The Forex Market:

The Foreign Exchange (forex) market is the world’s largest financial market with volumes exceeding $2 trillion each day.

The forex market sets the exchange rate between the world’s currencies. It’s open from Sunday night through Friday night, 24 hours a day.

Exchange Rates:

The foreign exchange rate (FX rate) between two currencies tells you how much one currency is worth in terms of the other.

For example an exchange rate of 0.82 Euro (Euro, €) to the United States dollar (USD, $) means that 0.82 Euro is worth the same as USD

Or, doing the reverse, at the same exchange rate as the previsous example, 1 Euro (Euro, €) is worth the same as USD 1.20

Exchanging Money:

Just like the stock exchange, money is made or lost on the foreign exchange market by investors and speculators buying and selling at the right times.

Billions of dollars are traded on daily, and some people get better rates than others.

Major banks have experts and systems for exchanging currency and can probably get average or better than average rates.

But due to the highly fluid nature of the market, it is easy for there to be quick changes that could have an effect if you are exchanging a large sum of money.

In these instances, it probably pays to have a specialist.

However, if you are only exchanging a few hundred dollars, or even a few thousand dollars the difference may be measured in a few dollars.

What does this mean to the regular Joe looking to exchange some money or do a simple overseas money transfer?

Well, it could mean a lot or a little, a few pennies, a few dollars or thousands of dollars depending on how much money you are exchanging and the current rates.

If you are going to do a money transfer and want to make sure that the transfer company isn't totally ripping you off and making extra money on the exchange rate, you can ask them what their exchange rate is, and compare it to any number of online rate exchange calculators.

Companies like Western Union don't publish their rates online, so you will have to call them and ask. But, their rates are slightly worse to the transferrer than the general market is. However, it is hard to figure out exactly how much money you are losing by accepting their fees.

Here are some online currency rate exchange calculators. Keep in mind that currency rates fluctuate frequently these rates may be updated several times per day.

http://www.exchangerate.com/ "The Currency Authority™ "

http://www.hifx.co.uk/currency/converter.asp

http://money.cnn.com/data/currencies/

Universal Currency Converter:

http://xe.com/ucc/ http://www.x-rates.com/calculator.html

http://www.x-rates.com/cgicalc.html

http://finance.yahoo.com/currency

http://www.forex.com/

http://www.bankofamerica.com/foreigncurrency/

https://www.wellsfargo.com/com/ceo/fxo/fxo

CitiBank Exchange Rates:
CitiBank 24-hour Exchange Rate Hotline: 1-800-756-7050, option #1.
Toll-free International Line: 1-210-677-0065
Text Telephone (TTY): 1-800-788-0002
http://www.oanda.com/ http://www.oanda.com/converter/classic