The Importance Of Liquidity In The Forex Market – Forex Trading Strategies

Last Update: February 4th, 2025

Liquidity has been an important factor since ancient times and it continues to this day.

A person, company or a country can be very wealthy but if they don´t have enough liquidity or liquid assets they can bankrupt easily. Very often we hear about liquidity or the lack of it, during financial crises (like the financial crisis of 2008). Some reputable companies declared bankruptcy at that time because they didn´t have enough liquid assets to pay off their creditors or their clients.

Greece has been in a similar position for about five years and only the extra liquidity provided from the EU has kept the country afloat. In fact, Greece is going through a liquidity ‘starvation’ at this very moment and if it doesn´t get help soon from the EU it will default on the IMF debt repayment, which will officially cause the country to go bankrupt. Liquidity is a key element of the forex market.

Understanding the factors affecting forex liquidity is crucial for traders to navigate the market effectively and make informed decisions. We will explain below why it is so important for every forex trader.

The most liquid market in the world is the Forex market

What is Liquidity?

Let´s start with an example: if during an exam there are 30 people in a classroom, but there is only one pen, how long will it take the whole classroom to finish the exam? There will be great demand for that pen since there are not enough pens to go around. In other words, we are experiencing a pen market with no pens!

Liquidity can be defined as the existing demand for a product or service. How fast can you sell your car and turn it into cash? How fast can you sell your designer watch? In the financial markets, when we refer to liquidity, we mean how easily or fast a specific instrument can be turned into cash, either in an electronic or physical form. Some instruments are very liquid, like gold or short-term US bonds, both can sell quickly anywhere in the world if you´re willing to sell them for a reasonable price.

Some are less liquid, take the Greek bonds for example. No one wants to buy them for fear that the country will declare bankruptcy and that investors will not get their premium back. The same goes for forex – some currencies are more liquid than others, like the US Dollar, Euro etc.

While small or unstable currencies are less liquid because you cannot use them anywhere apart from the issuing country and, therefore, cannot sell or exchange them for another instrument. In the context of forex trading, forex market liquidity refers to the ease with which currency pairs can be bought or sold without causing significant price changes.

Factors Affecting Liquidity in Forex Trading

Several factors influence liquidity in forex trading, each playing a crucial role in determining how easily assets can be bought or sold without affecting their price.

1. Trading Volume: Higher trading volumes typically lead to higher liquidity. When more buyers and sellers are actively participating in the market, it becomes easier to execute large trades without causing significant price changes. For instance, the EUR/USD pair often sees high trading volumes, making it one of the most liquid currency pairs.
2. Market Participants: The presence of major market participants, such as central banks, major financial institutions, and retail traders, significantly contributes to liquidity. Central banks and major financial institutions often engage in large-scale transactions, while retail traders add to the overall trading activity, ensuring a steady flow of buy and sell orders.
3. Market Hours: Liquidity fluctuates throughout the day, peaking during overlapping sessions when multiple markets are open. For example, the overlap between the London and New York sessions typically sees the highest liquidity, as traders from both regions are active simultaneously.
4. Market News and Events: Economic announcements, geopolitical developments, and other market-moving events can impact liquidity by shifting trading activity and risk sentiment. For instance, a major economic report or a geopolitical event can lead to a surge in trading volumes as traders react to the news.
5. Currency Pair: Major currency pairs, such as EUR/USD, USD/JPY, and GBP/USD, tend to have higher liquidity due to their popularity and widespread trading. These pairs are favored by traders worldwide, ensuring a constant flow of buy and sell orders, which enhances liquidity.

Measuring Forex Liquidity

Measuring forex liquidity involves analyzing various metrics that provide insight into how easily assets can be traded. Here are some key metrics used to gauge market liquidity:

1. Bid-Ask Spread: The bid-ask spread is the difference between the bid (buy) and ask (sell) prices of a currency pair. A narrower spread typically indicates higher liquidity, as it suggests that there is a high level of trading activity and competition among market participants. For example, major currency pairs like EUR/USD often have very tight spreads.
2. Order Book Depth: Order book depth refers to the number of buy and sell orders at each price level. A deep order book, with many orders at various price levels, indicates high liquidity, as it shows that there are plenty of participants willing to trade at different prices.
3. Trading Volume: Trading volume is the number of units of a currency pair traded in a given period. Higher trading volumes generally indicate higher liquidity, as they reflect active participation by traders. For instance, the daily trading volume of the forex market often exceeds $5 trillion, highlighting its high liquidity.
4. Market Depth: Market depth is similar to order book depth but focuses on the number of buyers and sellers at each price level. A market with high depth has a large number of participants willing to trade at various prices, which enhances liquidity and ensures smoother price movements.

