What is a Currency Pair?
Every forex price you see — EUR/USD at 1.0925, GBP/USD at 1.2710 — is a currency pair. You never trade a single currency in isolation; you always trade one against another, because a currency only has value relative to something else.
Base and quote
The first currency in the pair is the base currency; the second is the quote currency (sometimes called the counter currency). The price tells you how much of the quote currency it takes to buy one unit of the base. So EUR/USD at 1.0925 means one euro costs 1.0925 US dollars. When you “buy” EUR/USD, you are buying euros and selling dollars at the same time.
Majors, crosses, and exotics
Pairs that include the US dollar and trade in huge volume — EUR/USD, USD/JPY, GBP/USD — are the majors, and they tend to carry the tightest spreads. Pairs without the dollar, like EUR/GBP or AUD/JPY, are crosses. Pairs that match a major currency with a smaller or emerging-market economy are exotics, which usually move more sharply and cost more to trade.
Why it matters for your trade
Because you are always long one currency and short the other, your view is really a comparison of two economies. On Fidorix, majors trade with fixed spreads that do not widen during news, so the cost of opening a position stays predictable while you focus on the bigger picture. For precise definitions, see the glossary, and start with the broader forex basics guide.
Fidorix Editorial Team
Trading Education & Market Research
The Fidorix Editorial Team writes practical, jargon-free guides on forex, binary options, and disciplined trading — built from the same tools and data our traders use every day.
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