What is a Pip and a Pipette in Forex?

There are some concepts that you need to know when trading in Forex. these concepts seems small and unimportant to you but actually it's very important.

You don't need to just know these concepts but you should understand them as well like:

• Pip
• Pipette
• Lot

What the pip is ?

The pip is a unit of measurement to show the difference between two currencies.

If EUR/USD moved from 1.4356 to 1.4357 so this 0.0001 is one pip. this means that the pip is usually the fourth decimal place of price quote.

  

What the pipette is ?

• Fractional pips are called pipettes.
• Is equal to a tenth of a pip. 

For example, if USD/GBP moved from 1.46757 to 1.46758 so this 0.00001 is called a pipette.

Here is how fractional pips "pipettes" look like in a trading platform 

Do you know how to read pips and it's values??

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How to calculate the value of a pip ?

Value of a pip is different in every currency pair as each pair has their own relative value.

Example:

• Lets take USD/CAD = 1.0200 
• Pip value in terms of base currency = the value change in counter currency*the exchange rate ratio
• Pip = (0.0001 CAD)*(1 USD / 1.0200 CAD) = 0.000098 USD per unit traded

What is a Lot in Forex ?

In the past, Forex was only in specific amounts called lots which are the number of currency units you will buy or sell.

Standard size for a lot is 100,000 units but there are another types of lots:

• Standard 
• Mini
• Micro
• Nano 

Some people show quantities in lots and others show it in units but no problem for you now in dealing with any of them.

To take advantage in the pip's minute change rates"values" you need to trade with large amounts of specified currency to find a touchable profit or loss.

Let's assume we will use Mini lot size (10.000) and we choose to trade in USD/CHF  with exchange rate of 1.4555

This will give us = (0.0001 / 1.4555)*10,000 = 0.69 $/pip.

Here are some examples of pip value for USD/JPY and EUR/USD with the four types of lot sizes:

What Is a Currency Cross Pair ?

In the past, if you wanted to change currencies you would convert them first to US dollars then convert these US dollars to the currency you desire.

For example, if you wanted to change Japanese Yen to UK sterling you would first convert Japanese Yen to US dollars then convert US dollars to UK sterling.

The invention of Currency Crosses made this process very easy as you don't have to convert to US dollar in every exchange"middle process".

Examples of cross pairs:

• EUR / GBP
• EUR / JPY 
• GBP / JPY
• EUR / CHF 
• EUR / USD
• USD / JPY

Calculating Currency Cross Rates

Do you want to know how currency crosses are calculated ?

It's all about numbers so if you like numbers, you will find this part interesting.

Of course trading platforms do this process automatically and you don't need to think about that but here we will explain the method and currency cross rates.

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For example let's take EUR / JPY and we want to find the bid/ask price for them but why these 2 pairs ??

The answer is because both of them have USD as their common denominator.

• First we will look at the bid / ask price for both EUR and JPY.
• Let's say we found EUR/USD : (1.5230)(bid) / (1.5235)(ask).
• And for USD/JPY : (89.38)(bid) / (89.43)(ask).

To calculate the bid price for EUR/JPY you multiple bid prices of EUR/USD and USD/JPY which in our case will be ((( 136.13 ))).

To calculate the ask price for EUR/JPY we will do the same process by multiplying ask prices of EUR/USD and USD/JPY which in our case will be ((( 136.25 ))).

Is Forex Trading Tax Free?

Why Trade Currency Crosses ??

The US dollar is the reserve currency in the world so, about 80% of exchanges in Forex market contain US dollar.

Most agricultural and commodities like oil are priced in US dollar.

But why US dollar and not any other currency??

When countries want to buy stocks like Oil they have to own US dollar"Oil pricing in US dollar" so countries even large ones like China and Japan keeps reserve of US dollars in hand for easy buying and not to be in need to convert every time they wanna buy. that's why US dollar is so strong and considered the leading currency in the world.