Talk:Currency pair

Issues with the current page

- Is this article misleading? the first paragraph seems to imply that a currency pair is an exchange rate and an exchange rate is a currency pair. Where is a currency pair is really a (very important) organisational tool within the foreign exchange market. The first para is devoted to exchange rates, for which there is already a fairly comprehensive article. Exchange Rates are definitely relevant to currency pairs, and you can't really mention one without the other, but the first paragraph is really about exchange rates, not currency pairs per se.

Maybe something like this would be more appropriate.

The foreign exchange market functions via the exchange of one currency for another. The rates and conventions for the exchange of any currency for another currency are peculiar to the particular :::currency pair:::. Markets, trades, foreign exchange books, exposures and many other features of the foreign exchange market are frequently organised by these currency pairs. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.63.219.74 (talk) 01:37, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

- The first sentence could be better. "A currency pair is the quotation of the relative value of a currency unit against the unit of another currency in the foreign exchange market". If it's a relative value then you don't need to say "against the unit", or if you say "against the unit" you don't need to say it's relative. And is it a quotation? Can it not also be a locked in, contracted rate?

I would suggest:

A currency pair is the rate at which one currency that may be exchanged for a single unit of another currency in the foreign exchange market.

- The second sentence is difficult to understand. "The currency that is used as the reference is called the counter currency, quote currency or terms currency[1] and the currency that is quoted in relation is called the base currency or transaction currency". What does "The currency that is used as the reference" mean? What does "the currency that is quoted in relation" mean?

I would suggest:

The rate tells you how much of the counter, quote or terms currency is required to obtain a single unit of the base currency. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.63.219.74 (talk) 01:22, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

- The nicknames should distinguish that 'fiber' is retail only. You will never hear an institutional FX trader use this terminology. Also gopher chunnel etc are pretty much retail names. The other names had their origination in phone dealing such as cable, swissy etc.

- No discussion of other means of trading that do not involve lots etc (RFQ, RFS, Executable rates) Overall this is very retail focused. The standard lot size also on EBS or Reuters is 1M not 100K and there is no such thing as lot size when trading with bank directs

- The base currency is not the accounting currency for the bank. This is dead wrong. The convention of base vs term currency is more to do with making sure the stronger currency is the base...also its tied to which currencies are commonwealth currencies.

- The trading description is focused entirely on speculative trading, but a significant amount of FX trading is to for funding purposes - e.g. to cover cross border trades by an asset manager or the cost of goods for a corporate

- There is no discussion of trading on term (e.g. when the dealt currency is USD on a EUR/USD trade

Format of quoting currencies

EURUSD and EUR/USD are equivalent but most trading system use EUR/USD. Most trading systems and books use EUR/USD

Please note, that it writes EURUSD. This is how currecny pairs are usually written. I noticed that somebody wanted to change it to EUR/USD.

Currency pairs may be written in a variety of formats, for example EUR/USD, EURUSD, EUR.USD, EUR-USD, EUR USD. The most common format in the FX markets is EUR/USD and I propose that this article be amended to use this format. Nfh 20:21, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Please be careful with that. EURUSD is rather equal to USD/EUR (not EUR/USD). If neccessary let's discuss it here first. --PBS27 09:45, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

EURUSD is the same as EUR/USD. There is no difference. In the FX market, if you write EUR/USD, it means 1 euro is equal to a variable number of dollars. That is market convention. Nfh 20:21, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

In the absence of any objections, I am inserted a stroke/slash into each currency pair. Nfh 19:51, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Those who are mathematically inclined may see EUR/USD quoted as 1.3067 and think that the dimensions of the number 1.3067 is EUR/USD, when it is actually the reverse. Maybe a note in the article can clarify this. Finnancier 15:18, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

A less confusing way to think about it is EUR/USD = 1.3067, or 1 EUR/USD = 1.3067, and therefore 1 EUR = 1.3067 USD. Finnancier (talk) 15:25, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

It is unfortunate that the market convention would be EUR/USD to express a number of dollars for one euro, because mathematically (and verbally) that is dead wrong. A slash / means division (as in a fraction). In other words, EUR/USD means the number of euros divided by the number of dollars, and the quotient is a certain number of euros per 1 dollar - NOT the other way around. If one euro is equal to 1.3 dollars, then the rate of 1.3 describes the number of dollars per one euro, in other words: USD/EUR = 1.3. To avoid this, if the market convention holds that the currency pairs must be written in this order, then by all means PLEASE delete the misleading and incorrect slash in the middle. 83.24.108.5 (talk) 15:17, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I also got once confused by this. The confusion results from thinking the "rate" actually denotes the numeric value of EUR/USD in an equation like 1 EUR = 1.3 USD which would be (1/1.3) EUR/USD = 1. But the "rate" here is comparing two different denominations of a common dimension (something like "perceived worth") and therefore represents the dimensionless other side of the equation. So you can express a rate like EUR/USD=1.3 in the same way you can say min/s=60 (although that rate is fixed by definition). I suppose the main unfortunate notation convention resulting in this confusion is that the equal sign is often left out.169.145.136.14 (talk) 21:50, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Think of it as the label of a graph. "Distance /metres" means distance is measured in metres. "Time/seconds" means that time is measured in seconds. "EUR/USD" means that the size of 1 EUR is measured in USD. Count Truthstein (talk) 14:57, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Pips

There is already an article called Percentage in point. The discussion of pips should be moved there, or at least better integrated. Finnancier 15:18, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Removed section on pips which had only one quite useless line. Hyperlinked pips in Spread section to the relevant article. Cheers Unstudmaddu (talk) 13:09, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Comments please, possible merge with Currency correlation

A debate is in progress about what to do with article Currency correlation and one of the proposals is to merge it into either Currency pair, Technical analysis or Exchange rate. We'd appreciate any suggestions of where the best place for it is. To keep the conversation in one place, please respond in Talk:Currency_correlation#Fallout_of_Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion.2FCurrency_correlation. Thanks -- John (Daytona2 · talk) 19:54, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Major currencies

Any reference to the saying that INR/USD belongs to currency majors? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Martinlamkc (talk • contribs) 07:00, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments, I've requested a deletion review - Wikipedia:Deletion_review#Currency_correlation -- John (Daytona2 · talk) 18:15, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

In any event, it would USD/INR — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.155.193.120 (talk) 13:00, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

The article ranks Auzzi and NZ dollar above GBP. As far as I am aware, GBP is usually ranked above Aussi and NZ dollar. See, e.g. http://www.londonfx.co.uk/quoting.html, as referenced in the article, and http://www.forexconspiracyreport.com/best-currency-converter/, and http://www.currency-rate-exchange.com/currency-rate-quotations-helping-to-analyze.html, and http://www.merkfunds.com/currency-asset-class/currencies-unplugged/how-are-currencies-quoted.html, and every other site I can find. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DavidIMcIntosh (talk • contribs) 14:17, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Currency pair/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

In your aarticle currency pair and all, there is nowhere mentioned who makes/decides currency pairs....Also how each currency bid rate is determined by base currency. Gaurav

Last edited at 16:27, 21 June 2008 (UTC). Substituted at 12:33, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

JPY precedence

The article suggests an order of base precedence eg EUR always comes first, then GBP always comes first except EURGBP .... However, it lists JPY as the last currency which would have precedence. However, JPY is never used as base, even with minor (exotic) currencies, for example you say TRYJPY and PLNJPY not the other way round. Really JPY should be removed from that list. Instead the correct order (outside the big 5) is that the higher denomination comes first, so that the exchange rate is >1. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.155.193.120 (talk) 13:04, 16 May 2016 (UTC)