Online forex trading offers number of distinct advantages. Besides real time rates, your profit and loss is calculated on real time basis by the forex trading software and is displayed live online. Even though this is an important advantage in forex trading account but I strongly recommend that you must be aware about the methodology to calculate your profit and loss from forex trading.
Basically there are two straightforward rules for calculating your profit and loss from forex trading:
- Rule No.1: Whenever the quote currency (second currency) is USD, you can calculate the profit and loss in USD terms by multiplying the number of Pips with 10 USD if the lot size is a standard lot of 100,000. Similarly in case of mini lot of 10,000, the profit and loss from forex trading can be calculated by multiplying the number of Pips with 1 USD.
- Rule No.2: In case of quote currency other than USD, the profit and loss will be calculated by dividing the number of pips with the exchange rate and then multiplying the result with lot size.
Let us discuss few factual examples on how to calculate profit and loss from forex trading. I have illustrated three examples – one example with USD as the quote currency and two examples with JPY as the quote currency. For simplicity only Long trades (Trades where you buy first and then sell) are considered. The lot size is assumed as standard lot of 100,000 and lot quantity is taken as 1 Lot.