The foreign exchange market is not a geographic place; it consists of a communications network through which many participants throughout the world agree to buy or sell currencies. The foreign exchange market includes a wide variety of smaller markets for immediate exchanges (spot trading), agreements for later exchanges (forward trading), and contracts based on exchange rates (futures and options trading). Given the worldwide dispersion of the foreign exchange market, exchange trading never opens or closes. Markets around the world are interconnected by communication links so that it is possible to trade in the foreign exchange market somewhere in the world 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This interconnection of diverse market segments also provides very competitive prices, which usually are within one-hundredth of a cent of each other.