Learn Forex Basics – Forex for Beginners
What Is Forex Trading?
“Forex trading” is short for “foreign exchange trading”. It refers to the buying and/or selling of a nation’s currency, using another nation’s currency. This might sound a little strange since most of the time we normally exchange money for stuff that we use.
For example, we normally exchange money for a new T-shirt, or maybe a warm meal at the local restaurant. We can wear the T-shirt, or eat the meal that we’ve bought with our money.
However, in Forex trading we are exchanging money for money instead. But why would anyone want to exchange money for money? It doesn’t seem to make sense, right?
Most People Trade Currencies For Profit
In Forex trading, we exchange money to buy another nation’s money in expectation of selling it later. For example, we can use the U.S. Dollar currency to purchase some Euros now, because later we want to be able to sell away the Euros for a profit.
Here’s an example:
Let’s say we buy 1 Euro (1 EUR) at the price of 1.5 U.S. Dollars (1.5 USD). A month later, the price of the Euro increases to 1.6 USD and we sell the 1 Euro that we purchased earlier to get back 1.6 USD.
In this transaction, we made a total of 0.1 USD in profit. Does this make sense?
Now of course, a profit of 0.1 USD doesn’t seem like much… but if you carried out these same transactions with 1,500 USD instead of just 1.5 USD, then you’d have made a profit of 100 USD. And if you started with 15,000 USD, these same transactions will have profited you with 1,000 USD!
But I Don’t Have 15,000 USD To Begin With!
This is where the Forex market really shines. You see, even if you don’t have 15,000 USD to start with, you can still make 1,000 USD in profit. How? You can do this by ‘margin trading’.
Margin trading basically allows you to trade with 15,000 USD, using only 150 USD of your OWN money. This means that you can potentially make 1,000 USD in profit by using buying and selling 150 USD ‘worth’ of the Euros.
Now of course, margin trading is a double-edged sword and you’ll have to be careful because you can lose as much as you win. But with a proper education in managing your money and risks, Forex trading can be a very lucrative past time.
To learn more, Click Here to download my free 26-page guide, “Forex Trading Traps!”
Harold Hsu is the owner of ForexSystemProfits.com where he provides premium Forex trading tips and resources.
More USD Articles
Tags: Basics, Beginners, Dirk, Dollar Currency, Euro 1, Euros, Exchange Money, Exchanging Money, Expectation, Foreign Exchange Trading, Forex, Forex Market, Forex Trading, Learn, Local Restaurant, Margin Trading, People, Stuff, T Shirt, Trade Currencies











Us Currency Exchange Rate Chart – The Base and Cross Currency
August 30th, 2010 by Bank Loan | No Comments | Filed in Forexby toyohara
Us Currency Exchange Rate Chart – The Base and Cross Currency
Us Currency Exchange Rate Chart
One of the main aspects of foreign exchange trading that makes it different from other stock and commodity markets is that all currencies are traded in pairs. The Euro and the United States dollar are the two most highly traded currencies in the world, and this currency pair is always quoted as “EUR/USD” with the euro quoted first. In this currency pair the euro is called the “base currency” and the dollar is called the “cross currency.” Us Currency Exchange Rate Chart
Some of the other most popular currencies are the Japanese Yen and the British Pound, and these currency pairs are always quoted as “USD/JPY” and “GBP/USD.” These are not random pairings, but rather it has traditionally been for the ease of calculation that the stronger currency is the base currency and the weaker currency is the cross currency. The base currency always has a value of one, so when you see a price quote for the currency pair or you look at a price chart the value shown is how many units of the cross currency it takes to equal one unit of the base currency.
When we see a currency pair such as USD/JPY with a value of 115.00, this is saying that one dollar equals 115 yen. Understanding the relationship between the base currency and the cross currency and learning to read currency pair price quotes in this way is essential when you want to make money in the forex market. A good exercise that can help you to better understand this relationship with currency pairs is to pick up your daily newspaper and turn to the financial section, where there will likely be a daily updated currency table. Us Currency Exchange Rate Chart
The currency table that is published in most major newspapers will list all of the major world currencies vertically and horizontally, with a diagonal line of blank spots where each currency lines up with itself. When you look at this table you will find the exchange rate for the dollar in terms of the euro, but this will literally be quoted as USD/EUR instead of the traditional pairing used on nearly all forex trading platforms of EUR/USD. If you had an open trade on this currency pair and wanted to look at the newspaper to see if your position gained or lost value, seeing the exchange rate reversed might be very confusing to you.
So if you have a price quote of “0.7407? for the USD/EUR, what you will want to do is take 1 divided by 0.7407 so that you can reverse the currency pair and get the normal EUR/USD price quote which would be 1.3500. What this example tells you is that this exchange rate value can be read as “one euro equals .35? or “one dollar equals 0.74 euros.” From this example it is easy to understand why the currency that historically has a higher value is always quoted as the base currency, because it makes the calculations much simpler.
If this type of calculation seems complicated to you, you can simply remember that if you put the number 1 in the numerator place (top) and the exchange rate in the denominator place (bottom), it will reverse the currency pair. It is very important for a forex trader to understand these basic relationships with currencies and exchange rates, and once you get some practice and experience (even if it is only trading a demo account) it will become second nature to perform the simple calculations that affect your trading. Us Currency Exchange Rate Chart
Always dream of being Rich? Never able to make a Consistent Profit through trading?
Get your Us Currency Exchange Rate Chart and be Successful forever!
Try this Forex Auto Money and be Financial Free in 6 Months!
Tags: "notify me when new comments are added"intitle:currency exchange, base, Base Currency, Blank Spots, Chart, Commodity Markets, cross, Currency, Currency Euro, Currency Exchange Rate, Currency Pairs, Currency Rate, Currency Table, Diagonal Line, Equal One, Euro Currency, exchange, Foreign Exchange Trading, Forex Market, Gbp Usd, Japanese Yen, Jpy, rate, Understanding The Relationship, United States Dollar, Us Currency, World Currencies