currency

China's foreign-exchange policy risks "unwinding" some of the progress made in reducing global trade imbalances during the financial crisis, the U.S. Treasury said Thursday in its latest report on foreign-exchange trading. 

 But the department repeated its previous finding that China was not formally manipulating its currency. 

 A provider of ecommerce solutions and third party online payments 2Checkout.com announced the addition of five new purchase currencies and one remittance currency to its lists of payment options for international customers.

On Friday gold was softer near $975 as traders became concerned about the possible data on employment. As it was reported on Thursday gold rose around 2% after Goldman Sachs raised its forecast for oil prices at the end of 2009 to $85 a barrel from $65, triggering inflation-hedge buying of gold.

"I think there's a sense of caution in the market as gold nears the $1,000 mark," said Shuji Sugata, a manager at Mitsubishi Corp Futures & Securities in Tokyo.

Despite some variable price action USD continues to strengthen on a balance. Though currencies are unlikely to be on the agenda, traders expect range trading to continue into the G-7.

EUR/USD was stronger than many expected on the day, making it easy to squeeze shorts and ignore more rates cut calls from ECB's Papademos and a negative outlook from ECB's Liikanen.

The forex market which also known as Forex or FX is the largest financial market in the world with more than 1.5 trillion dollars being traded daily.

The forex market across the globe has no central location in contrary to other financial markets that operate in a central location such as stock exchange. Forex market is a network among worldwide banks, financial institutions and individual traders who are all involved in the buy and sell of currencies.