Does anyone of you have an idea on which currency pairs are the best to trade in forex? Is it the major currency pairs, the cross pairs or the exotic pairs? Well there isn't really a right and wrong answer; it depends on how you define 'best'. If a currency pair has tight spreads, it may be considered the best trading currency pair for you, but may not apply for others. So now we'll discuss on various factors on choosing a forex pair:
1. Spreads - There is always an advantage to trade currency pairs that have a tight spread in forex trading. It means that lesser spreads equal to more profit, lesser spreads give you more room for price fluctuation if you have a tight stop loss and lesser spreads may help you to breakeven your forex trade earlier. Does that make sense to you? EUR/USD has the tightest spread of 2 to 3 pips for most forex brokers and even 1 pip for some brokers, while GBP/JPY has spread of 6 to 10 pips. For some forex traders who care a lot on spreads, he will certainly choose the formal over the latter.
2. Trendiness - For chartist traders like me, I depend mostly on technical indicators to help me decide which forex currency pair to trade. Although volatility is considered good, but it is then more risky and need a wider range of stop loss. e.g. is GBP/USD. On my forex trading screen, I have 7 to 8 currency pairs in smaller windows, so that I'm able to decide which pair is the trendiest, even when all pairs seem to have a trend. Though EUR/USD and USD/CHF is negatively correlated 90% of the time, you will sometimes find either of the pairs trending better than the other. Therefore you will want to choose the more trendy pair to trade with the help of some forex technical indicators.
3. Trading Sessions - The best time to trade forex is when the market is the most active and therefore has the biggest volume of trades. During Asian hours when Tokyo opens, the better trading time is from 7PM EST to 10PM EST. But since not all the currency pairs are actively moving, you may want to trade AUD/USD as it starts to move during the stated timing. When London market opens, this is where you can trade almost all the currency pairs. I will trade from 3AM EST to 6AM EST depending on the trendiness of the pair; example is GBP/USD, EUR/USD etc. Another trading session which will experience high volatility is from 8AM EST to 12PM EST where both the London and U.S. markets are open at the same time.
After looking at the above factors, do you think there is a right and wrong answer on choosing the best forex currency pair? I doubt so. As long as you are using a reliable forex trading system to help you, all currency pairs can be profitable. A good forex trading system will be able to help you analyse the behavior of the currency pairs and help you generate profits consistently.
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663
Date Published :
Feb 9 2009