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Currency exchange - Currency Pairs Explained

By Rueben Gomez
Nov 8, 2009
The fastest growing type of online investment at the moment is undoubtedly the currency trading market. Individuals looking beyond the realm of traditional investments such as the bonds market have been flocking to the currency markets. This article is an in-depth look at the traded currencies that are the reason currency markets exist in the first place.

All currencies on the currency exchange markets come in the type of a pair. Buying or selling currency pairs mean the purchase or sale or one currency against another. The the majority well-liked currency pairs are often given nicknames by currency traders. Some of the more general nicknames include Cable (GBP/USD) and the Loonie (Usd/Cad). Any currency pair that consists of the Euro, British Pound, Japanese Yen, Swiss Franc and the American dollar see a very high level of trading activity. Beyond the majors, we have what are recognized as exotic currency pairs such as Usd/Huf, MXN/Jpy and so on and so forth. One frequent trait that a large amount exotic pairs share among themselves is their high spreads.

The buying of Aud/Nzd in actuality means the buying of the Aussie dollar and the selling of the New Zealand dollar. Profits are derivative from the appreciation of the base currency (First currency in the pair) against the quote currency (2nd currency in the pair), assuming you took a long trade. Profits from a short trade are derivative from the appreciation of the quote currency against the base currency. This is the primary method of earning a profit or making a loss from a currency pair.

Most forex brokers do not venture into exotic currencies, preferring to stick to the majors. Unless you're willing to pay upwards of 30 or so pips per trade, its best to just stick to regularly traded currency pairs. Different forex brokers have numerous spreads on their currency pairs. The competitive nature of the online forex trading market ensures that the vast majority of major forex brokers charge more or less the same spread on pairs that are popular. Spreads after all, are a means to attract new traders to their brokerage firm.

Some of the top online forex brokers include Oanda, Fxcm, Easy forex and Interbankfx. All these broker have been in the business for years and are dependable with reasonably low spreads. Between them, Oanda is almost certainly the only one that offers the widest variety of currency pairs. On the other hand, all of them are good online forex brokers.
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