The fundamentals of foreign currency exchange rates (MODUL 1-8)

You should know, however, that you will not receive the price quoted in the newspaper if you trade forex. That’s because banks and other market participants make money by selling the currency to customers for more than they paid to buy it and by buying the currency from customers for less than they will receive when they sell it. This difference is called a spread and we’ll talk more about spreads later in this program.

As you can see, currency exchange rates fluctuate. Retail customers who trade in the forex market hope to profit from those fluctuations.