- O -

Odd Lot - A non standard amount for a transaction.

Offer - The price at which a seller is willing to sell. The best offer is the lowest such price available.

Offset - The closing-out or liquidation of a futures position.

Off-shore - The operations of a financial institution which although physically located in a country, has little connection with that country's financial systems. In certain countries a bank is not permitted to do business in the domestic market but only with other foreign banks. This is known as an off shore banking unit.

Overnight limit - Net long or short position in one or more currencies that a dealer can carry over into the next dealing day. Passing the book to other bank dealing rooms in the next trading time zone reduces the need for dealers to maintain these unmonitored exposures.

Over the Counter : Refers to trading that is not done over a formal exchange. Traditional forex is traded over the counter, meaning traders entered into forex transactions with one another over telephones or electronic devices. Counter refers to counterparty, in that with forex one trades with a counterparty instead of through an exchange. In online forex trading, the counterparty is the market maker.

Overbought : A currency pair is overbought when its price rises much more quickly than usual in response to net buying. Once overbought, the pair is then expected to make a contrarian move, meaning its price is expected to fall.

Offer : Also known as the Ask Price, it is the price at which a seller is willing to sell.

Overnight - A deal from today until the next business day.

- P -

Parity - (1) Foreign exchange dealer's slang for your price is the correct market price. (2) Official rates in terms of SDR or other pegging currency.

Parities - The value of one currency in terms of another.

Pegged - A system where a currency moves in line with another currency, some pegs are strict while others have bands of movement.

Pip - One unit of price change in the bid/ask price of a currency. For most currencies, it denotes the fourth decimal place in an exchange rate and represents 1/100 of one percent (.01%).

Position - The netted total commitments in a given currency. A position can be either flat or square (no exposure), long, (more currency bought than sold), or short ( more currency sold than bought).

Profit Taking - The unwinding of a position to realize profits.

- Q -
Quote Currency : The second currency of two in a currency pair. For the EUR/USD, USD is the quote currency. The exchange rate quoted is how many units of the second currency you will receive for one unit of the base currency.

Quote - An indicative price. The price quoted for information purposes but not to deal.