Direct and Indirect Quotes

Direct and indirect quotes describe two ways of expressing the same exchange rate from the point of view of a domestic currency. A direct quote states how much domestic currency is needed to buy one unit of a foreign currency, while an indirect quote states how much foreign currency one unit of the domestic currency buys. For a trader in the euro area, EUR/USD is an indirect quote and USD/EUR would be the direct one. The two are simple reciprocals: divide one by the rate to flip between them. Retail platforms almost always show the market convention rather than your local one, so the terms matter mainly for interpreting bank rates, textbooks and central bank data.