What is leverage in trading?Leverage does not change what a trade wins or loses. It changes how large a trade you are allowed to open - a different thing, and the reason accounts disappear in an afternoon.Insights
The rest of this site answers which broker. This part answers the questions that come before and after it - what the words on the account page mean, how to do the things you only do once, and how the pieces fit together into something you can follow.
Written against the same hundred broker records as everything else here, so where a figure appears it is one we hold and you can check it two clicks away.
Trading basics
How a leveraged account actually works, from the inside.
What is leverage in trading?Leverage does not change what a trade wins or loses. It changes how large a trade you are allowed to open - a different thing, and the reason accounts disappear in an afternoon.
Margin explained: the five numbers on your accountBalance, equity, used margin, free margin and margin level. Every leveraged platform shows all five, most traders watch one of them, and the one most people watch is the one that tells you least.
Margin calls and stop outsOne is a warning. The other is your broker closing your positions for you, at the worst possible moment, without asking. They are not the same threshold and they are not the same event.
What is negative balance protection?It stops a trading account from ending below zero and leaving you owing the broker. Whether you have it is not a question about your broker - it is a question about which of its companies opened your account.
What is slippage?The price you saw and the price you got are different. That is normal, it goes both ways, and how a broker handles the two directions tells you more than its advertised spread does.
Market maker, ECN and STP brokersThree labels that sound like three business models. Across our hundred brokers they appear 138 times, because most firms are more than one of them - and which one you get can depend on the account you opened.How-to guides
The orders you place, and where to put them.
Market, limit and stop ordersEvery order type is a position on one question: do you care more about the trade happening, or about the price it happens at? You cannot have both guaranteed.
How to place a stop-loss orderA stop is a trigger, not a promise. It says where you want to start getting out - the price you actually get is a separate question, and the difference between the two is where most of the surprises live.
How to use a take-profit orderSetting a target is easy. Leaving it alone is not, and a trader who habitually closes winners early has quietly replaced their strategy with a worse one.
How trailing stops workA stop that follows the market up and never comes back down. It is the only exit that can capture a move nobody predicted - and it guarantees you will give some of that move back.
How to choose a forex brokerSix decisions, in an order that matters. Most people start with the spread, which is the fourth of them and the one that changes least between the brokers worth considering.
How to check a broker's licenceNine steps, on the regulator's website rather than the broker's. The one that catches people out is the first: you are not checking a brand, you are checking a company, and the brand is usually several of them.
MT4 vs MT5: which should you use?MT5 is newer, faster and better specified. MT4 is still offered by more brokers than MT5 is, and for most forex traders the sensible choice is decided by something other than the feature list.Investing strategies
How much to risk, what to expect back, and how to spread it.
Position sizing: how to calculate trade sizeTwo traders take the same trade, at the same price, with the same stop. One loses 1% of their account and the other loses 10%. The only difference between them is a number they chose before entering.
Risk-to-reward, win rate and expectancyA 1:3 ratio is not better than 1:1. It is a different bet, requiring a different hit rate, and the ratio on its own cannot tell you whether a strategy makes money.
Diversification, and why four trades can be one betSpreading money across more positions is not the same as spreading risk. A portfolio of six markets that all fall together is concentrated, whatever the account summary says.
Risk management: the whole accountSizing one trade correctly is arithmetic. Keeping an account alive across a hundred of them is a different job, and it is mostly about the losing streak you have not had yet.
Copy trading: what the track record does not tell youCopying somebody else does not remove risk, it transfers the decision. A 400% return and a 90% win rate can both be produced by a strategy that is one bad week from zero.
Algorithmic trading, and why backtests lieAutomating a strategy removes hesitation, fatigue and the temptation to move a stop. It does not make the strategy work, and the tool most people use to check that it does is the one most likely to mislead them.Markets
What is actually behind the ticker you are trading.
What are currency pairs?Every forex trade is a comparison, not a purchase. You are never simply buying euros - you are buying euros with dollars, and the price can move because of either side.
Trading goldGold pays no interest. That single fact drives most of what it does, and it explains why the metal can fall on the day inflation comes in hot.
Index trading explainedAn index can close up on a day when most of its companies fell. That is not a glitch in the calculation - it is the calculation, and it is the thing worth understanding before you trade one.
Commodity trading explainedOil inventories fell, which is bullish, and the price dropped anyway. Commodities trade on the gap between what happened and what was expected - and on a curve most retail traders never look at.
Cryptocurrency CFDs explainedA Bitcoin CFD rises and falls with Bitcoin and gives you none of it. No coins, no wallet, no keys - and, less obviously, no way out while the market is shut and the price is moving.
Share CFDs vs buying sharesThe same company, the same price movement, two completely different products. One makes you an owner. The other makes you a counterparty, with a nightly bill.
Futures vs CFDsBoth give you leveraged exposure in either direction. One is a standardised contract on a public exchange; the other is a private agreement with your broker. Almost every practical difference falls out of that.Reading the market
Why prices move, and why the obvious reaction is so often the wrong one.
How interest rates move currenciesA central bank raises rates and the currency falls. This happens constantly, it is not a malfunction, and the reason is the single most useful thing to understand about macro trading.
How inflation moves marketsInflation fell and the market sold off. Inflation rose and shares rallied. Both happen regularly, and neither is irrational once you know what the number is being measured against.
How to use an economic calendarIt will not tell you which way to trade. What it tells you is when the market is about to become a different market, which is more useful and much less often acted on.
Fundamental vs technical analysisThe long-running argument about which one works is a category error. They answer different questions, and a trader with a view still needs an entry, a stop and a size.
What volatility does to your position sizeThe same one lot can risk $200 in a quiet week and $800 in a busy one. Nothing about the trade changed. The market did, and the position did not follow.Broker safety
Who is holding your money, and what happens to it if they stop.
What segregated client funds actually meansEighty-nine of our hundred brokers say client money is segregated. Twenty-two of them sit behind no compensation scheme at all. Those are answers to different questions, and only one of them pays you back.
Forex broker scams: the patterns that workThe convincing ones do not look fake. They have a real company name, a real licence number and a working platform - all of which can be copied from a firm that genuinely holds them.
What happens if your broker goes bankruptYour money is not with a brand. It is with one specific company, in one specific country, under one specific set of rules - and which one decides almost everything about what you get back.34 guides published so far, with more added as they are written and checked.