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Beginner · 4 min read

What a pip actually is

A pip is a price increment, not a feeling about volatility. The money it represents depends on the pair, the contract and the account currency.

On most forex pairs a pip is the fourth decimal place: 0.0001. On pairs quoted in yen it is the second decimal place: 0.01. A dealer who quotes EUR/USD at 1.08642 is showing a tenth of a pip, sometimes called a pipette. The extra digit does not change the definition.

The cash value of one pip is pip size times the number of units. One standard lot is 100,000 units of the base currency, so one pip on EUR/USD is 10 US dollars if the account is in dollars. The same one-pip move on USD/JPY is 1,000 yen, which then has to be turned into the account currency by dividing by the USD/JPY price.

Gold and silver are not forex pairs. A ‘pip’ there is a convention the broker chooses, often 0.01 on gold, and the contract may be 100 ounces rather than 100,000 currency units. Market Explain’s pip calculator states the contract it is using and lets you change it.

None of this says whether a trade is a good idea. It only prices a one-pip move so a stop-loss can be turned into money before the order is sent.

This is a teaching note, not a recommendation to trade and not advice about any broker. The calculators are the place to run the arithmetic on your own numbers.
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