Predicting how economic factors and or government intervention cause currencies to rise in value (appreciate) or fall in value (depreciate) against one another are the fundamental skill required for forex and money broker jobs.

FX traders in investment banks typically focus on trading currency pairs, the most common of which are: the US dollar and the Japanese Yen; the Euro and the US dollar; the US dollar and the Swiss franc; and the British pound and the US dollar.

FX trading is largely comprised of so-called 'spot trading,' where currencies are bought and sold for immediate deliver. Equally, however, a significant proportion of FX trading jobs involve derivatives such as futures - products in which contracts are exchanged agreeing to trade one currency for another for a specified price at a particular point in the future, as well as swaps and options. In the current climate, most currency derivatives are highly liquid and traded on major exchanges. However, FX derivative products are also traded over the counter (OTC) between individual buyers and sellers without going through exchanges.

Most FX trading takes place electronically using electronic execution platforms that To allow banks and corporate clients to place foreign exchange trades online, without having to place them through actual human traders, most FX trading takes place electronically using electronic exchange platforms.

Sales jobs and careers in FX are typically divided into different client types. For example, some salespeople will focus on selling FX products to hedge funds. Others will focus on selling FX products and electronic trading systems to private clients, asset managers, pension funds or corporates.

This section also contains our money market jobs. Markets for short term fixed income investments of less than one year are known as money markets. Products traded in money markets are very liquid and considered very low risk so they can typically be bought and sold quickly and easily. So-called money market funds invest in products such as government bonds. However, in a climate of sovereign debt defaults these may prove far less safe and liquid than they're supposed to be.

Money market careers can include, for example, repo trading roles, in which holders of government securities sell them on to a counterparty, but agree to buy them back for a specified price at an agreed date no more than 30 days in the future.