FX Growth Lesson 2 of 11 7 min read
Currency pairs, pips and lots
Majors, minors and exotics, and how pips and lot sizes turn price moves into money.
Types of pairs
Majors include the US dollar and another big currency: EUR/USD, GBP/USD, USD/JPY, USD/CHF, AUD/USD, USD/CAD, NZD/USD.
Minors (crosses) exclude the dollar, e.g. EUR/GBP. Exotics pair a major with an emerging-market currency, e.g. USD/ZAR — these have wider spreads.
Pips
A pip is the standard unit of price movement — the fourth decimal for most pairs (0.0001) and the second for JPY pairs (0.01).
If EUR/USD moves from 1.0850 to 1.0870, it has moved 20 pips.
Lots
A standard lot is 100,000 units of the base currency, a mini lot 10,000 and a micro lot 1,000.
On EUR/USD one pip is worth roughly $10 per standard lot, $1 per mini lot and $0.10 per micro lot.
Key takeaways
- Majors are the most liquid pairs.
- Pips measure movement; lots set the value per pip.
- Smaller lots mean smaller risk per pip.