Currency Names and Symbols

As you may have noticed, the symbols (abbreviations) for all currencies have three letters. The first two letters denote the name of the country and third letter stands for the name of that country’s currency.

As an example, let’s look at the

USD

. The US stands for United States and the D stands Dollar.

The currencies on which the majority of traders focus are called the “majors”. The most widely traded currencies are represented on the grid below:

Not to be confused with major

currencies

are the major currency

pairs

. The Major Pairs are any currency pair with USD in them. For example, the

EURUSD

would be considered a Major Pair.

Currency pairs without the USD in them are referred to as Cross Pairs. The

EURJPY

would be an example of a Cross Pair.

To carry this one step further, any

EUR

pair without the USD in it would be referred to as a Euro Cross. So the EURJPY would be a member of the EURO Cross group. Other member of that group would be

EURGBP

,

EURCHF

,

EURNZD

,

EURCAD

and

EURAUD

.

Other currency groups of this type would be comprised of the

JPY

crosses,

GBP

crosses,

AUD

crosses,

NZD

crosses and the

CHF

crosses.

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Understanding The Forex Majors

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