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Forex Currency Pair Nicknames: Cable and Fiber?

Sometimes when talking to other forex traders you might hear a reference to a nickname that you don’t understand.

“I’m looking to long 10 lots in Cable, what are you thinking?”

“Hmm, have you taken a look at Fiber? Support looks like it might be breaking across the board.”

Wait, what? I thought we were talking forex trading over here? Although It may seem strange at first, these are actually nicknames for different forex currency pairs!

Let’s take a look at the two forex currency pair nicknames that get used the most, Cable and Fiber.

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GBP/USD – Cable: Back in the mid-19th century, before the invention of satellites and fiber optics, the exchange rate between the British Pound Sterling (GBP) and the US Dollar (USD) was actually transmitted across the Atlantic Ocean via submarine cable. The first such cable between the London and NY exchanges was laid in 1858 and the rest as they say, is history!

Traders love to talk about the good old days and this piece of forex trading history has stuck with traders generations onward.

EUR/USD – Fiber: But what about the brand spanking new Euro that was first introduced in only 1999? EUR/USD of course doesn’t quite have the same romantic history to draw upon that Cable does. So what do traders do? Well, being the funny bunch that they are, they’ve gone and simply ‘upgraded’ the old Cable to a state of the art Fibre Optic line. Hence the nickname Fibre!

The nickname Fiber is simply a play on words on the first nicknamed Cable. Isn’t it funny how nicknames like this just stick!

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Of course there are many more forex currency pair nicknames going around which we’ve listed for you here:

AUD/USD – Aussie
NZD/USD – Kiwi
USD/CHF – Swissy
USD/CAD – Loonie
GBP/JPY – Guppy
EUR/JPY – Yuppy
EUR/GBP – Chunnel

Can you figure out why they’re called what they are? Why not Tweet us @Vantage and let us know!

Go through the Market Watch on your Vantage MT4 demo and find the currency pairs with nicknames yourself. You now never have to feel left out of a conversation with other forex traders again!