Foreign exchange is a foreign language to many private investors. Speculating on 50 pip moves in 'Cable', 'Loonie' or 'Swissie' is something that most people feel is best left to an adrenaline-fuelled bloke yelling maniacally into four telephones simultaneously. Buying a wad of dollars for this summer's fortnight in Florida is probably the only currency deal that the average punter is ever likely to contemplate.
If this about sums you up, we hope this month's Masterclass will prompt you to think again. That's because the forex markets have never been more accessible to individual investors, with a wide range of companies offering the sort of exposure that was previously only available to institutions, or the very wealthy.
To give you an idea of the possibilities on offer, Richard Anderson has reviewed some of the most accessible ways for getting cheap - but potentially very profitable - exposure to currency markets. in ''
But to form views on the near-term direction of exchange rates, you have to look at what the charts are saying. So, to help you understand the basic uses of technical analysis within currencies, professional trader Rakesh Shah shares some of his charting wisdom with us. As well as showing us the essentials of trend-spotting, Rakesh has also taken a look at some of the most interesting situations in the market at the present time - see ''. He also reviews a couple of basic strategies for implementing your views on pages '.
If you're instinctively a buy-and-hold sort of investor, though, gambling on charts of intra-day moves in the dollar-yen rate may never be right for you. Nevertheless, there are still interesting opportunities in forex for those who take a longer-term perspective on markets. So, in '', we introduce you to the world of managed-currency funds, exchange-traded funds and even a smart way of potentially shrinking how much you owe on your mortgage.
When taking this sort of longer-term view of currencies, macroeconomics becomes an important factor, too. We've therefore also asked the Investors Chrionicle's economist, Chris Dillow, to give us his provocative insights into the forex game in .
