About the Forex Market
The foreign exchange (FX or forex) market is the largest and most liquid financial market in the world, trading roughly $7.5 trillion in daily volume. It runs 24 hours a day, five days a week, across overlapping sessions in Sydney, Tokyo, London, and New York. Prices on this page are spot quotes for the most actively traded currency pairs.
What Is the US Dollar Index (DXY)?
The DXY measures the dollar's value against a basket of six major currencies — the euro (57.6%), Japanese yen (13.6%), British pound (11.9%), Canadian dollar (9.1%), Swedish krona (4.2%), and Swiss franc (3.6%). A rising DXY means the dollar is strengthening broadly; a falling DXY means dollar weakness. The index uses a fixed geometric formula and was first published in 1973.
Understanding the Major Pairs
- EUR/USD — the world's most traded pair; roughly 28% of daily FX volume. Driven by ECB / Fed policy spreads and eurozone vs US growth.
- USD/JPY — the carry-trade benchmark; highly sensitive to US-Japan rate differentials and BoJ intervention risk.
- GBP/USD — "Cable"; tracks UK inflation, BoE policy, and political risk premiums.
- USD/CHF — safe-haven flows into the Swiss franc tend to push this lower in risk-off regimes.
- USD/CAD — "Loonie"; heavily correlated to oil prices given Canada's energy export base.
- AUD/USD — "Aussie"; tracks risk sentiment, iron ore prices, and China demand.
- NZD/USD — "Kiwi"; smaller and more volatile commodity-currency counterpart to AUD.
Reading the Currency Strength Meter
The strength meter aggregates each currency's average % change across every pair it appears in (with sign flipped when it's the quote currency). A currency at the top of the list is broadly strong against the basket; a currency at the bottom is broadly weak. This gives a faster read on cross-market themes than scanning individual pairs.
Cross vs Direct Quotes
The cross-rates matrix shows the price of 1 unit of the row currency in column currency. Some are direct quotes (e.g. EUR/GBP); others are derived by bridging through USD. Cell color intensity scales to the largest move on the board, so the matrix reads as a heatmap of the day's currency themes.
Pips and Quote Conventions
A pip is the 4th decimal place for most pairs (0.0001) and the 2nd decimal place for JPY pairs (0.01). The "Change" column on the cards above is expressed in price units, not pips — for non-JPY pairs the 5th decimal is a "fractional pip" or pipette.