Course 4 Beginner

Accounts, Platforms & Orders

Account types, the platforms you will trade on, what the screen is showing you, and every order type explained.

0 of 15 lessons

Module 1: Trading accounts

1
Demo and Live Accounts
A demo account is a practice account funded with virtual money that trades at the broker's live prices, and a live account is one funded with your own money....
2
Standard, Raw Spread and Commission Accounts
A standard account prices trades with a marked-up spread and no commission; a raw-spread or ECN account passes the market spread through and charges a fixed...
3
Swap-Free Accounts and Account Currencies
A swap-free account, also called an Islamic account, charges and pays no overnight interest, and exists so that traders whose faith forbids interest can hold...

4
MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5
MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 are the platforms most forex brokers offer, built by MetaQuotes and supplied free to traders through the broker. MT4, from 2005,...
5
TradingView and cTrader
TradingView is a charting and social platform that many brokers now let you trade from directly, and cTrader is a broker trading platform built by Spotware as...
6
Proprietary, Web and Mobile Platforms
A proprietary platform is one the broker built itself rather than licensed from MetaQuotes or Spotware. Some are excellent, particularly at the large regulated...

7
Watchlists and Charts
A watchlist is the list of instruments your platform shows prices for, and the chart is the price history of one of them drawn over time. Setting both up...
8
Order Tickets and Open Positions
The order ticket is the form you fill in to place a trade: instrument, direction, size, and optionally stop loss, take profit and an entry price for pending...
9
Balance, Equity and Margin on the Platform
Balance is the money in the account with all positions closed. Equity is balance plus the running profit or loss of open positions. Margin is the deposit tied...

10
Market Orders
A market order is an instruction to buy or sell immediately at the best available price. It fills almost instantly in a liquid market, at the ask if you are...
11
Limit and Stop Orders
A limit order waits to buy below the current price or sell above it, so it fills only at your price or better. A stop order waits to buy above the current...
12
Stop Loss and Take Profit
A stop loss is an order attached to a position that closes it at a set price if the market moves against you, and a take profit closes it at a set price if the...
13
Trailing Stops and Pending Orders
A trailing stop is a stop loss that follows the price as it moves in your favour, staying a set distance behind it and never moving back, so that a winning...

14
Slippage and Liquidity
Slippage is the difference between the price you expected and the price you got. It happens because the market moved between your order and its fill, or...
15
Execution Speed, Requotes and Market Gaps
Execution speed is how long a broker takes to fill an order, a requote is a broker's refusal to fill at the price you clicked with an offer of a new one, and a...

Every lesson's knowledge check plus a few extra questions, scored with feedback. Then continue to Course 5: Leverage, Margin & Risk.