Major Pair
The most heavily traded currency pairs, all involving the US dollar.
Also called: majors · major currency pair
Written by Javier Sánchez Ros
In plain language
The majors are EUR/USD, USD/JPY, GBP/USD, USD/CHF, AUD/USD, USD/CAD and NZD/USD.
They carry the deepest liquidity and tightest spreads, which makes execution cheaper and more predictable.
Pairs without the dollar are called crosses, and pairs involving smaller economies are exotics. Both have wider spreads and thinner books.
Worked through
The same 20-pip scalp on EUR/USD and on a thin cross
- Target
- 20 pips
- EUR/USD spread
- ~0.6 pips
- Thin cross spread
- ~6 pips
- Cost as share of target
- 3% vs 30%
Spreads move with the session and the broker, so treat these as the usual order of magnitude rather than a quote. The ratio is what survives: a major costs a fraction of a pip to enter, a thin cross costs several.
On a 20-pip target that is the difference between paying 3% of the move to get in and paying 30%. The second trade has to be right far more often to end up in the same place, and it is the same strategy on the same timeframe — only the instrument changed.
Widen the target to 200 pips and the picture inverts: 0.6 pips and 6 pips are both noise against a move that size. Spread is a fixed toll, so it only matters relative to the distance you are travelling. That is the real reason short-timeframe trading concentrates in the majors.
Why it matters
Spread is a fixed cost on every trade. On majors it is a small fraction of a typical move; on exotics it can consume a meaningful part of the expected profit.
Common mistakes
- Trading exotics on short timeframes where the spread dominates the edge.
- Assuming exotic spreads stay stable during volatile sessions.
Keep exploring
These concepts are connected. Understanding one usually makes the next one easier.
Two currencies quoted against each other, showing how much of one buys the other.
The gap between the bid and the ask — the built-in cost of entering a trade.
How easily an asset can be bought or sold without moving its price.
The first currency in a pair — the one being bought or sold.
The second currency in a pair — the one the price is expressed in.