Know When to Buy or Sell a Currency Pair

Forex trading involves trying to predict which currency will rise or fall versus another currency.

How do you know when to buy or sell a currency pair?

In the following examples, we are going to use a little fundamental analysis to help us decide whether to buy or sell a specific currency pair.

The supply and demand for a currency changes due to various economic factors, which drives currency exchange rates up and down.

Each currency belongs to a country (or region). So forex fundamental analysis focuses on the overall state of the country’s economy,  such as productivity, employment, manufacturing, international trade, and interest ratezzzzzzzz.

Wake up!

If you always fell asleep during your economics class or just flat out skipped economics class, don’t worry!

We will cover fundamental analysis in a later lesson.

But right now, try to pretend you know what’s going on…

EUR/USD

In this example, the euro is the base currency and thus the “basis” for the buy/sell.

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If you believe that the U.S. economy will continue to weaken, which is bad for the U.S. dollar, you would execute a BUY EUR/USD order.

By doing so, you have bought euros in the expectation that it will rise versus the U.S. dollar.

If you believe that the U.S. economy is strong and the euro will weaken against the U.S. dollar, you would execute a SELLEUR/USD order.

By doing so, you have sold euros in the expectation that it will fall versus the US dollar.

USD/JPY

In this example, the U.S. dollar is the base currency and thus the “basis” for the buy/sell.

If you think that the Japanese government is going to weaken the yen in order to help its export industry, you would execute a BUYUSD/JPY order.

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By doing so you have bought U.S dollars in the expectation that it will rise versus the Japanese yen.

If you believe that Japanese investors are pulling money out of U.S. financial markets and converting all their U.S. dollars back to yen, and this will hurt the U.S. dollar, you would execute a SELL USD/JPY order.

By doing so you have sold U.S dollars in the expectation that it will depreciate against the Japanese yen.

GBP/USD

In this example, the pound is the base currency and thus the “basis” for the buy/sell.