EUR/USD Explained: What Moves the Euro-Dollar Pair, With 27 Years of ECB Rates

Michael Whitman · Trading since 2017, full-time since 2020 · YouTube creator, 137K subscribers · Published 2026-10-03 · Updated 2026-11-02 · Reviewed 2026-11-01

EUR/USD tells you how many US dollars one euro costs. On 30 October 2026 the European Central Bank’s reference rate was 1.1172, so one euro bought $1.1172. Below, every daily ECB rate since the euro’s first trading day in January 1999 answers the questions quote pages skip: how far the pair usually moves, how often it breaks a round number, and how closely its neighbors follow it.

How it works

The euro is the base currency, and the dollar is the quote. The number is always dollars per one euro. When it rises, a euro buys more dollars: the euro has strengthened, the dollar has weakened, or both. When it falls, the reverse. The rate alone cannot tell you which side did the moving. The currency pair page covers base and quote for every pair.

A pip is the fourth decimal place, 0.0001. Because the dollar is the quote currency, the dollar value of a pip needs no conversion: $10 on 100,000 euros (a standard lot), $1 on 10,000 (a mini lot) and $0.10 on 1,000 (a micro lot).

Traders call it “fiber”. The nickname plays on GBP/USD’s older one, “cable”, usually traced to the transatlantic telegraph cable that once carried pound-dollar prices.

It is the largest slice of the currency market. The Bank for International Settlements’ survey of April 2025 put euro-dollar trading at $2,033.30 billion a day, 21.19% of all foreign exchange turnover, up 19.81% from $1,697.08 billion in 2022 even as its share slipped from 22.73%. That is about 2.78 times the $731.09 billion traded daily in GBP/USD. The major currency pairs page ranks the rest.

Why this page uses the ECB rate

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

The ECB publishes one rate a day for everyone. It comes from a daily concertation between central banks, normally at about 2:10 p.m. Central European Time, and the ECB says it is published for information only. It is a snapshot, so it misses whatever the pair does between fixings. What it gives in return is a free, complete record since 1999 that any reader can download and check.

A worked example

The last two published rates are a full-sized day. The ECB rate was 1.1130 on Thursday 29 October 2026 and 1.1172 on Friday 30 October, a rise of 42 pips.

• A long position of 100,000 euros was worth $111,300 at the first rate and $111,720 at the second.
• The difference is $420, which is 42 pips at $10 a pip. On a mini lot it is $42, and on a micro lot $4.20.
• For a short position the same 42 pips is a $420 loss.

Now set it against the month. October’s 22 published rates had a median move of 20.5 pips, so this was roughly two ordinary October days in one. And 1.1130 on 29 October was the lowest rate of 2026: the last time the ECB rate was that low or lower was 1.1112 on 13 May 2025.

The same arithmetic sizes a position. An exit 40 pips away risks $400 on a standard lot. In October 2026 that was about two median days of room; in 2008 it was well under one.

The original data

The sample. The ECB’s full reference-rate history, downloaded on 1 November 2026: 7,126 US dollar rates from 4 January 1999 to 30 October 2026, and 7,125 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. Only 3,255 of the 7,126 rates, 45.68%, sat above that first value.

Parity broke twice. The euro was worth less than a dollar on 753 published days: 706 from 27 January 2000 to 5 December 2002, and 47 in 2022, from 23 August to 10 November, with a low of 0.9565 on 28 September 2022. So 2022 was not the first time below 1.00: it was the first time in about 20 years, since December 2002, and the first run lasted almost three years.

The ordinary day is small. The median move from one ECB rate to the next was 36 pips, and 62.04% of moves were under 50 pips. 909 moves, 12.76%, 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 1999 to 2025, the median distance between a year’s highest and lowest rate was 1,675 pips, and the median day in the busiest year was about three times the median day in the calmest:

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

Every year’s high, low, median move and count of 100-pip moves is in the EUR/USD yearly file.

2026 so far. The rate began the year at 1.1721 on 2 January, peaked at 1.1974 on 28 January and slid to 1.1130 on 29 October. Against the last rate of 2025, 1.1750, it was down 578 pips, or 4.92%, on 30 October. The month of October alone took 183 pips off the 30 September rate of 1.1355.

