Forex Currencies

Which Pairs Are Traded?

Trading Forex currencies is a way to potentially profit from the global financial crisis. Which currencies can be traded? Find out which currency pairs you can trade here.

Forex Currency Pairs

When you want to get involved in the Forex market, you will have to trade currency pairs. You can't simply buy one currency and hold it. You always are working with two currencies at once. Where you make your money is in the changes in the relationship between the two currencies. This is why when you look at Forex quotes, you will see that they always involve two different currencies.

Standard Broker Pairs

To be able to trade in the market, you will need to open an account with a Forex broker.

Once you have an account with a Forex broker, you will gain access to the ability to trade a number of currency pairs.

In the foreign exchange market, you cannot trade every currency that is in the world. The brokers only specialize in the most widely available currencies to trade. Here are the main currency pairs that you'll find with most brokers in the foreign exchange market:

USD/CAD EUR/JPY EUR/USD EUR/CHF USD/CHF EUR/GBP GBP/USD AUD/CAD NZD/USD GBP/CHF AUD/USD GBP/JPY USD/JPY CHF/JPY EUR/CAD AUD/JPY EUR/AUD AUD/NZD

Major Pairs

While you can have access to the pairs listed above, the vast majority of trading takes place with the major pairs. The major pairs in the market are: EUR/USD, USD/JPY, GBP/USD, AUD/USD, USD/CHF and USD/CAD. In some cases, the NZD/USD is also considered to be a major pair.

Working With Pairs

When you decide to get involved with the market, you will have to work with a broker. Although it may not be fun to have to open an account with a broker, it's pretty much a necessary evil. You could potentially go down to your local currency exchange store and buy currencies and trade them, but how much would you really make from that? Probably nothing. In fact, you'd lose money on the fees and the gas that it takes to get down there.

The much better way to trade with Forex currencies is to open an account. When you do this, you will notice some differences in the Forex spread with each pair. The spread on the GBP/USD pair might only be one pip while the spread on the NZD/USD might be five pips. The spread is the amount of money that the broker will keep on the transaction. If you can find a way to trade the pairs with lower spreads, you can keep more of your own money.

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