How Forex Trading Works?

Currency trading is mainly about buy and sell activities. Currencies are traded on a price interest point (normally called pip) system. Every currency pair has their own pip value. The objective of a trader is to hold as many profitable pips as possible. Some pip values are fixed, but some can fluctuate depends on the currency gain or loses strength. Normally I trade by using margin trading, where small deposit is required to control much larger amount in the market. Here I will use 1 percent margin deposit so that $1000 control $100,000 of trade currency. $100,000 is the notional amount. Let me shows some major currency pair with the currency exchange rate and the pip values.

Currency	Currency exchange rate	Pip Value
(GBP/USD)	1.7204	$10.00 per pip (fixed)
(EUR/USD)	1.1789	$10.00 per pip (fixed)
(USD/CAD)	1.1642	$8.59 per pip (fluctuating)
(USD/JPY)	117.82	$8.49 per pip (fluctuating)

For GBP/USD, 1 pip movement can be from 1.7203 to 1.7204. That means from 1.7102 to 1.7202, it should be 100 pip movement. Lets look for another example, USD/JPY, 1 pip movement is from 117.82 to 117.83 and 100 pips movement is from 117.83 to 118.83.

Foreign Exchange Calculation

Below will show you how to calculate pip values.

Formula is (1 pip value/currency exchange rate) x (Notional Amount)

For GBP/USD, 1 pip value is 0.0001. Assume currency exchange rate is 1.7204. Notional Amount is GBP 100,000.

Therefore, (0.0001/1.7204) x GBP 100,000 = GBP 0.58

If we want to convert back to USD, then GBP 0.58 x 1.7204 and we will get $1

For EUR/JPY, 1 pip value is 0.01 . Assume currency exchange rate is 138.96. Notional Amount is EUR100,000 . EUR/USD=1.1789

Therefore, (0.01/138.96)x EUR 100,000 = EUR 7.20

If we want to convert back to USD, then EUR 7.20 x 1.1789= USD8.49

Make Profit in Forex Trading

Foreign exchange trading is mainly about buy and sell activities. The theory is slightly similar with share market. To make the profit, there is the only way which is buy at lower price and sell at higher price, or we can also sell at higher price first and buy at lower price. Is it very easy? It is actually not that difficult. What we need to do is to analyze the forex in a correct way and do the good trade. Together with good money management and proper guideline, I can say that success will be eventually more on your side.

Sometimes, trader involves in foreign exchange not because of make profit but just do not want to lose money. Let me take an example, A US Construction Company want to build a subway in India and it is going to take about 7 years with $50 million construction cost. The first thing this company will do is to hedge the dollar value of the project. By buying or selling US dollar against the future market value, no matter how big the amplitude of the fluctuation, the company will not lose any money.