Aggregate Currency Exposure

Aggregate currency exposure is your net position in a single currency once every open trade is broken into its two sides. Long EUR/USD and short GBP/USD look like two different trades, but both are short the US dollar; add a third and the account is not diversified across three ideas, it is one dollar position in three tickets. Working it out is arithmetic: convert each position to notional value, split it into the base and quote legs, and sum per currency. The result often shows concentration a trade list hides — and it is this net figure that a central bank decision or a broad risk move actually hits. Netting also cuts the other way: two positions can partly cancel, leaving less real exposure than the number of open tickets suggests.