What is a currency pair?
It is a pair of currency 3 character ISO codes, e.g. EUR, USD, GBP etc. Although there are many conventions we typically put a slash “/” between the two pairs as this helps us to generalise terminology for other asset classes such as those traded as Contracts For Difference (CFD’s) that we will cover later. These so called currency pairs are the assets traded on the Foreign Exchange (FX) market.
EUR
This is called "base" or "open" currency the first left hand side
/
USD
This is called the "quote" or "contra" currency the second currency listed
What are the major currencies traded?
Although there are 100’s of different currencies world wide the majority of currency pairs traded are made up of the following.