Signs of illiquidity

The stock exchanges around the globe are supposed to be the perfect market, thus very liquid, but that´s not always the case. During major events or off hours, the investors close their positions and the market becomes very volatile.

In the stock market charts, like the Facebook chart below, there are plenty of gaps in them. These gaps usually occur when the exchange floors close and the liquidity dries up.

Exotic currency pairs often experience lower liquidity due to fewer market participants and reduced trading volumes compared to major currency pairs.

Price gaps caused by lack of liquidity in the stock market

Although not as often as in the stock market, sometimes in the forex market there are gaps. But the most common signs of illiquidity in the forex market are the long candles that happen in a short period of time.

One such event happened on 15th of January this year when the Swiss National Bank (SNB) removed the 1.20 peg they had placed in EUR/CHF.

EUR/CHF and all other Swiss Franc (CHF) pairs fell more than 40 cents in a matter of seconds as investors and electronic trading computers withdrew capital from this pair. We can see from the EUR/CHF chart below that the pair had been trading in a tight range for a long time and then crashed in a minute.

A liquidity hole caused a massive drop in CHF pairs

All the market’s participants add liquidity to that market. Individually, some of the biggest names in the banking sector stand out in the forex market. These are called Tier 1 liquidity providers and include Deutsche Bank, Citi, Morgan Stanley, HSBC, UBS, Bank of America, Barclays, Goldman Sachs etc.

Retail trading has grown consistently and it is an important portion of the liquidity. It is estimated to account for more than 12% of spot turnover. Brokerages that operate as Dealing Desks are part of this and act as liquidity providers. They allow clients to buy and sell currencies and hedge their clients’ positions in the real market or internally.

The US Dollar is the most traded currency. Nowadays, most of the trading volume in the forex market is brought about by speculators and some argue that this accounts for more than 90% of the market. Most of the world has realized and accepted the importance of speculators and the liquidity that they add to the markets.

China was the latest to accept and introduce speculation to its financial markets. They opened the door to their markets for speculators a few years ago but decided to kick them out again. It didn´t take long before they begged them to come back.

Since the introduction of the high-frequency trading, their size of market share has increased and now they play an important role in providing liquidity. Since they execute millions of trades a day, they are willing to buy or sell instruments at any time, thus providing liquidity.

Liquidity Providers and Their Role

Liquidity providers play a crucial role in maintaining market liquidity by ensuring that there are always buy and sell orders available for traders. Here’s how they contribute to the forex market:

1. Quoting Prices: Liquidity providers quote buy and sell prices for currency pairs, ensuring that traders can always find a counterparty for their trades. By continuously providing quotes, they help maintain market efficiency and stability.
2. Providing Market Depth: Liquidity providers contribute to market depth by maintaining a pool of buy and sell orders. This ensures that there are sufficient orders at various price levels, allowing traders to execute large trades without causing significant price fluctuations.
3. Facilitating Trade Execution: Liquidity providers enable traders to execute trades quickly and efficiently by acting as counterparties to their trades. This is particularly important in a fast-paced market like forex, where timely execution can make a significant difference in trading outcomes.

Importance of liquidity to a Forex trader

The foreign exchange (forex) market is a decentralized global market. Apart from the Frankfurt exchange floor, which counts only for a very small percentage of the foreign currency exchange, the forex market doesn´t have a physical location.

The buying and selling of the currencies is executed electronically, primarily between banks, hence the name ‘interbank market’. But there are other participants as well, such as investment and hedge funds, pension funds, insurance companies, corporations etc.

As of April 2013, an average of $5.3 trillion is traded in a single day in the forex market. This makes it the biggest market in the world by far, and the most liquid market that has ever existed.

This means the trading volume is extremely high and the amount of buying and selling is high most of the time. You can open a trade at anytime during the day, anytime during the week, 24/5. High liquidity in the forex market leads to lower transaction costs, making it more cost-effective for traders to execute their trades.

The trading volume in the forex market has passed $5 trillion a day. From the point of view of a trader like me and you, the biggest benefit of a liquid market like forex is that it is easier to trade. Of course, there are times of high volatility, but this is less affected by outside shocks such as economic news or political events.

Liquid markets tend to follow crowd behavior, which is easier to read than the single investor behavior, characteristic of the less liquid markets/instruments. You can get a good sense of a large crowd’s sentiment, but you cannot know what´s in the heads of a small group of people with no relation to you. That´s why it is easier to predict the direction and the price action of a more liquid market.

Since a liquid market is more logical, it follows price patterns like trends, support and resistance levels etc, more strictly than a non-liquid market. So, another advantage of liquid markets for a trader is that it is easier to be exploited by mechanical trading systems; it´s for this reason that algorithmic trading has become very popular in forex.

You can apply automated trading systems in thin markets as well, but you´ll get lots of whipsaws which come from low liquidity and which a mechanical system cannot predict.