A currency option is a contract that gives the holder the right, but not the obligation to buy or sell a specified currency during a specific time period. It can be used to hedge a FOREX transaction and are a favoured method of reducing risk in companies that trade goods overseas.

There are two basic types of option: Call options and Put options. A call option gives the holder the right to buy a currency while a put option gives the holder the right to sell.

A lot of people often have this misconception that trading in the foreign exchange market is the same as the trading currency options. Because both markets deal with the buying and selling of monies, people naturally have this idea that they are one and the same, hence, the weak popularity of the latter.

The key difference and, perhaps, also the biggest advantage to trading currency options is that they are traded and their values are determined at a specific and fixed period of time, unlike the foreign exchange market that operates 24 hours a day for five days a week.