Aussie

The nicknames are a survival from voice broking, where a word carries better over a noisy line than three letters that sound like three other letters. Aussie names the Australian dollar against the US dollar. The same tradition gives cable for sterling against the dollar, kiwi for the New Zealand dollar, loonie for the Canadian dollar and greenback for the US dollar itself. Unless another currency is stated, a nickname refers to the pair against the dollar.

The currency behind the nickname is conventionally described as a commodity currency, because the economy issuing it is weighted toward exports of metals, energy and agricultural products, and because a large share of those exports goes to a small number of trading partners. Two consequences are commonly observed: the rate tends to move with the terms of trade, and it tends to weaken when global risk appetite falls, since capital moves out of higher yielding currencies at those moments. Both are tendencies described after the fact, not rules.

The nickname is used loosely for both the currency and the pair, which makes a phrase like being long the Aussie ambiguous about what is actually held. The quotation removes the ambiguity: the Australian dollar is written first in the pair, so a rising quote means the Australian dollar has strengthened against the US dollar, and the reverse when it falls.