Currency trading is the act of buying and selling international currencies for example USD-EUR or USD-YEN. Very often, banks and financial trading institutions engage in the act of currency trading. Individual investors can also engage in currency trading, attempting to benefit from variations in the exchange rate of the currencies. The currency trading market is bigger than stock and commodity combined and every day more than U.S. $3 trillion in currencies change hands in a highly professional interbank market, in which electronic trading platforms link currency traders from banks across the world directly. Currency Exchanges function from 9.00 AM to 5.00 PM every day.

Any currency can be traded on the international level but as per the ruling of RBI, Indian national cannot trade in foreign currency from India. But RBI policy does allow investor to trade in INR currency pairs and the main pairs are

• USDINR
• EURINR
• GBPINR
• JPYINR

In the case of USD/INR it is USD 1000; EUR/INR it is EUR 1000; GBP/INR it is GBP1000 and in case of JPY/INR it is JPY 100,000. ( Ref. RBI Circular: RBI/2009-10/290, dated 19th January, by which RBI has allowed trade in EUR/INR, JPY/INR and GBP/INR pairs.). The currency market is regulated jointly by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Securities & Exchange Board of India (SEBI).