EUR/USD: The Most Traded Pair, in 7,106 ECB Rates

Michael Whitman · Trading since 2017, full-time since 2020 · Published 2026-10-03

EUR/USD is the price of one euro in US dollars, and the most traded currency pair in the world. This page measures it with the European Central Bank’s own daily reference rate, every published value from the euro’s first trading day in January 1999 to 2 October 2026.

How it works

The euro is the base currency and the dollar is the quote. A rate of 1.1225 means one euro costs $1.1225. When the number rises the euro is strengthening against the dollar; when it falls the dollar is strengthening. The general rules for reading any pair are on the currency pair page.

A pip is the fourth decimal place, 0.0001. Because the dollar is the quote currency, a pip on a position of 100,000 euros, one standard lot, is worth exactly $10, with no conversion needed. That is one reason the pair is the usual starting point for anyone learning forex.

It is the largest single slice of the currency market. In the Bank for International Settlements’ survey of April 2025, euro-dollar trading averaged $2,033.30 billion a day, 21.19% of all foreign exchange turnover. In April 2022 it was $1,697.08 billion and 22.73%: the amount grew by 19.81% while its share slipped. The major currency pairs page ranks it against the other six.

Why the ECB rate is used here

Spot currency has no central exchange, so there is no single official high, low or close. Every broker’s chart is built from its own price feed.

The ECB publishes one rate a day for everyone. Its reference rates page, read on 3 October 2026, says the rates come from a daily concertation procedure between central banks across Europe that normally takes place at about 2:10 p.m. Central European Time, are usually published around 4 p.m. CET on every working day except TARGET closing days, and are “published for information purposes only”.

That makes it a fixing, not a trading price. It is a snapshot at the same time each day, so it misses whatever the pair does overnight and around US data releases, and every figure below is a move from one snapshot to the next. Its strength is that it is official, free, complete since 1999, and the same for every reader.

A worked example

Take the two most recent published rates. The ECB rate was 1.1298 on 1 October 2026 and 1.1225 on 2 October, a fall of 73 pips.

• A long position of 100,000 euros was worth $112,980 at the first rate and $112,250 at the second.
• The change is $730, which is 73 pips at $10 a pip.
• 1.1225 was also the lowest ECB rate of 2026 so far, against a 2026 high of 1.1974.

A 73-pip day is about twice the long-run median, and it is the kind of move a stop placed 40 pips away would not survive.

The original data

The sample. The ECB’s full reference-rate history, downloaded on 3 October 2026: 7,106 daily US dollar rates from 4 January 1999 to 2 October 2026, and 7,105 moves from each published rate to the next.

The whole range. The first rate was 1.1789. The lowest was 0.8252 on 26 October 2000, and the highest 1.5990 on 15 July 2008. The rate closed above its 1999 starting value on 3,255 of the 7,106 days, 45.81%.

Below parity, twice. The euro has been worth less than a dollar on 753 published days: 706 of them between 27 January 2000 and 5 December 2002, and 47 in 2022, from 23 August to 10 November. The 2022 low was 0.9565 on 28 September.

The ordinary day is small. The median move from one ECB rate to the next was 36 pips, and 61.96% of moves were under 50 pips. 909 moves, 12.79%, were 100 pips or more. The two largest came back to back: up 557 pips on 18 December 2008 and down 676 pips on 19 December 2008.

The year matters more than the day. Over the 27 full years from 1999 to 2025, the median distance between a year’s highest and lowest ECB rate was 1,675 pips:

So a fixed pip stop means different things in different years. A 40-pip distance was above the median day in 2019 and 2021 and well under it in 2008 and 2009. Every year is in the EUR/USD yearly file.

The range of every year, in pips, from the same rates:

What moves it

Interest rates on both sides. The ECB sets euro rates and the Federal Reserve sets dollar rates, and the gap between them changes what holding one currency against the other pays. The carry trade page sets out why a rate gap pulls money one way.

The dollar’s own swings. Because the euro is the largest weight in the US dollar index, a broad dollar move shows up in EUR/USD almost by construction.

The hours. The stretch when London and New York are both open is usually described as the busiest; the London session page covers why the European morning matters for this pair.

In practice

The spread is usually narrow on a pair this heavily traded, but it widens around major releases and outside the main sessions, which is when a fixed pip stop is most exposed.

Measure distance in the pair’s own recent terms. The table above shows a median day between 23 and 70 pips depending on the year. A stop or target set without checking which kind of year it is will be too tight or too loose.

Size from the stop, not the other way round. At $10 a pip on a standard lot, a 40-pip stop risks $400 on 100,000 euros; the lot size page shows how to scale that to a smaller account.

When it fails

Reading the ECB rate as a trading price. It is one snapshot a day. The highs and lows on a broker’s chart will be wider than anything in this data, because they include the hours between fixings.

Treating parity as a floor or a ceiling. The rate went through 1.0000 in 2000 and again in 2022. It spent most of the next three years below it the first time, and most of the next 11 weeks the second.

Carrying one year’s sizing into the next. A position sized for 2021’s 23-pip median day would have faced a typical day about three times as large in 2008 and 2009.

Assuming the biggest pair is the calmest. The largest moves in this data, 557 and 676 pips, came on consecutive days in December 2008, in the most traded pair there is.

Related

The major currency pairs page ranks EUR/USD against the other six majors. The pip page covers how a pip is valued on pairs where the dollar is not the quote currency. And currency pair explains base and quote for every pair, not only this one.

This page is educational, not financial advice. Test every idea on your own charts before risking money.