Reading Forex quotes is easy although it looks a bit confusing at the beginning.
Quoting Foreign Currency
The currencies in forex are always quoted in pairs. The two currencies are then perceived as an individual product which is known as XXX/YYY. The YYY is the ISO4217; international code of the currency. The XXX is the one unit of the price of the other currency that is put into it.
The first currency in the quotes act as the ‘base currency’.


To elucidate; USD/JPY, EUR/GBP, and GBP/AUD. In cases like this the fist three letters are the ones that are acting as the base currency. In forex terms this is the currency that always has a value of one. GBP/AUD is an indicator of the amount of Australian dollars that can be purchased with a sterling. it is actually really simple to be able to understand this bit.

FX Quoting: Bid/Ask and Spread
If you have EUR/USD 1.2385/1.2390 then the first numbers are going to be the bidding price and the second numbers are going to be the asking price. The bidding price is the amount that the base currency is going to be sold for and the asking price is the price that you would buy the base currency for. The difference between the two currencies is always referred to as the spread.
It can be seen that the bidding price is always lower than the asking price. The reason being that the bidding and the asking price and the difference between them is how currency brokers make money without having to charge commission to the people that they are working for. They can sell high and buy low simultaneously.

What’s a pip?
A pip is the smallest amount that a forex quote could be. so if you haver one currency that is 1.899 and another that is 1.900 then this is what is known as a pip.
A pip and what decimal value it relates to is dependable on the currency. If a currency is 1.2222 then the pip would be 0.0001. if a currency was 9.1 then the pip would be 0.1.

Hopefully this explanation gives you a brief insight into the functioning of the forex market.