Let's take the idea of buying first. What if you bought
something (it could literally be almost anything...a house, a piece of jewelry
or a stock) and it went up in value. If you sold it at that point, you would
have made a profit...the difference between what you paid originally and the
greater value that the item is worth now.
Currency trading is the same way...
Let's say you want to buy the AUDUSD currency pair. If
the AUD goes up in value relative to the USD and then you sell it, you will
have made a profit. A trader in this example would be buying the AUD and
selling the USD at the same time.
For example if the AUDUSD pair
was bought at 1.0615 and the pair moved up to 1.0700 at the time that the trade
was closed/exited, the profit on the trade would have been 85 pips. (See the chart
below…)
Had the pair moved down to 1.0600 before the trade was closed, the
loss on the trade would have been 40 pips.
Also, it makes no difference which currency pair you are
trading. If the price of the currency you are buying goes up from the time you
bought it, you will have made a profit.
Here is another example using the AUD. In this case we
still want to buy the AUD but let’s do this with the EURAUD currency pair. In
this instance we would sell the pair. We would be selling the EUR and
buying the AUD simultaneously. Should the AUD go up relative to the EUR we
would profit as we bought the AUD.
In this example if we sold the EURAUD pair at 1.2320 and
the price moved down to 1.2250 when we closed the position, we would have made
a profit of 70 pips. Had the pair moved up instead and we closed out the
position at 1.2360 we would have had a loss of 40 pips on the trade.
Remember, we are always buying or selling the currency on
the left side of the pair. If we buy the currency on the left side, which is
called the base currency, we are selling the one on the right side which is
called the cross or counter currency. The opposite would be true if we were
selling the currency on the left side.
Now let's take a look at how a trader can make a profit
by selling a currency pair. This concept is a little trickier to understand
than buying. It is based on the idea of selling something that you borrowed as
opposed to selling something that you own.
In the case of currency trading, when taking a sell
position you would borrow the currency in the pair that you were selling
from your broker (this all takes place seamlessly within the trading station
when the trade is executed) and if the price went down, you would then sell it
back to the broker at the lower price. The difference between the price at
which you borrowed it (the higher price) and the price at which you sold it
back to them (the lower price) would be your profit.
For example, let’s say a trader believes that the USD
will go down relative to the JPY. In this case the trader would want to sell
the USDJPY pair. They would be selling the USD and buying the JPY at the same
time. The trader would be borrowing the USD from their broker when they execute
the trade. If the trade moved in their favor the JPY would increase in value
and the USD would decrease. At the point where they closed out the trade, their
profits from the JPY increasing in value would be used to pay back the broker
for the borrowed USD at the now lower price. After paying back the broker, the
remainder would be their profit on the trade.
For example, let’s say the trader shorted the USDJPY pair
at 76.28. If the pair did in fact move down and the trader closed/exited the
position at 75.81, the profit on the trade would be 47 pips.
On the other hand, if the pair was shorted at 76.28 and the pair
did not move down but rather it moved up to 76.50 when the position was closed,
there would be a loss on the trade of 22 pips.
In a nutshell, this how you can make a profit from
selling something that you do not own.
In wrapping up, if you buy a currency pair and it moves
up, that trade would show a profit. If you sell a currency pair and it moves
down, that trade would show a profit.
