An accounting term used to refer to the currency in which an investor maintains its book of accounts. As part of an IBKR account, each client specifies a single base currency which determines the currency of translation for statements and the currency used for determining margin requirements. While the base currency selected will typically be the principal form of currency in which the client intends to hold cash and the denomination of instruments which the client trades, clients are eligible to hold cash balances and trade instruments denominated in either a base or non-base currency. If the client elects to maintain a cash or IRA account, then they are restricted to holding only long cash balances regardless of the currency of denomination. Clients maintaining a cash or margin account may change their base currency at any time in Client Portal and may make deposits or withdrawals in a non-base currency.<\/p>\n
Base Currencies are available in AUD, CAD, CHF, CZK, DKK, EUR, GBP, HKD, HUF, JPY, MXN, NOK, NZD, SEK, SGD or USD.<\/p>\n
In addition, accounts opened via IB (India) Pvt. Ltd can only use INR as the base currency, and accounts opened via Interactive Brokers Securities Japan, Inc. can only use JPY as the base currency. In addition, for foreign exchange market purposes, the term Base Currency refers to the first currency in a currency pair and the second, the Quote Currency.<\/p>\n
For example, for the USD.CAD cross pair, USD is considered the Base Currency and CAD the Quote Currency.<\/p>\n
In Forex markets the USD is generally considered the base currency for quoting purposes, that is the quotes are expressed as a unit of USD $1 per the other currency quoted in the pair. The primary exceptions to this rule are the GBP, the EUR and the AUD.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An accounting term used to refer to the currency in which an investor maintains its book of accounts. As part of an IBKR account, each client specifies a single base currency which determines the currency of translation for statements and the currency used for determining margin requirements. While the base currency selected will typically be the principal form of currency in which the client intends to hold cash and the denomination of instruments which the client trades, clients are eligible to hold cash balances and trade instruments denominated in either a base or non-base currency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"traders-glossary":[13253,13251],"class_list":{"0":"post-178942","1":"glossary-terms","2":"type-glossary-terms","3":"status-publish","5":"traders-glossary-trading-terms-b","6":"traders-glossary-trading-alphabet"},"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n