What moves it

The interest-rate gap. The ECB sets euro rates and the Federal Reserve sets dollar rates, and the gap changes what holding one currency over the other pays; the carry trade page shows why money follows it. On 1 November 2026 the ECB’s deposit rate stood at 2.50%, after a rise to that level on 16 September 2026, and the Fed’s target range at 3.75% to 4.00%, after a rise on 17 September. That leaves a gap of 1.25 to 1.50 percentage points in the dollar’s favor.

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

Policy shocks next door. On 6 September 2011 the Swiss National Bank set a minimum of 1.20 francs per euro; the ECB’s franc rate went from 1.1111 on 5 September to 1.2036 the next day. On 15 January 2015 it dropped that floor “with immediate effect”, and the rate fell from 1.2010 to 1.0280 in one fixing. Both events changed how EUR/USD moved against its neighbors, as the next section shows.

How EUR/USD moves with GBP/USD and USD/CHF

Neither link is perfect. The ECB fixes the pound and franc at the same moment as the dollar, so the cross rates can be measured on the same 7,125 days, using the correlation of daily changes (1 means always together, -1 always opposite).

• GBP/USD: 0.66 over the whole period. The two moved the same way on 5,308 of 7,069 days, 75.09%. The yearly figure ranged from 0.52 in 2017 to 0.85 in 2006, and reached 0.86 in 2026 so far.
• USD/CHF: -0.79 over the whole period. It moved opposite to EUR/USD on 5,935 of 7,069 days, 83.96%. Ten years came in at -0.90 or stronger, the deepest -0.98 in 2012, the first full year of the floor.

The franc link nearly broke in exactly two years. It weakened to -0.41 in 2011 and -0.43 in 2015, the year the floor arrived and the year it went. Holding two pairs that “always” move together is one position until the year they do not; the correlation page covers sizing them as one. Every year’s figures are in the EUR/USD correlation file.

In practice

Measure distance in the pair’s recent terms. The 20 moves from 5 to 30 October 2026 had a median of 19.5 pips, against 70 in 2009. A stop or target set without checking which kind of year it is will be too tight or too loose.

Size from the exit, not the other way round. At $10 a pip on a standard lot, 40 pips risks $400 on 100,000 euros; the lot size page scales that down to a small account.

Watch the clock as well as the chart. Spreads are usually tightest while London and New York overlap and wider outside the main hours and around big releases; the London session page covers that window.

When it fails

Reading the ECB rate as a trading price. It is one snapshot a day. A broker’s daily highs and lows are wider, because they include the hours between fixings.

Treating parity as a floor. The rate went through 1.0000 in 2000 and again in 2022, and stayed below it for most of the next three years the first time.

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

Trusting a correlation as a hedge. The franc link, at -0.90 or stronger in every year from 1999 to 2006, fell to -0.41 in 2011, when a central bank decision changed the rules.

Expecting a stop to fill at its price. On 15 January 2015 the franc rate jumped 1,730 pips between two fixings, while EUR/USD itself fell 67, from 1.1775 to 1.1708. An order resting inside a gap like that fills at the next price available, not the one written on it.

Reading a fall as euro weakness. The 578 pips EUR/USD lost in 2026 to 30 October could come from a weaker euro, a stronger dollar or both, and the pair alone cannot say which. Check the dollar index before blaming one side.

Questions people ask

Which is better, EUR/USD or GBP/USD?

Neither is better; they differ in size and pace. EUR/USD trades about 2.78 times as much per day, by the BIS 2025 survey. GBP/USD moves more: a median 46 pips between ECB fixings since 1999 against 36 for EUR/USD, and 29 against 23 in 2026 so far.

What is the EUR/USD pair called?

The euro-dollar pair, written EUR/USD or EURUSD, and nicknamed “fiber”. The BIS lists the same pair as USD/EUR in its survey tables.

Has EUR/USD ever been below 1?

Yes, twice. On the ECB’s daily rate it was below 1.0000 on 706 days from January 2000 to December 2002, reaching 0.8252, and on 47 days from August to November 2022, reaching 0.9565.

What is the best strategy for trading EUR/USD?

No strategy is shown to be best here. What the data does show is how much the pair’s pace changes: a median day of 23 pips in 2021 and 70 in 2009. Any plan needs exits sized to the year it is in.

Related

The major currency pairs page ranks EUR/USD against the other six majors. The pip page shows how a pip is valued when the dollar is not the quote currency. And the forex page explains how the currency market itself is organized.

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