I just recently figured out why I always feel confused when looking at foreign exchange quotes. It turns out that the currency symbols of different countries look so similar that it's really easy to get them mixed up. For example, the symbol ￥, in Japan it represents the Yen, in China it stands for the Renminbi. If you don't look at the code CNY or JPY, you really can't tell them apart.

The $ symbol is even more exaggerated, used in over 30 countries worldwide. The US dollar is US$, Taiwan is NT$, Canada is C$, Hong Kong is HK$... from a glance, they all look like $, and you have no idea which country's money it is. Interestingly, the ฿ symbol in the crypto world represents the Thai Baht in forex, but in the Bitcoin world, it becomes the symbol for BTC, meaning the same symbol has two different meanings.

If you often need to type out various countries' currency symbols, memorizing these shortcut keys can save you a lot of trouble. The Euro € on Mac is Shift+Option+2, on Windows it's Alt+E; the US dollar $ is the same on both systems, Shift+4; the British Pound £ on Mac is Option+3. Instead of copying and pasting each time, using shortcut keys is much faster.

Later, I understood the logic behind forex currency pairs. EUR/USD is the exchange rate of Euro to US dollar, where the first is called the base currency, and the second is the quote currency. Traders make profits by buying and selling different currency pairs. Although currency symbols seem simple, the underlying logic is quite interesting, especially when you start engaging in international trading.