Losses are a cost, not a verdict
A stop being hit means the plan worked as designed: the loss was measured and capped. Moving a stop away to avoid it is how a small planned loss becomes an unplanned large one.
Learn
Start from the beginning, in order.
Five steps from opening a demo account to placing a measured trade, the vocabulary you will meet along the way, and honest answers to the questions every beginner asks.
The path
Five steps, in this order.
Skipping one is what makes trading expensive. Each step takes a session or two, not a weekend.
- 01
Open a demo account
It costs nothing and takes a minute. You get virtual funds and the exact terminal a funded client uses: same instruments, same spreads, same margin rules. Spend your first hour clicking around rather than trading — find the account switcher, the instrument list, the ticket and the position table.
- 02
Learn to read a chart
A candle is four numbers: where the period opened, how high it went, how low, and where it closed. A long body means one side won the period; long wicks mean the price was pushed back. Switch between M1, M5, M15 and H1 on the same instrument and watch the same move tell four different stories — the timeframe you choose is already a decision.
- 03
Place your first order
Pick one instrument you can follow — a major currency pair is the usual starting point. Choose the smallest volume the instrument allows. Buy fills at the ask, sell at the bid, and the position opens straight away, slightly negative because of the spread. Close it manually the same session and read the result in your trade history.
- 04
Put risk in writing
Before the next trade, decide two prices: where you are wrong (stop loss) and where you are satisfied (take profit). Attach both to the ticket. Then check what the position holds in margin and what is left free. A trade you cannot describe in those numbers is not a plan, it is a hope.
- 05
Go live smaller than you think
A live account changes nothing technically and everything psychologically. Fund it with an amount whose loss would not change your month, and keep the volume small enough that a bad run is boring. Scale up from results, never from impatience.
Reading a chart
What a candle is telling you.
Body
The distance between open and close. Filled downwards, hollow upwards — the wider it is, the more one-sided the period was.
Wick
The high and low the price reached but did not hold. A long wick is a rejection: someone pushed, and the market pushed back.
Timeframe
How much time one candle covers. The same market looks calm on H1 and frantic on M1; neither is the truth on its own.
Trend and range
Successive candles closing higher form a trend; candles bouncing between two levels form a range. Most losing trades are a range strategy used in a trend, or the reverse.
Psychology
The part no indicator fixes.
Revenge trading is the expensive one
The trade taken to win back the last one is usually bigger, faster and unplanned. If you find yourself sizing up right after a loss, close the terminal for the day.
Boredom is a position too
Nothing obliges you to trade today. Sitting out a market you do not understand is a decision with a guaranteed result of zero, which beats plenty of alternatives.
Write it down
Note why you entered, where the stop was, and what happened. After twenty trades your journal will tell you more about your edge than any course.
Glossary
The words you will meet.
Enough vocabulary to read the ticket, the position table and the rest of this site.
- Bid / Ask
- The two sides of the price: bid is where you can sell, ask is where you can buy. Ask is always the higher of the two.
- Spread
- The gap between bid and ask. It is the cost built into the price, which is why a fresh position starts slightly negative.
- Pip / Point
- The smallest step the price is quoted in. What one point is worth depends on the instrument and on your volume.
- Lot
- The unit volume is measured in. One lot equals the instrument's contract size — 100,000 units on a typical currency pair.
- Leverage
- The ratio that decides how much margin a position holds. It changes what you can carry, not what you make or lose per point.
- Margin
- The part of your funds locked while a position is open. Released back to free margin when the position closes.
- Equity
- Balance plus the floating profit or loss of everything currently open — what the account is really worth this second.
- Free margin
- Equity minus used margin: the room you have left for a new position.
- Margin level
- Equity divided by used margin, as a percentage. The single number that tells you how much trouble your open trades are in.
- Long / Short
- Long is a buy, profiting when the price rises. Short is a sell, profiting when it falls.
- Stop loss / Take profit
- Price levels that close the position automatically — one against you, one in your favour.
- Swap
- The charge or credit applied to a position carried past the daily rollover.
- Volatility
- How much and how fast a price moves. More volatility means more opportunity and a stop that is easier to reach.
- Drawdown
- The fall from the highest point your account reached to its lowest afterwards. The honest measure of a bad run.
Beginner questions
Asked honestly, answered the same way.
Nothing at all for a demo account. A live account starts from the platform's minimum deposit, but the useful answer is different: fund it with an amount whose complete loss would not change anything about your month. That number is personal and it is usually smaller than people expect.
Risk warning
Leveraged trading carries a high level of risk and can cost you your whole deposit. Prices move against you as easily as with you, and past movement says nothing about the next one. Trade only with money you can afford to lose, and be sure you understand margin before you open a position.
Not ready for that? A demo account uses virtual funds, so nothing is at stake while you learn.
Read enough. Open the terminal.
A demo account costs nothing and teaches faster than another article.