-
9,450 USD
Last trade price -
+5.26%
24 hour price -
12.820 BTC
24 hour volume -
1000+
active traders - Live Bitcoin price
Cryptocurrency Market
A cryptocurrency is a fully decentralized, secure, digital currency whose creation is controlled by cryptography. Cryptocurrencies are not issued by central banks and their value does not depend on bank policies. Unlike regular currencies where new money can be introduced in the money supply through Quantitative Easing (QE), cryptocurrency prices are purely based on supply and demand. Bitcoin, created in 2009, was the first cryptocurrency. There currently are over 800 alternative cryptocurrencies, called Altcoins, such as Ethereum, Ripple and Litecoin.
Cryptocurrencies are somewhat similar to precious metals, in that their creation is controlled and most have a cap on the amount of units, just like precious metals, which have limited minable amounts.
Stock Market
Stocks, also known as equities, are shares of ownership that entitle the holder to a part of a company's assets and earnings. The stock market is where these shares are bought and sold. There are 60 major stock exchanges around the world and 16 of them each have a market capitalization of over $1 trillion. Both large players like banks or hedge funds and small investors participate in this market. The stock market operates on a system of supply and demand and has opportunities for long term investors and for day traders.
Common stocks are securities that represent ownership in a company — buying these you become entitled to a share in a company's profits in the form of dividends. If you choose the right stock, you can make considerable gains.
Futures Market
Futures are derivative products that derive their value from the price movement of an underlying instrument such as Gold, Coffee, a Currency pair, a Stock Index or a Government Bond. They are essentially contracts with an obligation to buy or to sell an instrument (in a certain quantity) at or before a fixed time for an agreed price. Futures are traded at large exchanges that formulate the contract terms. The buyer of a contract holds a long position, the seller of a contract holds a short position. Futures have a finite lifespan that ends at a preset expiration date.
They can either be used to hedge investment positions (to mitigate the risk of price movements) or to speculate (to try and profit from price movements). Futures trading started 150 years ago as a way to manage agricultural production. Planting and harvesting cycles created swings in prices and futures contracts were created to manage that risk. They have evolved into the exchange-traded instruments we know today, which are a key part of the financial system.
Bond Market
A bond is a contract between an entity that borrows money and a creditor that lends it to the entity. When you purchase a bond, you are effectively giving a loan to the bond issuer. With government bonds, also known as sovereign bonds, a national government borrows money to fund its operations. The bond specifies what interest rate (coupon) will be paid and at which times during the life of the bond and when the principal funds, also known as face value, will be returned. This is called the maturity date. Bonds are an asset class by themselves that offers more stability than stocks.
The return on a bond is known in advance, which makes them low risk investments, although the risk is related to the credit rating of the bond issuer. If the coupon rate is higher than the prevailing interest rates, a bond becomes attractive so the demand for these bonds will increase, driving up their price. If the bond interest is lower than the prevailing interest rates, their price will drop, so bonds are inversely correlated to interest rates.
Indices Market
Indices use a portfolio of representative companies (usually spanning major industries) to reflect the status of the whole stock market. There are basically three kinds: global, regional and national. Global indices include companies regardless of where they are traded. Regional indices include companies from a certain region and national indices include companies from a specific nation. Indices are used to get an indication of the market's overall direction. Some analysts use them as a barometer of the underlying economy.
Indices can be composed of tens to hundreds of stocks and each index calculates the weighted average differently. Some weigh the stocks equally (equal weighting), others take company size into account (capitalization weighting) and others use a hybrid method (modified capitalization weighting). Stock Indices are tradable entities themselves. A currency index is a measure of the value of a specific currency relative to other select currencies. Indices like the US Dollar Index or the Euro Currency Index are used to gauge the strength of those respective currencies.