Hi, I am fairly new to forex so forgive me if these are stupid questions. I hold pounds in my balance. For example, when I trade USD/JPY it will convert my profits/losses back into pounds using the exchange rate GBP/USD. Therefore I was wondering why I should ever trade the USD/JPY pair and instead use the GBP/JPY pair? Thus meaning I should never trade any pair which doesn't have the pound as the base or quote? Also, if I wanted to convert whatever is in my balace to dollars (or another currency) how would I do this? Cheers.
Don't worry about it, but if your account is a USD account the the ###/usd means you trade $ for $ 1pt = $1 , if it's a ###/Eur then you'll trade at the Eur/Usd exhange rate so 1pt = $1.10 or whatever the rate is. Do a small trade to work out the difference, should be highlighted on your Pair Advanced list aswell, then you'll know your risk better., Just open an account and select USD $'s, ICMarkets lets me open Sub account any denomination I require, I use USD as mainly trade Nasdaq.