Which Currencies Are Traded?

The most popular currencies along with
their symbols are shown below:

EUR — Euros

USD — United States dollar

CAD — Canadian dollar

GBP — British pound

JPY — Japanese yen

AUD — Australian dollar

CHF — Swiss franc

NZD — New Zealand dollar

Forex currency symbols are always three letters, where the first two letters identify the name of the country and the third letter identifies the name of that country’s currency

World Currency Watch with ForexGen

The ECB’s and BOE’s rate decisions puts more wind to the back of EUR/GBP!

The Eurozone and the U.K. economies continue to diverge.
For years and years, these two economies followed each other up and down in “lock step”. Then the credit/sub-prime crisis hit. This pushed the U.K. economy lower as they experienced the same things that America experienced: Hedge fund blow ups, banks struggling, housing prices falling, etc.
On the other hand, many other European banks didn’t have as much exposure to “sub-prime” as did the “financial epicenter”, the U.K.
So as these economies “de-linked” and continue to diverge, it’s produced a heck of an uptrend in the EUR/GBP pair. Click on the chart to enlarge it below.
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Currency Day Trading Examples

With the information we have covered so far, let’s show a few examples of how much money can be made (or lost!) daily by trading currencies.

Example
trader thinks the euro will gain value versus the dollar (EUR/USD is at 1.2150)Let’s say that the price of the euro-dollar pair is 1.2150 and a day trader, based on his strategy, gets a signal that the euro is going to continue to go up. The trader buys 100,000 EUR (1 lot) at 1.2155 (121,550 USD). If the trader’s margin requirement is 2%, his margin deposit would be 2,000 Euros or 2,431 dollars. The trader automatically sets a stop loss of 25 pips based on his technical trading strategy. As the trader expected, the EUR/USD goes up to 1.2225 (on paper, everything works!). Assuming this meets the profit requirements of his day trading system, the trader sells the 100,000 Euros