Read the Currency Pair Before You Trade It (Nigeria)

Minimum deposit applicable; may vary based on payment method or geographic location.

What reaches a currency position

• Withdrawal requests are mostly processed automatically, around the clock — processing times may vary
• A Standard or Standard Cent account opens with no minimum initial deposit, so a first pair position can be sized small
• Raw spreads from 0.0 pips on the Raw Spread and Zero accounts — the bid-ask gap is the entry cost on every pair
• Negative balance protection keeps a losing position from taking the account below the funds deposited
• Swap-free (Islamic) accounts are available, which changes what holding a pair overnight involves
• The same pair charts and orders on MT4, MT5, the Exness Terminal web platform and the Exness Trade app
• Accounts are USD-based, so every pair is valued against one account currency after a single conversion

Processing times may vary depending on the chosen payment method.

Where each pair question is answered

Also: what a round turn costs, the full instrument list, measured spread readings, forex trading in Nigeria and signing in to the Personal Area.

Before the first pair position

Exness has operated as a broker since 2008 and lists currency pairs alongside metals, cryptocurrencies, energies, stocks and indices, all as CFDs. For someone whose interest is the pair itself, three practical points do most of the work: the entry cost is the bid-ask gap, size is set in lots rather than in money, and a position left open past server midnight is adjusted by a swap. Independent accounts of the broker are collected on Trustpilot. CFDs carry a high risk of losing money — confirm the current terms before depositing.

Base, quote and direction

In EUR/USD the first currency is the base and the second is the quote. The number on the screen says how many units of the quote currency one unit of the base is worth. Buying the pair is a view that the base strengthens against the quote; selling it is the opposite. There is no separate short instrument — the same line is traded in both directions.

That is why a pair is never really described as going up or down on its own. GBP/USD rising can mean sterling strengthening, the dollar weakening, or both at once in different proportions. A trader who follows only one of the two currencies tends to be surprised by the half of the move that was not being watched.

The convention also decides where the pip sits. Pairs quoted against the yen carry two decimals rather than four, because one yen is worth far less than one dollar or euro and the same percentage move needs fewer decimal places to stay readable.

Size before entry, not after

A position is entered in lots, and a lot is a fixed number of units rather than an amount of money. One standard lot is 100,000 units of the base currency; a mini lot is 10,000 and a micro lot is 1,000. What the position is worth in cash therefore depends on the price at the moment it is opened.

Because the size is fixed in units, the value of a single pip is fixed for that size too. That is the number worth working out before an order rather than after it: it turns a stop distance measured in pips into an amount that can be compared with the balance. The margin and pip calculator on this site does the arithmetic for the instruments it covers.

Margin is a separate number again. It is the part of the balance the platform sets aside while the position is open, decided by the leverage on the account. Margin is not a cost and it is not a loss — it comes back when the position closes — but it does limit how many positions can be open at the same time.

The trading day and the rollover

The forex market runs continuously from the Asian open on Monday to the American close on Friday, but a pair is not equally active across those hours. The overlap between the European and American sessions is where the major pairs usually move most, and Nigeria stays on UTC+1 all year, so that overlap falls in the afternoon rather than in the middle of the night.

Every platform day ends at server rollover. A position still open at that moment is adjusted by a swap, positive or negative, reflecting the interest difference between the two currencies of the pair. Hold a position for a week and the adjustment happens five times, with one midweek adjustment normally covering three nights so that the weekend is accounted for — which weekday that falls on depends on the instrument.

Swap-free accounts remove that overnight adjustment on eligible instruments, which changes the arithmetic of holding a pair for days rather than hours. Swap readings and hour-by-hour spread and movement are published separately on this site.

Reading a pair before the first order

1. Identify the base and the quote currency, and decide which of the two the view is actually about.
2. Read the bid and the ask, and note the spread in pips — that gap is paid on entry whichever direction the position takes.
3. Pick the lot size, then convert the intended stop distance from pips into money at that size.
4. Check the margin the platform will set aside, and confirm the remaining balance still covers whatever else is open.
5. Decide in advance whether the position closes inside the session or is carried overnight, because a carried position picks up a swap.
6. Note the hour. A pair behaves differently at the European open than it does an hour before the American close.

None of this predicts direction. It fixes what the position costs and what it risks before the direction question is even asked.

Anatomy of a currency quote

This describes the convention, not a live quote — measured spread readings are published on the live spreads page.

Pair groups and what defines them

Which individual instruments are available differs by account type — the platform carries the current list.