Calculating Pip Value - Ask/Bid Question

Hi. I’m calculating the Pip Value for my trades but I have a question if someone can help me or tell me his opinion.

In a nutshell, when I want to trade for example AUDCAD on my USD account, I know that each 1 PIP Movement of trades in this chart will result in 10CAD. In general 1pip in XXXYYY chart results in 10YYY (except JPY pairs which will result in 1000 JPY).
Then, in order to calculate my Pip Value in dollars (my account’s currency), I have to convert these 10CAD to USD. So, I’ll use the USDCAD chart and the rate is 1.24900. That would mean that my “Dollar Pip Value” for AUDCAD is 10CAD/1.24900 = 8USD.

My problem though is:

Should I use the Ask OR Bid Price of the USDCAD chart that I want to convert CAD to USD?
Ask and Bid Prices being “almost the same” doesn’t help me because I want to make an EA and need to know which of the 2 rates (Bid or Ask) I should use.
Or maybe it doesn’t matter which one I use as long as I stick with it and always use that same one? (for all my calculations on all pairs I want to open BUY and SELL orders)
Or maybe it depends? Maybe it depends if I open a BUY or SELL order? I maybe then need the Ask for BUY Order and the Bid for SELL Order or the opposite.

Thanks for any help or any opinion on the matter in advance

this is totally weird, but this is probably the only question that i never really got a good answer for it..

(if i am off topic, or if i am not properly answering your question, please forgive)

but let me show you how i do this...

if i am trading eurusd, then my profit per 0.0001 of movement is:

double perpip=(lots*10);

0.01 lots gives $0.10 of profit

this works if my quote currency is the same as my base currency..
ie, my account is based in USD and EURUSD ends in USD.

so, 0.01 lots give $0.10 per pip of movement..

but what if the quote currency is not the same as my account's base currency?

what if i am trading EURCHF?

double perpip=(lots*10)/USDCHF;

OR, i think you could also say this:

double perpip=(lots*10)*CHFUSD;

SO, your question above, if i understand you correctly, is should the USDCHF variable above be for the bid or the ask?

is that your question?

cuz it is really odd, cuz usually i am a retard about details, but do you know what i did cuz i could not figure out which it was, the bid or the ask?

i used the average of the bid and the ask and i just moved on with other issues.

truth is, i would like to know which is the correct one to use, the bid or the ask..

i hope that i am not too off topic for your very fine question, which i can hardly believe they moved this into rookie talk, lol..

A bit of trivia about bid/ask conversion issues...

1/eurusd.bid=usdeur.ask

and

1/eurusd.ask=usdeur.bid

i think that is right, anyways..

Yeap. you got it. This is the part that I'd like to hear other people's opinions on how they deal with it or if there is any "official" correct way.


I'm not sure too, why they moved it to rookie but it doesn't matter to me as long as I still get in this subforum too some good points/replies.
I had it in Money/Risk Management because I need the correct Price rate to end up with my correct Lot Size to manage my account balance. So I thought Management was more appropriate.

why is it so important to get this calculation so precise, when you could just use the typical or average price and the difference wont even be a sliver of a sliver of a penny..

typical/average price=(bid+ask)/2;

maybe if i know why you need such high precision, maybe that will inspire me or someone else to figure this out..

I use Pip Value to calculate my correct Lot Size as I said above.
But it may be not worth it indeed. I may want full precision just trying to be a perfectionist but MT4 Platform anyway rounds up to 2 decimal Lot Sizes so precision goes out of the window. So choosing Ask vs Bid or even average I think it won’t make difference even for the 2nd decimal Lot Size. Only on lower fractions. I may just pick one price and stick with it as it won't change much the Lot size if at all.