Trading Commodities, Commodity Options and Currencies (Collection)

2. Making “Cents” of Currency Pairs

In FX, a currency pair is composed of two elements known as a base currency and a quote currency. The base currency is listed first and the quote currency second, with a hyphen or backslash separating the two. Given this explanation, it isn’t difficult to understand why some refer to the base currency as the “primary currency” and the quote currency as the “secondary currency.” As mentioned in Chapter 1, “What Is FOREX?,” FX currency pairs are most often traded in 100,000 or 10,000 units of the base currency, but some firms offer increments of 1,000. Because size is relatively standard, the FX community often refers to the various contract sizes as a full-sized contract (standard lot), a mini contract, and ...