How-to guides

Stops, targets and trailing exits are the three controls almost every strategy is built from. They look simple on a platform - a price, a button - and most of what goes wrong with them comes from the gap between what the order says and what it actually guarantees.

Written as procedures rather than essays, because that is what you want open in another tab while you set one up.

6 min readMarket, 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.

7 min readHow 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.

6 min readHow 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.

6 min readHow 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.

7 min readHow 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.

7 min readHow 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.

5 min readMT4 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.