How much is one “lot” of EUR/USD?
"A lot (sometimes called a round lot) always refers to the quantity of physical good that you're getting, like a carton of eggs or a barrel of oil.  The tricky thing in the case of forex is that the physical good also happens to be a currency. A spot currency product trades in the denomination on the right-hand side (RHS) of the product name.  So if you're buying EUR/USD you are paying USD currency to get EUR ""units"", and if you're selling EUR/USD you are receiving USD by giving away EUR ""units"".  The EUR is the ""physical good"" in this case. The way I remember it is to think of all products (not just currencies) as trading pairs.  So AAPL in my mind is AAPL/USD.  When I buy AAPL/USD I am paying USD to get AAPL units.  When I sell AAPL/USD I am receiving USD by giving away AAPL units. The thing on the left is the physical good (even if it happens to be money) that you are exchanging, and the thing on the right is the money that you are exchanging. So, when I buy a lot of AAPL, I am buying 100 shares at their current price in dollars. Similarly, when I buy a lot of EUR/USD, I am buying 100K Euros at their current price in dollars."
"If the ""crash"" you worry about is a dissolution of the euro, then the main thing you should concern yourself with is liquidity.  For that, purchase the most highly liquid gold ETF or futures contract, whichever is more appropriate for the total amount of money involved.  Any other way and you will lose a significant chunk of your assets to transaction costs. If, on the other hand, the ""crash"" you were concerned about were the total collapse of the world economy, and people around the world abandon all paper currencies and resort to barter as a method of trade, then I can see buying several small pieces being a rational strategy, although then I would also question whether you were a sane individual." "The €100'000 limit is per bank, where ""bank"" is defined as a financial institution with a banking license from one of the ECB members. ""WeltSparen"", is operated by the MHB-Bank which is a German bank, recognized by the Bundesbank.  That means your money is initially guaranteed by the Bundesbank. When it's moved to the final saving account, you'll be saving at other banks, which are identified in the individual offerings. This can be an effective technique to split capitals in excess of €100.000. You should obviously look for banks that are backed by ECB member banks, but keep in mind what happened to Iceland: the national banks can also fail. In particular, the Bank of Italy at the moment is looking a bit shaky because Monte dei Paschi di Siena is currently failing and will require a bail-out. There's no official back-up for failing national banks within the ECB system." There is (at least) one service that allows you to convert USD, GBP and EUR at the interbank spot rate, and make purchases using a prepaid MasterCard in many more currencies (also at the interbank rate). They currently don't charge any fees (as of September 2015). You could use your US prepaid card to fund your account with Revolut and then spend them in your local currency (HRK?) without fees (you can check the current USD/HRK rate with their currency calculator); you can also withdraw to non-EUR SEPA-enabled bank accounts, but then your bank would charge you for the necessary currency conversion (both by fees and their exchange rate). If you have a bank account in EUR, you could alternatively convert your USD balance to EUR and then withdraw that to your EUR bank account. If your US prepaid card has a corresponding bank account which can be used for ACH direct debit or domestic wire transfers (ask the issuer if you are unsure), TransferWise or a similar service might also be an option; they allow you to fund a transaction using one of those methods and then credit an account in Once you declare the amount, the CBP officials will ask you the source and purpose of funds. You must be able to demonstrate that the source of funds is legitimate and not the proceeds of crime and it is not for the purposes of financing terrorism. Once they have determined that the source and purpose is legitimate, they will take you to a private room where two officers will count and validate the amount (as it is a large amount); and then return the currency to you. For nominal amounts they count it at the CBP officer's inspection desk. Once they have done that, you are free to go on your way. The rule (for the US) is any currency or monetary instrument that is above the equivalent of 10,000 USD. So this will also apply if you are carrying a combination of GBP, EUR and USD that totals to more than $10,000. If you are a Russian citizen a much easier and common solution would be a USD or EUR withdrawal from your Webmoney account to your Cyprus bank account. You will need to create a Webmoney