What made countries move from the Gold Standard to the current compact?

The challenge with the Gold Standard is that it triggered bouncing periods of recession and economy booms. A country that was doing well economically would import goods from overseas until their gold reserves were too low to properly sustain the economy. inflation rose to a high level that ensured a recession. Eventually, the recession would cause the cost of that country’s goods to sink so low that its goods were very attractive to other countries. Those countries who were doing well economically would begin to import goods and the cycle would continue from country to country. An acknowledgement called the Bretton Woods Agreement, the compact that set the price of the US Dollar and set all other participating countries currencies against it, ended after World War 2 when international trade became so widespread as to render the agreement useless.

Who can participate in the Forex trading?

Basically, only large financial organizations can take part. This boils down to multi-national banks and companies. There are some allowances for individuals to trade, but this must be done through a broker (and often leaves people open to fraud). There are a few reasons for this. First, the amount of money that is needed to make a decent make money in is certainly more than a single individual can invest. Secondly, the way most trades are set up tend to make most of the money "on paper", which means that while there is profit, it’s not usually profit you can take and directly put into your pocket. These two things alone make the Currency Trading (forex) fairly unappealing to individuals.

Continue learning more about stock market investing or see if penny stocks are an alternative to forex.