European Currency Unit European Currency Unit The European Currency Unit (₠ or ECU, ) was a basket of the currencies of the European Community member states, used as the unit of account of the European Community before being replaced by the euro on 1 January 1999, at parity. The ECU itself replaced the European Unit of Account, also at parity, on 13 March 1979. The European Exchange Rate Mechanism attempted to minimize fluctuations between member state currencies and the ECU. The ECU was also used in some international financial transactions, where its advantage was that securities denominated in ECUs provided investors with the
Currency pair = Cable = GBP/USD. The currency pairs that do not involve USD are called "cross currency pairs", such as GBP/JPY. Pairs that involve the euro are often called "euro crosses", such as EUR/GBP. Currencies are traded in fixed contract sizes, specifically called lot sizes, or multiples thereof. The standard lot size is 100,000 units. Many retail trading firms also offer 10,000-unit (mini lot) trading accounts and a few even 1,000-unit (micro lot). The officially quoted rate is a spot price. In a trading market however, currencies are offered for sale at an offering price (the "ask price"), and traders looking