The forex market is the world's largest financial arena. It has daily transactions exceeding $6 trillion and operates 24/5 to facilitate global trade and currency exchange. Its unique feature is the constant fluctuation of currency values, influenced by factors like monetary policy, political events, economic indicators, commodity prices, and risk sentiment.
Forex trading capitalises on these fluctuations, serving three functions: speculation, hedging, and international trade, where companies settle invoices and payments in different currencies.
This principle is at the heart of forex trading: buying and selling currencies to profit from changes in exchange rates.
Base currencies in forex trading indicate the amount needed to purchase a single unit of the second or quote currency in a currency pair. A higher price quote indicates that it takes more of the quote currency to buy the same amount of the base currency, indicating a strengthening base currency.
Conversely, a lower price quote indicates that it takes less of the quote currency to buy the same amount of the base currency, indicating a weakening base currency.
“Base” vs. “quote” currency
If AUDUSD is $0.65, this means that you need 65 cents in US dollars to buy 1 Australian dollar. The Australian dollar is the first currency mentioned, so it's called the "base” currency.
The second currency in the pair is known as the “quote” currency.