A currency cross pair, also referred to as cross-currency pair or simply as a cross, involves a pair of currencies neither of which is the United States dollar. An example of a currency cross pair is the GBP/JPY, in which the two currencies in the quote are the British pound and the Japanese yen. Other examples include EUR/JPY, EUR/CAD, CHF/JPY, and AUD/CHF.
In ancient times, if you wanted to convert one currency to another, you would be required to first exchange the former into US dollars before exchanging the dollar amount into your desired currency. As an example, if an individual wanted to convert his British pound into Japanese yen, he would be required to start by exchanging the pounds into the almighty dollar, and then exchange these dollars into yen. Cumbersome, is it?
However, with the advent of the concept of cross-currency pairs, this cumbersome process has been simplified. It is now possible to exchange one currency for another while bypassing to first convert it to the United States dollar. Therefore, currency cross pairs allows for a direct exchange between two currencies.
To calculate currency crosses is not difficult. For example, if we want to get the bid/ask price for GBP/CHF, we will start by looking at the bid/ask price for both GBP/USD and USD/CHF. We will look at these pairs because both of them have the United States dollar as their common denominator. GBP/USD and USD/CHF are known as the legs of GBP/CHF since they are the United States dollar pairs linked with it.
Now, if we found the following prices for the pairs:
GBP/USD: 1.5000 (bid)/ 1.5005 (ask)
USD/CHF: 0.9800 (bid)/ 0.9803 (ask)
Then, to determine the bid price for GBP/CHF, we simply multiply the bid prices for GBP/USD and USD/CHF. If we do the math, this comes to 1.4700. To get the ask price for GBP/CHF, we multiply the ask prices for GBP/USD and USD/CHF, and this comes to 1.4709.
Currency cross pairs are important in the foreign exchange market because they create more opportunities for traders by providing them with more currencies to trade. Basically, the chart patterns formed by crosses are cleaner than they are on the other major currency pairs; thus, they are easier to forecast. If you want to keep off from trading the United States dollar because of a major occurrence or any other thing, then cross currency pairs is the best alternative.