Chapter 3: Show me the money!

The three-letter codes used to identify currencies — such as USD, EUR and AUD — are set by the International Organization for Standardization under ISO 4217. You will find that most trading platforms will abide by this standard and use these codes.

The most common of the currency codes you are likely to encounter are shown in table 3.1.

Table 3.1: most common currency codes

Further to these prominent eight currencies you may also encounter the currency codes shown in table 3.2 (overleaf).

Major currencies

While there are more than 160 currencies in use around the world, the majority of FX currency trading is generally restricted to, and most often conducted between, just a handful of these.