Discover How to Use Crosses to Trade the Majors

As much as the introduction of cross currency pairs has led to more trade opportunities in the foreign exchange market, trading them may be a daunting task to average traders. Crosses normally experience lower trading volume as compared with the major currency pairs and thus liquidity may be a problem when trading them. In addition, since the cross currency pairs represent countries with smaller economies, the volatility experienced by their prices would also be minimal.

 As such, it is better to analyze crosses to trade the majors. Even if you are not willing to trade crosses, you can study their price movements with the intention of identifying potential trade opportunities in the major currency pairs. Crosses provide an idea of the relative strength of a particular currency pair in the foreign exchange market.

 For instance, if you identify a buy opportunity on the EUR/USD and a sell opportunity on the USD/JPY at the same time, you may have problems choosing the one to go for. Some traders experienced in multiple position trading may go for both opportunities. However, it is recommended to choose one which offers the highest profit potential.

In order to make the correct decision on which currency to go for, you would look at the price action on EUR/JPY cross. If the trend of the EUR/JPY is going down, then it implies that the Japanese yen is somewhat stronger than the euro at the moment. Therefore, you would go for the sell opportunity on the USD/JPY rather than the buy opportunity on the EUR/USD because of yen's relative strength against the euro.

Because the euro is weaker as compared to the yen at the moment, if it starts to strengthen against the United States dollar, it is expected to strengthen less than the yen. Therefore, if the United States dollar becomes weak across the board, then you can harvest more profits from a short position in the USD/JPY than a long position in the EUR/USD.

If you are not very confident as to which currency pairs you should be trading, you can look at the crosses to help you in making the right decision. After you are able to master how crosses perform in the market, you can have an edge in your trading. You can easily identify profitable trade opportunities, regardless of the pair. Specifically, you can analyze crosses to identify good trade opportunities in the majors. Posted by Forex articles and reviews online.