We present a systematic study of various statistical characteristics of high-frequency returns from the foreign exchange market. This study is based on six exchange rates forming two triangles: EUR-GBP-USD and GBP-CHF-JPY. It is shown that the exchange rate return fluctuations for all the pairs considered are well described by the nonextensive statistics in terms of q-Gaussians. There exist some small quantitative variations in the nonextensivity q-parameter values for different exchange rates and this can be related to the importance of a given exchange rate in the world's currency trade. Temporal correlations organize the series of returns such that they develop the multifractal characteristics for all the exchange rates with a varying degree of symmetry of the singularity spectrum f(alpha) however. The most symmetric spectrum is identified for the GBP/USD. We also form time series of triangular residual returns and find that the distributions of their fluctuations develop disproportionately heavier tails as compared to small fluctuations which excludes description in terms of q-Gaussians. The multifractal characteristics for these residual returns reveal such anomalous properties like negative singularity exponents and even negative singularity spectra. Such anomalous multifractal measures have so far been considered in the literature in connection with the diffusion limited aggregation and with turbulence. We find that market inefficiency on short time scales leads to the occurrence of the Epps effect on much longer time scales. Although the currency market is much more liquid than the stock markets and it has much larger transaction frequency, the building-up of correlations takes up to several hours - time that does not differ much from what is observed in the stock markets. This may suggest that non-synchronicity of transactions is not the unique source of the observed effect.

The concept of multifractality offers a powerful formal tool to filter out a multitude of the most relevant characteristics of complex time series. The related studies thus far presented in the scientific literature typically limit themselves to evaluation of whether a time series is multifractal, and width of the resulting singularity spectrum is considered a measure of the degree of complexity involved. However, the character of the complexity of time series generated by the natural processes usually appears much more intricate than such a bare statement can reflect. As an example, based on the long‐term records of the S&P500 and NASDAQ—the two world‐leading stock market indices—the present study shows that they indeed develop the multifractal features, but these features evolve through a variety of shapes, most often strongly asymmetric, whose changes typically are correlated with the historically most significant events experienced by the world economy. Relating at the same time the index multifractal singularity spectra to those of the component stocks that form this index reflects the varying degree of correlations involved among the stocks.