Major cross-currency pairs

Although the vast majority of currency trading takes place in
the dollar pairs, cross-currency pairs serve as an alternative
to always trading the U.S. dollar. A cross-currency pair, or
cross or crosses for short, is any currency pair that does not
include the U.S. dollar. Cross rates are derived from the
respective USD pairs but are quoted independently.
Crosses enable traders to more directly target trades to spe-
cific individual currencies to take advantage of news or events.
For example, your analysis may suggest that the Japanese yen
has the worst prospects of all the major currencies going for-
ward, based on interest rates or the economic outlook. To take
advantage of this, you’d be looking to sell JPY, but against
which other currency? You consider the USD, potentially
buying USD/JPY (buying USD/selling JPY) but then you con-
clude that the USD’s prospects are not much better than the
JPY’s. Further research on your part may point to another cur-
rency that has a much better outlook (such as high or rising
interest rates or signs of a strengthening economy), say the
Australian dollar (AUD). In this example, you would then be
looking to buy the AUD/JPY cross (buying AUD/selling JPY) to
target your view that AUD has the best prospects among major
currencies and the JPY the worst.
The most actively traded crosses focus on the three major non-
USD currencies (namely EUR, JPY, and GBP) and are referred to
as euro crosses, yen crosses, and sterling crosses. Table below
highlights the most actively traded cross currency pairs.

Most Actively Traded Cross Pairs
ISO Currency Pair	Countries	Market Name
EUR/CHF	Eurozone/Switzerland	Euro-Swiss
EUR/GBP	Eurozone/United Kingdom	Euro-sterling
EUR/JPY	Eurozone/Japan	Euro-yen
GBP/JPY	United Kingdom/Japan	Sterling-yen
AUD/JPY	Australia/Japan	Aussie-yen
NZD/JPY	New Zealand/Japan	Kiwi-yen