#TradingPairs101
When I first entered the world of trading, I thought that all currencies were only bought with dollars; I didn't know there was something called trading pairs, nor what the difference was between BTC/USDT and ETH/BTC, for example. After a while of learning and experimenting, I began to understand that choosing the right trading pair has a significant impact on the trade. Sometimes the currency itself is good, but the pair you are trading in may not have enough liquidity or may move strangely.
One of the things I learned is that some pairs are more stable and easier to predict their movement, like the pairs against USDT, because they are pegged to the dollar and their price is clear. As for pairs against currencies like BTC or ETH, their movement is more complicated, because you are tracking two currencies at the same time, not just one.
I started to always ask myself before any trade: What is the pair that gives me the best price and execution? Do I need to convert my profits back to dollars or invest them in another asset? Many times I use pairs against BNB or BTC because I don't want to go back to cash, but I want to swap between projects. I came to know that choosing the pair depends on my goal for the trade and on the state of the market as a whole.
Choosing the pair has become part of my decision; I no longer trade just because I saw a currency rising; I need to see which currency I am going to trade with, and how the movement of that pair has been over the past few days. I learned to monitor the volume, liquidity, and spread before I open the trade. This is a big difference from the old days when I would just click buy and that was it.
