Battle of the Currencies – What are the Most Tradable Currencies?
Most Tradable Binary Options Assets: USA Against the World!
The Foreign Exchange market (Forex) is one of the biggest in the world with an average of $4 Trillion daily volume. This means that 4 trillion bucks are exchanged electronically everyday through Forex brokers, banks and other financial institutions. But we are Binary Options traders so what do we care, right? Believe it or not, currencies are the most commonly traded asset of Binary Options as well and basically 90% of the traded pairs involve the US Dollar and another currency. We can safely say that US Dollar is the star of binary options so let’s see how it stacks up against its major counterparts.
Top Traded Currency Pairs – The 9 Stars of Binary Options
Recently StockPair, one of our most liked brokers, sent us a cool statistic showing the volumes of their top traded assets. First 9 positions are held by currency pairs, with a total of 79.60% of all the trading volume of StockPair clients. Of course, the greenback is right there in the mix, being the top traded currency by far.
4. AUD/USD – 9.26% Overall Volume
“G’day mate how r ya?” According to Mr. Internet this is a traditional greeting in Australia but I wouldn’t know much about that. What I do know is that Aussie (common slang for AUD/USD) is one of the most trending pairs and also one of my favorites. It might take a while, but when the pair finally starts to move, it does so in a very easy to follow manner.
3. GBP/USD – 10.73% Overall Volume
Back in the day, a transatlantic cable was used between New York and London to synchronize the quote of the two currencies and as a result the pair got its nickname- the Cable. This pair is a great example of how support zones work: if you take a look at a zoomed out weekly chart of GBP/USD, you will notice the pair started to climb in mid 2001, finally reached a top in late 2007 and then dropped abruptly just to be stopped by the zone where the original uptrend started. Coincidence… or technical factors at work?
2. USD/JPY – 12.24% Overall Volume
The second most traded pair on Stockpair’s binary platform, also called simply the Yen or a more fancy name – Ninja. Well, the only connection between this pair and a ninja is the fact that ninjas come from Japan but anyway, from 2007 to 2011 the Japanese ninjas kicked the greenback’s a$$ big time. Since then however, the pair has been in a clear uptrend and it seems like the Americans found the ninja’s weak spot.
1.EUR/USD – 30.92% Overall Volume
The pair leads with a comfortable advantage the race for the most traded asset and I must admit it’s one of my favorite pairs as well. It is also one of the most stubborn pairs, behaving like an untamed stallion sometimes and turning on a dime when news comes out. I can almost say that Euro and the US Dollar share a love-hate relationship, constantly battling for trend domination but no clear winner emerges and you will rarely see smooth trends on this pair, especially on the lower time frames. It’s nickname is “Fiber” but it’s not used so much and nobody knows exactly where it comes from: some say the Euro bills have fiber in them to give them durability and a distinctive feel; some say it’s because the Euro was invented in the fiber-optics era. But one thing’s for sure: everybody loves to trade the fiber.
The Others – No Buck No Trade
The 4 pairs above are the main players and make up a total of 63.15% of the entire Stockpair trading volume; the rest of the commonly traded pairs are EUR/JPY (5.98%), USD/CHF (2.97%), USD/CAD (2.80%), EUR/GBP (2.60%), and GBP/JPY (2.10%). As you can see the last five pairs are not really so impressive in volumes but nonetheless, we can clearly see that currencies are the most loved asset among binary options traders. The US Dollar is present in all 4 giants so we could say it’s USA against the world as the US economy is what influences the greenback… and without the buck we wouldn’t be able to trade anymore. Anyway, I don’t think the American currency is going anywhere soon so I don’t think we should be too worried.