Skip to main content

Beginning FOREX - How Are Lots Traded & What The Heck Is A Pip?



If you are new to Forex, no doubt you are confused by all of the strange and unfamiliar terminology. For example, what is a pip? Also, you are probably already aware that Forex trading can be risky. How can you limit your loss and best protect your funds? This article briefly covers how currency lots are traded to help you better understand how to plan your trading strategy and manage your funds. 

In Foreign Currency Exchange (FOREX), earnings are expressed in "pips". Pip is short for Price Interest Point, also called points. Whereas the smallest denomination in USD is the penny ($.01), in Currency Exchange, funds can be traded in an even smaller denomination, $0.0001. This means that very small movements in currency prices can create large profits. 

So, a PIP is the smallest unit a currency can be traded in. The actual value of a pip is not a set price. If you are trading with a standard account, a pip is worth $10. If you are trading a mini account, a pip is only worth $1. 

The value of a pip changes based upon the size of your account, because the size of your account affects how much currency you can leverage. A standard full size trading account is 100,000 units of the base currency. If you are trading in USD, a standard account has a value of $100,000 USD. 

A mini lot is 10,000 units of base currency. If you are trading mini lots, you can leverage $10,000. This is why a pip in a mini account is worth less than a pip in a standard full sized account. 

While Forex trading allows you to leverage more funds than you actually have, this can be a double edged sword. While you can make profits on funds that you leverage (rather than own), you can also have losses amplified as well. There are several ways, however, to manage your risk when trading Forex. If you are interested in trading Forex, you should have a definite trading strategy. You must educate yourself to know when to enter and exit the market and what kind of movements to anticipate. 

You can also place something known as a stop loss order. Stop-loss orders the typical way traders minimize risk when placing an entry order. A stop-loss order to exit your position if the currency price reaches a certain point. 

If you are taking a long position, you would place the stop loss order below current market price. For a short position, you would place a stop loss order above current market price. This technique allows you to manage your risk and, just as the name suggests, stop your losses at a certain point. 

As you can see, Forex trading can be complex, but once you understand the basic fundamental principals of how lots are traded, its starts to come together for you. Foreign Currency Trading can be quite profitable and and exciting way to invest.
DeAndre Pennington Cashfxgroup.com

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Better Understand Technical Analysis and Some Indicators

We’re focusing on technical analysis in this article with a description of some of the important indicators. We could say, all wealthy traders use technical analysis but not all technical analysis traders are wealthy although T.A. is the most precise way of trading the Forex market. It’s also useful note that fundamentals play their part in indicating whether a price will move up or down. It gives you the edge over other traders. Technical Analysis is so powerful because of a few reasons 1) it represents numbers. All information and its impact on the market and traders is represented in a currency’s price. 2) It helps to predict trends and the foreign exchange market is very ‘trendy’. 3) Certain chart patterns are consistent, reliable and repeat themselves. T.A. helps us to see them. Here’s one way of putting technical analsysis into perspective (wish I had a dollar each time I said ‘technical analysis’). We all know that prices move in trends. Research has shown that those that ...

“How To” Start Trading The Forex Market? (Part 4)

What are *PIPS* ? Currencies are traded on a price/ point (pip) system. Each currency pair has its own pip value. When you see a FOREX price quote, you'll see something listed like this: EUR/USD 1.2210/13 Explanation: a) If you want to BUY the EUR/USD ( meaning you BUY EUROS and SELL US$ ) you buy 100,000 EUROS and you SELL 122,130 US$, or in other words you receive 122,130 US$ for 100,000 EUROS. B) If you want to SELL the EUR/USD ( meaning you SELL EUROS and BUY US$ ) you buy 122,100 US$ and sell 100,000 EUROS, or in other words you receive 100,000 EUROS for 122,100 US$. The difference between the bid and the ask price is referred to as the spread. In the example above, the spread is 3 or 3 pips. Since the US dollar is the centerpiece of the FOREX market, it is normally considered the 'base' currency for quotes. In the "Majors", this includes USD/JPY, USD/CHF and USD/CAD. For these currencies and many others, quotes are expressed as a unit of $1 USD per ...

Ways of Winning Huge Profits In Forex Trading

The Foreign Exchange Market, better known as FOREX, is a worldwide market for buying and selling currencies. It handles a huge volume of transactions 24 hours a day, 5 days a week. Daily exchanges are worth approximately $1.5 trillion (US dollars). In comparison, the United States Treasury Bond market averages $300 billion a day, and American stock markets exchange about $100 billion a day. Currency exchange is the trading of one currency against another. Professionals refer to this as foreign exchange, but may also use the acronyms Forex or FX. Currency exchange is necessary in numerous circumstances. Consumers typically come into contact with currency exchange when they travel. They go to a bank or currency exchange bureau to convert their "home currency into , the currency of the country they intend to travel to. They may also purchase goods in a foreign country or via the Internet with their credit card, in which case they will find that the amount they paid in the for...