what is forex

2009-09-28T02:37:00.001-07:00

What is Forex?

FOREX - the foreign exchange market or currency market or Forex is the market where one currency is traded for another. It is one of the largest markets in the world.

Some of the participants in this market are simply seeking to exchange a foreign currency for their own, like multinational corporations which must pay wages and other expenses in different nations than they sell products in. However, a large part of the market is made up of currency traders, who speculate on movements in exchange rates, much like others would speculate on movements of stock prices. Currency traders try to take advantage of even small fluctuations in exchange rates.

In the foreign exchange market there is little or no 'inside information'. Exchange rate fluctuations are usually caused by actual monetary flows as well as anticipations on global macroeconomic conditions. Significant news is released publicly so, at least in theory, everyone in the world receives the same news at the same time.

Currencies are traded against one another. Each pair of currencies thus constitutes an individual product and is traditionally noted XXX/YYY, where YYY is the ISO 4217 international three-letter code of the currency into which the price of one unit of XXX currency is expressed. For instance, EUR/USD is the price of the euro expressed in US dollars, as in 1 euro = 1.2045 dollar.

Unlike stocks and futures exchange, foreign exchange is indeed an interbank, over-the-counter (OTC) market which means there is no single universal exchange for specific currency pair. The foreign exchange market operates 24 hours per day throughout the week between individuals with forex brokers, brokers with banks, and banks with banks. If the European session is ended the Asian session or US session will start, so all world currencies can be continually in trade. Traders can react to news when it breaks, rather than waiting for the market to open, as is the case with most other markets.

Average daily international foreign exchange trading volume was $1.9 trillion in April 2004 according to the BIS study.

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AIDS missing ‘acquired’ impact

2009-03-21T20:49:00.000-07:00

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Our mindsets are determined by the words we use or don’t use. And words can also set our minds a certain way.

RECENTLY I had the pleasure of listening to one of our national poet laureates recite a poem about the birth of his daughter. It was of course in Bahasa Malaysia, and it was lovely to listen to the cadences of the language.

I don’t know very many languages that can sound quite as beautiful as the Malay language. I remember enjoying the movie Puteri Gunung Ledang precisely because of its poetic script.

At times like that, I wished I could speak my own language more elegantly than I do. I grew up in English-medium schools, including the elite government boarding school I attended for two years.

Some years after I left school, the switch to teaching entirely in Bahasa Malaysia was implemented. But during my time, the only Malay I had at school was during Bahasa Malaysia classes.

Worse still, as a Science student, I had absolutely no exposure to any literature in either English or Malay. Going overseas to study of course did nothing much for my Malay.

It was only years later, when I started to work in HIV outreach and when I had to communicate to audiences that did not necessarily understand the issue, that my Malay got the polishing it very much needed.

Even so it was a frustrating endeavour, not so much because I could not speak, since with practice my Malay improved, but because the vocabulary I needed in Malay was simply inadequate.

Just take the translation of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, for example. In Bahasa Malaysia, it comes out as Sindrom Kurang Daya Tahan. Which sounds fine except that a very key word, “acquired”, did not get a look in.

I don’t know why that is. But by not translating the word “acquired”, Malay-speaking audiences are likely to make a conceptual mistake in understanding how HIV operates.

English-speaking audiences realise that HIV is not something a person is born with nor that it occurs naturally within us. It is an infection which one can only acquire by doing something risky.

But Malay-speaking audiences are more likely to miss that point with the inadequate translation. I don’t know this scientifically, but sometimes I wonder if this missing word is the cause for much of the stigma associated with, and discrimination against, people with HIV.

People who study linguistics know what I mean. The words we use or don’t use reflect our mindsets, or they can set our minds a certain way.

So it’s not an issue of what language we use, but how well it copes with current ideas and concepts. Bahasa Malaysia is trying hard to keep up but it does that mostly by simply taking on English words.

I was shocked when years ago I was told that it is perfectly acceptable to call the TV programme, 3R, Respek, Relaks dan Respon.

Even if these words alliterated better than Hormat, Santai dan Balas, they still sound odd, but somehow also younger and cooler.

In many ways, this underscores the problem we have in keeping the teaching of Maths and Science in Bahasa Malaysia.

Unless we are not expecting our students to get very far in these two subjects, there is no reason to teach them in English.

And perhaps they won’t want to advance in these subjects if we keep teaching them in Malay, Chinese or Tamil.

But what if we have students who want to be mathematicians or scientists? At what point do we switch them over?

Or do we simply tell them that they can only go as far as our language can cope with mathematical theories and scientific concepts.

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