Understanding the basics of forex trading: currency pairs
Fri, Aug 22, 2008
In the foreign exchange market currencies are traded in pairs. This makes perfect sense if you consider that the principle of exchanging is to give one thing and take another.
In forex you give one currency for another or take one currency for another depending on your choice to buy or sell.
If trading the EURUSD for example, a decision would be made either to sell the EURO against the US dollar or buy the EURO against the US Dollar.
Commonly traded currency pairs
- EURUSD (Trading the EURO against the US dollar)
- USDJPY (Trading the US dollar against the Japanese Yen)
- GBPUSD (Trading the British pound against the US dollar)
- USDCHF (Trading the US Dollar against the Swiss Franc)
- USDCAD (Trading the US dollar against the Canadian Dollar)
- EURJPY (Trading the EURO against the Japanese Yen)
- EURGBP (Trading the EURO against the British Pound)
Other traded currency pairs
- AUDUSD (Trading the Australian dollar against the US Dollar)
- NZDUSD (Trading the New Zealand dollar against the US Dollar)
- EURCHF (Trading the EURO against the Swiss Franc)
- GBPJPY (Trading the British pound against the Japanese Yen)
- GBPCHF (Trading the British pound against the Swiss Franc)
There are numerous other possible currency pairings that get traded in the foreign exchange currency trading market. The pairings are divided into the “base currency” and the “quote currency”. The base currency is the first currency (represented by the first 3 letters of the pair). The quote currency, which is also known as the “secondary currency” or the “counter currency” is represented by the last 3 letters of the pair.
The decisions you make with regard to a currency pair are made based on the base currency. You either decide to buy the quote currency against the base currency or sell the quote currency against the base currency.
Tags: currency pairs, forex



Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.