From reading the information about NewOrderSingle FIX-Protocol message on FIXimate I can't figure out how to properly use the Side, tag 54=.
For the below orders, what are the correct sides?
CAD, sell USD: Symbol is USD/CAD, Side needs to be 1 or 2?EUR, sell USD: Symbol is EUR/USD, Side needs to be 1 or 2?You're asking whether the instrument is quoted as base/terms currency or the inverse.
That depends on your counterparty and the FIX-Protocol specification that you and they specify together.
Usually it's baseCCY/termsCCY and the answer to your question is 2 and 1:
the 2 to buy termsCCY, the CAD in USDCAD,
and
the 1 to buy baseCCY, the EUR of EURUSD.
So you see you can use either case as shown by your CADUSD example. That's because a client, for example, may want to buy 1.000.000 USD of EURUSD (in other words a nice round figure amount quoted in USD) but with the price quoted in the conventional EURUSD and not as the unconventional USDEUR.
In that case it would be 2 to buy USD (and sell EUR).
From memory I think the baseCCY, or dealt currency, FIX-Protocol tag is 12= or 15=, and that removes any ambiguity about the size and side and currency quoting convention.
No doubt you get what I am talking about tho.