at a rate everyone agrees on afterwards. The most important one is the London 4pm Fix, and it matters to retail traders for […]

  • Read more
Non-Deliverable Forward (NDF): How Cash-Settled Forwards Hedge Restricted Currencies

  • Non-Deliverable Forward (NDF): How Cash-Settled Forwards Hedge Restricted Currencies

    13 August 2026 , Abe Cofnas

    A non-deliverable forward, or NDF, is a cash-settled currency forward. Two parties lock in a forward rate for a currency pair, but at maturity they do not exchange the actual currencies. Instead they settle only the difference between the agreed rate and a reference rate, and they pay it in a freely traded currency, almost […]

  • Read more
Risk Reversal: The Options Strategy, the Volatility-Skew Signal, and Its Real Risks

  • Risk Reversal: The Options Strategy, the Volatility-Skew Signal, and Its Real Risks

    12 August 2026 , Abe Cofnas

    In finance, risk reversal means two related things. As an options strategy, it is selling an out-of-the-money put to finance buying an out-of-the-money call, producing a low-cost bullish position, or the reverse legs for a bearish one. As a market measure, it is the volatility skew reading, usually the 25-delta risk reversal, that compares the […]

  • Read more
Load more