Everyday, you make a lot of personal and financial decisions that shape your financial life. Seven days a week, twelve months a year, you choose how to spend, save, and share your money, time, and effort on people, things, and activities that matter to you. But how often do you think about the risks associated with the personal and financial decisions you make? In this article, you will discover a number of risks involved in making your personal and financial decisions and explore what actions you can take to manage them.

The foreign exchange market, also known as the forex market, facilitates the buying and selling of currencies around the world. Like stocks, the end goal of forex trading is to yield a net profit by buying low and selling high. Forex traders have the advantage of choosing a handful of currencies over stock traders who must parse thousands of companies and sectors. In terms of trading volume, forex markets are the largest in the world. Due to high trading volume, forex assets are classified as highly liquid assets. The majority of foreign exchange trades consist of spot transactions, forwards, foreign exchange swaps, currency swaps and options. However as a leveraged product there is plenty of risk associated with forex trades that can result in substantial losses.

You don't have to be a daily trader to take advantage of the forex market - every time you travel overseas and exchange your money into a foreign currency, you are participating in the foreign exchange (forex) market. In fact, the forex market is the quiet giant of finance, dwarfing all other capital markets in its world. Despite this market's overwhelming size, when it comes to trading currencies, the concepts are simple. Let's take a look at some of the basic concepts that all forex investors need to understand.