account (www.webmoney.ru), get a primary certificate in your local Webmoney office in Russia (The list is available at the website), create WMZ (for USD) and WME (for EURO) accounts in Webmoney (done online). Then you can easily top up your Webmoney WMR (Rubles) account (created automatically) with Rubles, convert the sum into USD (According to the Webmoney rate, which is only slightly different from the official central bank rate) and then withdraw the money from your USD Webmoney account to your Cyprus bank account. The money will be transfered to your Cyprus bank account from UK Webmoney dealer. The transaction description would say that this sum is transfered according to the contract of sale of securities. This method prevents any Russian regulatory authorities from seeing your transactions. And the best thig in Webmoney is that they have stable exchange rates and they use classic currencies such as USD, RUR, EUR, etc. Webmoney also has WMG accounts (Gold) and WMX accounts (Bitcoin). Non-Russian residents can also open a Webmoney accounts. You can get one even in Cyprus, by the way:) I shorted at 1.35 recently, I was short from 1.39 and closed at 1.33  There are two collapse scenarios scenarios:  1. Euro collapse all countries revert (very unlikely) eur/usd = 0  2. Euro zone kicks out the PIIGS, eurusd =1.5, the currency now has only the strong countries in it which will reduce all of the eurozone risk.   Scenario two will kill you if you are short.  Short the currency and leverage it up (in fx you can usually get 50:1 leverage). There is a service TransferWise through which you can send money from UK banks to EUR bank accounts in the EU for a 1 GBP fee (much cheaper then about 25 GBP for a SWIFT transfer). You send them a UK national GBP transfer to their UK HSBC account, and they send the equivalent amount in EUR from their Irish EUR bank account to your EUR account - for example in Germany. What is best, is that they use bare mid-market ForEx exchange rates, without any markup on the GBP to EUR exchange rate, which is usually in the range of 2% to 5% in banks, so you don't lose anything on the exchange rate. According to your post, you bought seven shares of VBR at $119.28 each on August 23rd.  You paid €711,35.  Now, on August 25th, VBR is worth $120.83.  So you have  But you want to know what you have in EUR, not USD.  So if I ask Google how much $845.81 is in EUR, it says €708,89.  That's even lower than what you're seeing.   It looks like USD has fallen in value relative to EUR.  So while the stock price has increased in dollar terms, it has fallen in euro terms.  As a result, the value that you would get in euros if you sold the stock has fallen from the price that you paid.   Another way of thinking about this is that your price per share was €101,72 and is now €101,33.  That's actually a small drop.   When you buy and sell in a different currency that you don't actually want, you add the currency risk to your normal risk.  Maybe that's what you want to do.  Or maybe you would be better off sticking to euro-denominated investments.   Usually you'd do dollar-denominated investments if some of your spending was in dollars.  Then if the dollar goes up relative to the euro, your investment goes up with it.  So you can cash out and make your purchases in dollars without adding extra money.   If you make all your purchases in euros, I would normally recommend that you stick to euro-denominated investments.  The underlying asset might be in the US, but your fund could still be in Europe and list in euros.   That's not to say that you can't buy dollar-denominated investments with euros.  Clearly you can.  It's just that it adds currency risk to the other risks of the investment.  Unless you deliberately want to bet that USD will rise relative to EUR, you might not want to do that.   Note that USD may rise over the weekend and put you back in the black.  For that matter, even if USD continues to fall relative to the EUR, the security might rise more than that.  I have no opinion on the value of VBR.  I don't actually know what that is, as it doesn't matter for the points I was making.  I'm not saying to sell it immediately.  I'm saying that you might prefer euro-denominated investments when you buy in the future.  Again, unless you are taking this particular risk deliberately. Take a look at Everbank. They offer CDs and Money Market Accounts denominated in Euros for US residents.  