Today’s Forex market began to develop in 1973; however, foreign currency trading has been around since pharaonic Egypt's advent of coinage, and the ancient Babylonian's usage of paper money. More relevant to today’s market however, are the post World War II alterations to the international exchange rate. World War II left the United States an industrial giant unscathed by the war, at least in comparison to the European powers. Worldwide confidence in the dollar made it the reserve currency of choice. To prevent a recurrence of the global depression, the Bretton Woods System, ratified by all the major capitalist countries, pegged international currencies to the dollar, which had its value, in turn, fixed in gold. This led to a system of fixed exchange rates, and the dollar's role as de facto reserve currency was formalized.

This arrangement lasted for the next three decades. In the early seventies, however, deteriorating confidence in the strength of the dollar led to market-driven currency values, and a new system of floating exchange rates took hold. The modern Forex market arose from this new arrangement.