Profiting from FOREX dates back to ancient times, when traders first began exchanging coins from different countries and groups. However, the FOREX industry itself is the newest of the financial markets.
In the last hundred years, the FOREX market has undergone some dramatic transformations. In 1944, the postwar FOREX system was established as a result of a multination conference held at Breton Woods, New Hampshire. That system remained intact until the early 1970s.
At this conference, representatives from 45 nations met together to discuss the future exchange system. The conference resulted in the formation of the International Monetary Fund. It also produced an agreement that fixed currencies in an exchange-rate system would tolerate a % currency fluctuations to gold values, or to the U.S. dollar, which was established previously as the "gold standard." The system of connecting the currency's value to gold or the U.S. dollar was called pegging.
In 1971, the Breton Woods Accord was first tested because of dramatically uncontrollable currency rate fluctuations. This started a chain reaction, and by 1973, the gold standard was abandoned by President Richard M. Nixon. The fixed-rate system collapsed under heavy market pressures, and currencies finally were allowed to float freely. Thereafter, Profiting from FOREX quickly established itself as the financial market, the world's largest financial market.
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