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Why are forex symbols "backwards"?
Consider:
120 km/hr = 120 kilometers per hour
200 USD/gram = $200 per gram
$8.65/hr = $8.65 per hour
but
1.33 EUR/USD = 1.33 euros per USD? Nope, it's just the opposite.
Why are they backwards like that? That's always kinda irked me. Is it simply a case of "it's always just been that way", or am I just missing something obvious?
Dan- Yes I do understand what it means, I'm asking _why_ it's in that order when there's a slash there which for everything else in life means the opposite. I noticed you left the slashes out of your quotes which makes perfect sense.
2 Answers
- PrivateBankerLv 79 years agoFavorite Answer
Hey, it irks me too, especially since I learned a system like this:
Quoted format...EUR:USD...meant 1 Euro costs X USD or... USD/EUR as in dollars per euro
Now many places have changed the semi-colon to a slash, i.e. EUR/USD format, so it looks like it's already been transposed - i.e. my old way I'd interpret it as euros per dollar, but it really means dollars per euro - extra confusing!
It was probably done for the same reason Americans drivers sit in the left front seat and drive on the right side of the road, but Brits do the opposite. How the heck did that happen when so much of the US was originally settled (colonized) by the Brits? I know they didn't have cars, but horse & buggies had to have some kind of standard, didn't they?
- 9 years ago
the left part of the symbol always represents 1 unit of that currency...
1.33 EURUSD means 1 EUR = 1.33 USD
82.15 USDJPY means1 USD = 82.15 JPY
1.20 EURCHF means 1 EUR = 1.20 CHF
