Forex pairs
Forex pairs, read through the Lens
A forex pair is the price of one currency quoted in another. This section covers fifteen pairs, majors and crosses, with the same evergreen facts for each: the two currencies, the hours when the pair is usually active, what one pip is worth, and how smart money traders describe its liquidity. No prices, no forecasts, no signals.
Major pairs
Cross pairs
Every pair is written BASE/QUOTE. The price says how many units of the quote currency buy one unit of the base currency. Buying EUR/USD means buying euros and selling dollars at the same time; selling it is the reverse. One pip is the fourth decimal place on most pairs and the second decimal place when the quote currency is the Japanese yen.
The majors are, by long habit, seven heavily traded pairs that all include the US dollar: EUR/USD, USD/JPY, GBP/USD, USD/CHF, AUD/USD, USD/CAD and NZD/USD. A cross is a pair without the dollar, such as EUR/GBP or GBP/JPY. A cross is in effect built from two dollar pairs, so it inherits movement from both, and its spread is usually wider than the spread on a major.
Each pair has its own rhythm because each currency has a home market with opening hours, a central bank and a calendar of data releases. A pair tends to be busiest when the home markets of both its currencies are open, or when one of them is open and the big London and New York dealing hours overlap. That is why the kill zones matter more on some pairs than on others.
Smart money concepts are applied the same way on every pair: map structure, mark where liquidity is said to rest, and watch what happens when a session reaches it. What changes from pair to pair is the size of a normal move, the cost of trading it and the hours when it is worth watching. Those are the things these pages describe.
What these pages are not: they contain no live or historical prices, no levels, no forecasts and no trade ideas. Behaviour is described as a tendency, never as a rule. Everything you can practise on ForexLens uses simulated prices and play money, and most retail traders lose money when they trade for real. If pips and lots are new to you, the forex FAQ is the place to start.
No prices, no levels, no forecasts on this page: it is a description of the pair, not a view on it.
Practise on simulated charts
ForexLens games use simulated prices on several pairs. Start with structure, then liquidity and sessions.