The forex, or foreign exchange market, is the biggest and most highly traded market in the entire world. It operates around the clock, five days a week and more than $5 trillion dollars are traded every single day. Most people know about the foreign exchange from the booths at airports and holiday destinations that allow you to convert one currency into another. However, forex is a great deal more exciting than that. Trading forex involves speculating on the strength and weaknesses of different currencies against each other. Forex is traded in pairs, with the figure quoted for each pair referring to how much of one currency can be purchased with one unit of another currency. For instance, if the EUR/USD exchange rate is listed as 1.15, this means that 1 euro will buy you 1 dollar and 15 cents. When this number increases, it means that the euro is growing stronger in relation to the dollar. When this number drops, it means that the dollar is growing stronger in relation to the euro. In previous decades forex trading was exclusive to the foreign exchange desks of the big banks, but the Internet revolution changed all that and made it much more accessible to people from all sorts of walks of life.