The foreign exchange market, or Forex, exists wherever one country’s currency is traded for another. It comprises four variables: Currencies, exchange rates, time and interest rate. The way these components interrelate provides small investors with a return on their investment that they don’t generally find in the more traditional trading venues. It is, by far, the largest market in the world, in terms of cash value traded. The Forex includes trading among large banks, central banks, currency speculators, multinational corporations, governments, and other financial markets and institutions.

Released with our new eSignal 8.0 version, individual contributors (such as GAIN, FXCM, and so forth) can be separated out and compared against the composite symbols. The contributor codes used on these symbols can be found in our KnowledgeBase website, which also includes a downloadable sample of our Forex contributors' Quote window.

Important note: Because a variety of banks, institutions and corporations comprise the Forex marketplace, they are the ones that decide which currency cross rates to report and during what hours. While Forex is a 24-hour, 6-days-a-week market, many contributors do not participate.

Our Forex data primarily comes from GTIS (now by contributor), an affiliate of FT Interactive Data and a sister company to eSignal. GTIS is the principal supplier, for more than 20 years, of foreign exchange information used by traders, corporations and financial institutions. What you'll get when you subscribe to eSignal's Forex service is listed here: