Occasionally when speaking with other forex traders you may hear a reference to a label that you do not recognize.

“I’m looking at 10 lots in Cable, what are you thinking?”

“Hmm, have you taken a look at Fiber? Support looks like it might be breaking across the board.”

Wait, what? I assumed we were speaking forex trading? Although It might seem weird in the beginning, these are actually nicknames for different forex currency pairs!

Let’s take a look at the two forex currency pair nicknames that get used the most, Cable and Fiber.

GBP/USD – Cable: Back in the mid-19th century, prior to the development of satellites as well as fiber optics, the exchange rate between the British Pound Sterling (GBP) and also the US Dollar (USD) was in fact transmitted throughout the Atlantic Ocean by means of submarine cable television. The first such wire between the London and NY exchanges was stocked 1858 et cetera as they state, is history!

Traders love to talk about the good old days and this piece of forex trading history has stuck with traders generations onward.

EUR/USD – Fiber: But what concerning the brand spanking new Euro that was first introduced in just 1999? EUR/USD naturally does not quite have the very same enchanting background to draw upon that Wire does. So what do investors do? Well, being the funny lot that they are, they have actually gone as well as simply ‘updated’ the old Cord to a state of the art Fibre Optic line. For this reason the label Fibre!

The nickname Fiber is simply a play on words on the first nicknamed Cable. Isn’t it amusing exactly how nicknames such as this simply stick!

Of course, there are many more forex currency pair nicknames going around which we’ve listed for you here:

AUD/USD – Aussie
NZD/USD – Kiwi
USD/CHF – Swissy
USD/CAD – Loonie
GBP/JPY – Guppy
EUR/JPY – Yuppy
EUR/GBP – Chunnel