Foreign Exchange Market Participants

The sell side generally consists of large FX trading banks.

The buy side consists of clients who use these banks to undertake FX transactions (i.e., buy FX products) from the sell-side banks.

The buy side:

Corporate accounts

Real money accounts

Leveraged accounts

Retail accounts

Governments:

Central banks

Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs)

The sell side (generally the FX dealing banks):

the very largest dealing banks, and a few other multinational banking behemoths;

the second and third tier: all other banks.