I’m interested to hear what pairs newbies and veterans alike started their trading life in, and why. Obviously this is very subjective but I’m trying to get an idea of the best progression for my own education.
Did you stick with one pair for a long time to get the grips of it, or did you soon look into others?
So for me:
EURGBP, 4H
I started with this market on this timeframe as I am UK-based, am active and awake during european session and recognise there is currently a lot of volatility due to Brexit and ongoing politics in the Euro region, which I am interested in and stay updated on.
4H because I don’t look at charts all day and it teaches me to be patient with candle openings and closing.
EURUSD, 4H
Similar reasons to the above, especially interested in this market since the rise and rise (and fall?) of the markets following Trump and how the Euro situation is developing.
4H again for the same reasons.
When I was a newbie I traded EUR/USD for the longest time without paying much attention to anything else, which in retrospect was a mistake. I’ve moved onto other pairs since then.
Hi there
I believe that most of us have started with EURUSD just because it is most traded pair. There is tons of information about it which might help a new trader at the beginning to gain some experience. Also most of the financial news affect it, so it was seductive for making quick profits – big mistake of course
I am now looking with more interest on gold.
Putting the multi-day time perspective, I trade the majors only, mainly because they have the narrowest spreads for spread-betting. But also worth considering is the duplication of the primary currencies in multiple pairs - so you can get a good consensus of the strength of say the EUR relative to other currencies as it is found in so many major and minor pairs - the Mexican Peso e.g. only features in one pair, against the USD - I try not to be long on a major pair currency when all the other pairs show it as a short.
But I only trade the pairs who show a well established up- or down-trend. This means much of the time I can only consider getting into 1 or 2 or none of the majors at any time - so be it, I’d rather be in cash than in the red.
I started with EUR/USD “because I was advised to” (on the perfectly valid grounds that it had the highest liquidity, the lowest spread, and the timing of its RTH suited me).
The next one I added was GBP/USD (in spite of the high degree of correlation), and after that USD/CAD (occasionally).
I always tended to avoid AUS and JPY pairs because their spreads, “behaviour” and RTH’s were less suitable for me, but I’ve traded USD/CHF a bit, too.
I started with EUR/USD for pretty much the same reasons, and it took me quite a while to realize that this pair is very range-bound and I do better trading a trend than I do trading a range. After that I moved onto USD/CAD and USD/JPY.
I started learning FX with GBP/USD - never looked at any other pair during the learning stages. Ironically, it stayed that way, eight years later and I still predominately stick with GBP/USD for over 90% of my FX trades. I don’t really have a justifiable reason for sticking with this pair, or even perhaps promoting it - apart from the fact it’s made me money?
It’s relatively stable to trade, too, which helps - as are all the majors, though.
It is what it is - if it works then why change it.
EUR/USD. . Since these currencies have a large number of market participants and it is constantly available to trade in the market, this currency pair is considered the most volatile pair for traders who want to participate in forex trading between these two currencies
EURUSD and I haven’t moved much since then. I still trade it twice as much as any other pair. Good fluid price movement, loads of widely available economic data
I also started from EURUSD pair and now trying to add EURGBP. But I use D1 timeframe to exclude excessive “noise” of volatility. Because H4 little bit difficult for me as for newer and I have no time to do the trades while the day.
I suppose it all comes down to personality and the trading style being implemented. I also have to agree though - I can’t stand EU on an intraday approach.
I remember back in 2012 when both GU and EU were incredibility correlated it was far easier to make ‘assumptions’ - all be them still correlated, but not to the extent which used to be the case. I remember the times when you would see EU or GU rally before one another, a great tell that the lagging pair was going to experience the same.
I believe I came up with the name ‘cross currency divergence’, similar to spotting divergence on an oscillator, but in this case you overlay two highly correlated pairs on the same time frame and look for higher highs and lower lows which are not common between the two pairs in question.
Still works to this day - but I dropped it due to not being able to control the lack of constant correlation.
I did try to trade correlating currency pairs at one point, and tried pretty hard too, but I admit I didn’t have much success with it. So I stuck to what I do much better - technical analysis of a single currency pair using trendlines, RSI divergence and candles.
When I started trading I was looking on different pairs and this was not helpful for a new trader like me. After a year, a changed my strategic and I was focusing on just one pair and more specifically on EUR/GBP. However, this currency pair has less volatility but returns higher gains. If you are a new trader I will suggest you avoid currencies like this one and GBP/JPY which has very high volatility especially when there is economic news.
I think it is a good idea to focus your trading no more then three pairs, if you look for trades among too many pairs you will miss trades. For myself I took this approach, I divided the market into three parts, 1. Europe 2. Commodities and 3. Safety, then took the most traded currency representing these 3 segments of the market which gave me EUR, AUD and USD.
These three currencies and the three pairs they form EURUSD, AUDUSD and EURAUD make up the core of my trading, I try to take positions in the strongest trending of the three and hold until that trend ends.
To be honest, in my early stage of trading I was too much retracted, and I opened my demo chart with only EUR/USD and GBP/USD trading pair! Yes, I practiced my demo account by only these 2 major trading pairs! By the way, now I am working with 4 trading pairs in my live chart, I added 2 more pairs gradually according to my trading performance! I have specific trading strategy on every trading pair!
I love to trade aud/usd. Each week there’s a chance that it’s going to have a good 150 pips spreads from support to resistance level of one week . this is what I like most in this. I do hope that in a month I can really earn good 5% profit trading this pair.
I also trade with EUR/USd in demo when started trading. I do not think there is a role of accuracy in this pair . My reason was that it is a major currency pair with good movement all the time in market. It uses low spread from my investment so I can get profit early as market is going to my side.
