A Few Facts Worth Knowing About Forex Currency Pairs
The bare fact is that in order to trade in forex currencies requires trading in pairs of currencies such as EUR/USD in which the Euro trades over the US dollar and this is a typical form of forex currency pairs. In the case of EUR/USD, the Euro which is the first currency is known as the base currency while the second currency or the US dollar is known as the quote currency or counter. What it means is that in the case of these forex currency pairs, if you wish to buy the currency pair, you have to buy the Euro and sell the US dollar simultaneously.
Complete Understanding
Thus, to succeed with trading in forex currency pairs, you need to have a complete understanding of currency pairs and in particular when making a Forex transaction, know for sure what currency you will be buying or selling. In order to succeed with forex currency pairs, it requires having thorough knowledge about the major currencies of the world such as the US dollar, GB pound, German deutsche mark and so on.
For long, the US dollar was the major currency in world trade and it was used to evaluate other currencies being traded on Forex and so all currencies had to be quoted in terms of the US dollar. Since all Forex trading deals with foreign currencies and the extent of such trade is stupendous and amounts to well over a trillion dollars, to succeed at it requires understanding forex currency pairs.
As explained, traders buy as well as sell currencies through exchanging one form of money for a second type of currency and hope to realize a profit from doing so. The market quotations as far as Forex is concerned will specify forex currency pairs which is shown as a base currency followed by the quote currency and among the most common forex currency pairs are EUR/USD (euro vs. US dollar) GBP/USD (British pound vs. US dollar), USD/JPY (US dollar vs. Japanese Yen) and USD/CHF or US dollar vs. Swiss franc.
As far as forex currency pairs go, it is usual to have the Forex quotation state the base or domestic currency first which is followed by the counter or quote currency. Furthermore, the base currency is always a single monetary unit such as 1 USD or 1 EUR or 1 GBP, and is implied and not necessarily shown. Lastly, forex currency pairs normally depict the ‘bid' and ‘ask' price and the former refers to the price that brokers wish to pay while the latter means a price at which the broker wants to sell the currency.
