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I am starting to study FOREX again and one thing about trading on the market through means available to me personally is that one can take positions on 'currency pairs'. This has made little sense to me because I'm looking for some sort of physical relation to what 'taking a position on a pair' really means.

One thing that shed some light was the 'Exposure' tab in MetaTrader. My base account is in USD as that is the currency that I have deposited into the account. If I take a position on USDCAD, what I think is that I take some of my USD in my account and purchase an amount of CAD with it at the current USDCAD exchange rate. My exposure tab is then updated with an exposure on the CAD currency of the amount that I have purchased.

I then thought, what about purchasing from something not starting with USD, such as AUDJPY. This causes exposure of X in AUD and an exposure of -X in JPY, so such a position will cause a long purchase of AUD and a short sell of JPY. So now my positive exposure is in CAD and AUD and negative in JPY.

So trying to simplify, I feel that I have bought CAD and AUD with my USD and short sold some JPY for USD. Am I correct in this thinking? If not, could someone explain what is really going on when I take a position against a currency pair?

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Are you talking about having two open pairs? I think this is what is becoming confusing. I know you are Canada. But it's still your choice to trade whatever currency pair you wish. – JoeTaxpayer Jun 23 '12 at 18:50
I didn't realize your from canada. So just to clarify, you said "My base account is in USD" so I am assuming this is a hypothetical and the USD would be your native currency(the money you would use to buy a tomato for example). Is this correct? – Kirill Fuchs Jun 23 '12 at 18:56
I considerably reworked the answer, hopefully its a little easier to follow now. I'm still using USD as the native currency. – Kirill Fuchs Jun 23 '12 at 20:31
I am Canadian but I'm using USD as the base currency because the MT practice accounts I can open are all in USD. – Burton Samograd Jun 24 '12 at 1:55

1 Answer

up vote 8 down vote accepted

So lets start from the beginning:

Heres what we know:

  • Currency can only be valued when compared to another currency. So each time you enter a position on a currency it is always relative to another currency. So the currency pair can actually be thought of as one unit.
  • The first currency of a currency pair is called the "base currency", and the second currency is called the "quote currency".
  • If you buy a currency pair, you buy the base currency and sell the quote currency.

See - Currency Pair - Investopedia

So now lets begin braking your question down:

If I take a position on USDCAD, what I think is that I take some of my USD in my account and purchase an amount of CAD

(I assume you mean "long position")

No, if you execute a buy(long position) on USD/CAD this means you are buying the USD vs the CAD(your betting the USD will go higher vs the CAD). Remember the USD is the base currency and the CAD is the quote currency. So in this case you would actually be borrowing CAD and purchasing more USD.

What your looking for would be to execute a sell(short position) on USD/CAD - this means you are using USD to buy CAD(betting CAD will go higher vs the USD).

Now if I switch the base currency and the quote currency (e.g: CAD/USD). Then going long CAD/USD would be the same thing as going short USD/CAD, that's because in every currency trade you are always going both long one currency and short another. This leads us back to the first rule from the beginning.

Hopefully that made sense.

Onward to AUD/JPY, CHARGEEE!

You are correct in saying:

so such a position will cause a long purchase of AUD and a short sell of JPY

But your analysis on USD/CAD is still incorrect for the same reasons as before.

Ok gents we're almost home!

So trying to simplify, I feel that I have bought CAD and AUD with my USD and short sold some JPY for USD. Am I correct in this thinking?

No you did not buy AUD with USD, at least not directly(key word). When going long AUD/JPY, you are borrowing JPY then using JPY to buy AUD. So now to exit this trade you would go short AUD/JPY which means your using the AUD to buy back the JPY after which you would give back the JPY you borrowed. Any extra JPY would be your profit (or loss if the trade went the other way).

But there's more: We also have to understand that our native currency is USD, meaning when we go to a store, no one cares about JPY they only want to see USD. So at the end of the day everything must calculate to its USD equivalent. Your brokerage firm also will not accept your maintenance-requirement or your fees in any other currency but your native one.

So for example: If you made 100 JPY profit from your trade, how much profit did you make? hint: It's not 100 JPY.

Yes you may have added 100JPY but that means absolutely nothing to us, because all we care about is USD! So the right answer is we made "whatever 100JPY = in USD at the time we convert it".

Your brokerage firm will take care of all the day to day calculations for you in real time so you don't have to sit there contemplating how much your profit really is or what your maintenance-requirement is. To put it simply every trade you make must always come back to your native currency and hence why you are indirectly buying AUD with USD because the real value of the amount you make is dependent on the JPY vs the USD, simply because the USD is what you pay your bills with. So EVERYTHING has to come back to USD.

See the section called - Converting Profits and Losses in Pips to Native Currency

WOOHOO We made it!

So lets keep reading:

Taking a look at the answer to - WSJ article about CFDs - am I missing something? will help as it explains a-lot of what you asked.

Baby Pips - is a good site for Forex explanations.

Specificlly this article gives a good explanation about what your asking.

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"So now to exit this trade you would sell AUD, buy JPY and then give back the JPY you borrowed." You may wish to note, the 'sell aud/ buy jpy' doesn't occur in two transactions for the individual. Margin on a pair valued at $100K per side may only be $1000. So you can't just unwind one side, it's done in one transaction. If you expand on this point, I'll delete this comment. – JoeTaxpayer Jun 23 '12 at 16:57
So a taking a position on currency pair is (according to investopedia) 'the simultaneous buying of one currency (the base) and selling of another (the quote)' combined into one action. Like I said in the question, I had a feeling that this was happening, but I'm trying to understand it fundamentally. – Burton Samograd Jun 23 '12 at 17:00
@JoeTaxpayer Yep thanks, I corrected it. – Kirill Fuchs Jun 23 '12 at 17:49
@BurtonSamograd I've rephrased the answer and clarified a few more things. Let me know if there is something still confusing you. – Kirill Fuchs Jun 23 '12 at 20:29
It's getting clearer...but...when I borrow the JPY to buy the AUD, what I'm seeing is that the borrow is executing at the current USDJPY rate causing my margin to be reduced which to me looks like I am 'buying' JPY with USD to buy the AUD. I'm trying to relate this system to the margin amount in my account, and how all this relates to the actual purchase and transfer of wealth from one entity to another. This is a good answer but it's still leaving me with some questions especially when relating to my margin after a trade. – Burton Samograd Jun 24 '12 at 1:53
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