What is Forex?
Forex — short for foreign exchange — is the global marketplace for buying and selling currencies. It is the largest, most liquid financial market on earth, and the engine behind every international payment, holiday, and trade deal. This guide explains how it works, in plain language, from the ground up.
The world's largest market
Roughly $7.5 trillion changes hands across the foreign exchange market every single day — more than any stock market on the planet. Unlike a stock exchange, forex has no central building. It is decentralized, traded electronically between banks, brokers, institutions and individuals around the globe. And because the world is always awake somewhere, the market runs 24 hours a day, five days a week, from the Monday open in Asia to the Friday close in New York.
How a forex trade works
You never trade a single currency on its own — you always trade one against another, in a currency pair such as EUR/USD. The first currency is the base currency; the second is the quote currency. The price shows how much of the quote currency it takes to buy one unit of the base. When you buy EUR/USD you are, in the same breath, buying euros and selling US dollars — a bet that the euro will strengthen against the dollar.
Pips and spreads
A pip is the smallest standard unit of price movement in a pair — for most pairs, the fourth decimal place (0.0001). If EUR/USD moves from 1.0920 to 1.0925, it has moved five pips. The spread is the gap between the buy (ask) and sell (bid) price, and it is the first cost of every trade you open. On Fidorix, spreads are fixed and do not widen during news or volatility, so your cost of entry stays predictable even when markets move fast. You can see live pricing on the spreads page.
Leverage and margin
Leverage lets you control a position larger than your deposited funds. A 1:100 ratio means $100 of your own money controls a $10,000 position; Fidorix offers leverage up to 1:2000 on smaller balances. The amount of your own capital set aside to open that position is the margin. Leverage is powerful but double-edged: it magnifies profits and losses equally, and over-using it is the fastest way for new traders to get a margin call. Use it conservatively while you learn — there is no rush. Read more on the leverage page.
Swap-free by design
When you hold a position overnight on a typical broker, you pay or receive rollover interest — a swap. Fidorix is swap-free: there is no overnight interest charged on open positions, so you can hold a trade for days or weeks as your plan requires without watching swap fees quietly erode it. For swing traders especially, that removes a real and often-overlooked cost.
Going long and going short
One of the most freeing ideas in forex is that you can profit whether prices rise or fall. Going long means buying, expecting the base currency to strengthen. Going short means selling, expecting it to weaken. Because every pair is two currencies, a falling market is simply a rising market for the other side — and you can position for either.
Risk — and how to manage it
Leverage and 24-hour markets make forex exciting, but the same features can hurt an undisciplined trader. The traders who last protect their capital first: they use a stop-loss on every position, risk only a small slice of their account on any single trade, and never chase losses. If you read only one more guide, make it our beginner's risk-management playbook.
How to start — safely
The smartest first step costs nothing. Open a free demo account and trade real market conditions with virtual funds until your plan feels second nature. When you are ready for the real thing, a Fidorix Classic account opens from just $10, commission-free, with fixed spreads and swap-free holding. Walk through your very first position step by step in our 5-minute trade walkthrough.
Keep learning
This guide is your starting point. Continue through the Fidorix Academy learning paths, or look up any term in the glossary.