In the ever-evolving landscape of global economics, understanding the diverse array of the financial market is crucial for informed decision-making and successful investments. This blog article serves as your gateway to comprehending the intricate world of financial markets. By exploring the various categories and functions within this dynamic realm, you’ll gain the knowledge needed to navigate and thrive in the intricate world of financial markets.
Bullion refers to the physical gold and silver of high purity. The demand for bullion isn’t driven only by their practical use, but also by their role as investments and a store of value. Paper currencies come with all sorts of problems, like the risk of inflation in times of political and economic turmoil.
Gold and silver are safer bets in this respect because their value is independent of any particular country’s economic health, so issues like inflation and economic downturn don’t have as much of an effect.
When trading Bullion via a CFD, you don’t take delivery of any gold or silver, so the difference in the price between the buy and the sell will be cash-settled.
Like almost all other investments and commodities, the prices of gold and silver are driven by supply and demand. Given that most of the gold and silver ever mined is still in circulation, bullion price changes more with sentiment than the demand for jewellery.
Economic Factors
Opening Times
Pacific Union quotes bullion from 23:00 Sunday London time until 21:00 Friday London time. We offer prices in Bullion 24 hours a day during this period apart from a daily exchange break at 22:00 – 23:00.
A stock market index is a listing of stocks and a statistic reflecting the composite value of its components. It is essentially a hypothetical portfolio of securities that represents a portion of the market, or even the whole market. All stocks in an index will have something in common to tie them together, so the index is a tool to give a general gauge of market movement.
While there are specialised indices that track specific sectors like energy or electronics, most indices offered are broad-based, covering a country, region, or the whole world. They represent the performance of the stock market, as well as investor sentiment.
Some of the most regularly quoted market indices are made up of the stocks of large companies listed on a nation’s largest stock exchanges, such as the American Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 Index, the British FTSE 100, the French CAC 40, the German DAX, the Japanese Nikkei 225 and the Hong Kong Hang Seng Index.
An index will reflect the general health and stability of that country’s economy and will be affected by the countries industrial and political activities. It is worth remembering that a country’s index is directly linked to the relative strength of that country’s currency as that will determine a company’s competitiveness on the international scene.
Industrial Factors
Political Factors
Political factors are important. They’re interwoven with economic conditions for many investors when making investment decisions, and include things like the political and social stability in a country, government policies, the regulatory environment, and central bank intervention.
Often, market makers such as Pacific Union will have prices that are different from the prices quoted at the exchange. This is because the underlying contract is a future. For example, Pacific Union offers a rolling spot product, where any open positions at the end of the day are rolled over daily. Rolling over incurs an interest fee.
Therefore, a concept called fair value is applied to convert an index future into an equivalent spot price by removing the cost-of-carry involved, such as dividends, interest rates, and the current index value.
These fair values are monitored by dealers to ensure prices are relevant to the futures market.
You should also note that Pacific Union’s prices might occasionally differ from the cash market that you will see quoted on Bloomberg, Reuters, or any other reference source. This is because the cash price is calculated from a weighted addition of the prices of the constituent stocks. This can lead to a difference if a stock in an index is suspended or not trading correctly.
The Foreign Exchange market (also commonly referred to as the FX, forex, or currency markets) is the single largest market in the world with an average of approximately $3 trillion worth of currency traded every day.
The market exists whenever one currency is traded for another. It consists of transactions between large banks, central banks, currency speculators, multinational corporations, governments and other financial markets and institutions. The FX market is an OTC (Over the Counter) market, in which participants directly with each other without the supervision of an exchange.
Floating exchange rates are constantly changing and, like any other product, are influenced by the supply and demand for each currency. The factors that affect supply and demand can be generalised into 2 groups: Economic and Political.
Economic Factors
Political Factors
Political factors are interwoven with economic conditions for many investors when making investment decisions. These include things like the political and social stability of a country, government policies, regulatory environment and central bank intervention.
Opening Times
Pacific Union begins quoting Foreign Exchange prices at 22:00 Sunday London time until 22:00 Friday London time. We offer prices in currencies 24 hours a day during this period.
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