Every three years, the Bank for International Settlements BIS releases one of the most important reports in global finance: its Central Bank Survey of foreign exchange markets. It rarely makes headlines, but it offers a clear view of how the financial plumbing of the global economy is really working.
The latest survey shows that the global foreign exchange market now trades 9.6-trillion every single day.
To put that into perspective, that is more than five times South Africas annual GDP changing hands daily. While this figure may seem abstract, the reality is that this market affects almost every South African business, consumer and policymaker whether they are aware of it or not.
