Placing Your First Trade
Market and pending orders, volume, SL/TP — the full workflow.
Written and reviewed by the Fundezy team · how we produce this
This lesson walks one complete trade, start to finish. Open the Trade Terminal in another tab and follow along.
Step 1 — Choose the market
Click a symbol in market watch (start with EUR/USD — deepest liquidity, most forgiving spreads in real life). The chart and order form follow your selection.
Step 2 — Plan before the form
Before touching anything, write down (mentally or in the journal):
- Direction and reason — one sentence referencing structure (Course 02).
- Stop loss — at the invalidation level.
- Take profit — at least 2× the stop distance (Course 03).
- Volume — from the 1% rule: lots = risk ÷ (stop distance × 100,000).
Example on a 100,000 account: risk 1,000, stop 25 pips (0.0025) → 1,000 ÷ (0.0025 × 100,000) = 4.00 lots.
Step 3 — Enter the order
Market order: pick BUY or SELL, set volume (0.01 step), attach SL and TP prices, submit. The position appears immediately in the TRADE tab with live floating P/L.
Pending order: use the pending form — type (BUY LIMIT / SELL LIMIT / BUY STOP / SELL STOP — Course 01), trigger price, volume, SL/TP. It sits in the PENDING tab until price reaches the trigger.
Step 4 — Manage
- TRADE tab — open positions with floating P/L, updating every tick; close individually when you choose.
- PENDING tab — cancel untriggered orders if the setup is voided.
- HISTORY tab — closed trades with realized P/L.
Both directions at once
An opposite-direction order never closes or reduces your existing positions: your desk is an MT5-style hedging account — the mode most retail brokers run. (Its alternative, netting, merges each symbol into one net position; exchange-style platforms work that way.) A BUY and a SELL on the same symbol coexist as separate rows, and economically they offset — equity moves only with the net. The broker model, however, charges commission per position while holding margin only on the larger direction leg (MT5's hedged-margin rule): two 1-lot buys plus two 1-lot sells tie up just one side's margin but pay four round-turn commissions while the book is risk-flat. "Locking" a loss by hedging locks in both legs' commission costs too — flattening realizes the loss once and releases the margin. When a symbol runs both directions, the net-exposure line above the TRADE tab nets the legs so a flat hedge is obvious at a glance.
Step 5 — Journal it
Open the JOURNAL tab and log the entry with your reason and emotional state (Course 04). Thirty seconds now buys you pattern-detection in a hundred trades.
What NOT to do
Don't widen a stop that's about to be hit (Course 03, Lesson 2). Don't add size to a losing position. Don't place a trade without a written stop — the form accepts SL/TP at entry precisely so your calm self makes the decision.
Your first trade should feel almost boring. If it feels thrilling, the size is wrong.
By the numbers
Run the arithmetic on a full-size ticket: 4.00 lots of EUR/USD at 1:30 ties up about 13,333 in margin — a seventh of the account behind a single click. That's the sizing lesson in one number. And the stop you set is not the price you get: the platform's stop-loss crosses the spread and pays execution slippage, filling at or through your level — the journal records by how much — while a take-profit, a limit order, fills at its level and never slips. Real brokers slip further still.
Practice in the simulator
Place one fully planned trade now — apply what you just read with simulated money.
Check your understanding
4 questions · answer all, then submit.