https://www.everbank.com/personal/foreign-currencies.aspx "No, this is not solid advice. It's a prediction with very little factual basis, since US interest rates are kept just as low and debt levels are just as high as in the Eurozone. The USD may rise or fall against the EUR, stay the same or move back and forth. Nobody can say with any certainty. However, it is not nearly as risky as ""normal forex speculation"", since that is usually very short term and highly leveraged. You're unlikely to lose more than 20-30% of your capital by just buying and holding USD. Of course, the potential gains are also limited." The Euro is currently at 1.24. It's been lower than that before. Why do you think there is still so much money behind it? I'm not trying to push back, but do you know something that the market doesn't in terms of a collapse? Also, if you are so positive, are you heavily shorting the euro?  I by no means am convinced that the euro was a good idea. But I am convinced that they will do whatever they can to keep it alive. "Amount is the closest single word.  ""Amount in dollars"" would be the easiest way to specify information you are requesting.  ""Amount and currency"" if you ware in an area using multiple currencies.  An accountant might be able to give you a more technical term, but it would be accountancy jargon.  Amount due, credit amount, debit amount, amount deposited, amount credited, amount withdrawn, or amount included.  If you're writing instructions and want to specify that the person following the instructions needs to indicate the currency, you'll probably have to simply state that requirement.   Based on US centric thinking, inside the US, money is dollars, dollars is money.  For US citizens outside the country, we would always tack on the currency.  100 dollars, or 100 Euro.  There is a segment of Americans who do not understand geography, and that other countries exist, and that they use different currencies, might not realize that other countries have currencies named dollars, and that USD means US Dollars.  So for U.S. citizens, be specific and clear. Bottom line, if this is written for US residents, and they need to specify the currency, you need to explicitly require them to ""List the amount and currency.""" Sorry, but it doesn't make sense to convert to USD when you can find the actual price of gas easily.  Maybe I should have just stuck with EU prices since the article was EU-based.  1,15/L inflated by 1% every year ends up at 1,27/L after 10 years. Is there not some central service that tracks current currency rates that banks can use to get currency data? Sure.  But this doesn't matter.  All the central service can tell you is how much the rate was historically.  But the banks/PayPal don't care about the historical value.  They want to know the price that they'll pay when they get around to switching, not the last price before the switch.  Beyond that, there is a transaction cost to switching.  They have to pay the clearinghouse for managing the transaction.   The banks can choose to act as a clearinghouse, but that increases their risk.  If the bank has a large balance of US dollars but dollars are falling, then they end up eating that cost.  They'll only take that risk if they think that they'll make more money that way.  And in the end, they may have to go on the currency market anyway.  If a European bank runs out of US dollars, they have to buy them on the open market.  Or a US bank might run out of Euros.  Or Yen.  Etc.   Another problem is that many of the currency transactions are small, but the overhead is fixed.  If the bank has to pay $5 for every currency transaction, they won't even break even charging 3% on a $100 transaction.  So they delay the actual transaction so that they can make more than one at a time.  But then they have the risk that the currency value might change in the meantime.  If they credit you with $97 in your account ($100 minus the 3% fee) but the price actually drops from $100 to $99, they're out the $1.   They could do it the other way as well.  You ask for a $100 transaction.  They perform a $1000 transaction, of which they give you $97.  Now they have $898 ($1000 minus the $5 they paid for the transaction plus the $3 they charged you for the transaction).  If there's a 1% drop, they're out $10.98 ($8.98 in currency loss plus a net $2 in fees).   This is why banks have money market accounts.  So they have someone to manage these problems working twenty-four hours a day.  But then they have to pay interest on those accounts, further eating into their profits.  Along with paying a staff to monitor the currency markets and things that may affect them. It depends on your bank and the details in the agreement, but typically, interest is calculated daily. So if you borrow 1000 EUR for 1 day, you pay 15% * 1000 EUR * 1/360 = 42 Cent (41.666667 cent to be exact). You can simply multiply these 42 cent up with the number of days you plan and the number of 1000s EUR. Note that weekend days count too, even if you cannot pay them back on the weekend. The exact value will be very slightly different, as the interest is added monthly to the principal, and there is compound interest on the interest. Banks also often consider all months 30 days long for interest calculations.