CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. Excess volatility increases risk further. Be cautious. Past performance is not an indication of future results.
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The order screen

The order ticket: three choices, three readings — Sri Lanka

Half the ticket is yours to set and half of it reports back at you. Beginners fill it top to bottom and mix the two up. Sorted properly, it takes about a minute and produces a number instead of a feeling.

Three fields are decisions: trade size, stop-loss level and direction. Three are readings the platform gives you: the spread on opening, the running profit or loss, and the swap if the position stays open past the daily rollover. Set the decisions first — size, then stop, then direction last — and the readings become information rather than surprises.

The exercise below runs on a practice account, so being wrong is free. What it produces is one written line, not a result.

Which half of the ticket is which

Field Yours or the platform's What it means
Volume / size Yours, on every ticket 0.01 lots is the smallest step on a regular account; a cent arrangement runs the same order roughly 100 times smaller
Stop-loss Yours, before confirming An exit level held on the trading server, not on your phone
Buy / sell Yours, and last Buy expects a rise, sell expects a fall — a guess either way on a first ticket
Spread Reported The gap between buy and sell price, paid the moment the position opens
Profit / loss Reported What the position is worth right now, moving with the price
Swap Reported, in advance A small overnight charge or credit, repeated each night the trade stays open

Nothing in the right-hand column can be argued with, and nothing in the left-hand column happens by itself. That is the entire skill this page teaches.

Filling it in, decisions first

  1. Open EUR/USD and do not touch anything yet

    What you see: two prices, slightly apart. What to check: that you can point at the gap between them. Next step: that gap is the spread, and it is the cost of opening whichever direction you eventually pick.

  2. Set the size before anything else

    What you see: a volume field with a floor. What to check: the smallest value it accepts. Next step: use it. On a first ticket there is no argument for anything larger. Where that floor comes from.

  3. Set the stop 20 pips away

    What you see: a stop-loss field, empty by default. What to check: the figure the platform prints for what the trade can now lose. A pip is the step from 1.1000 to 1.1001, and at 0.01 lots one pip is worth about 10 cents — so 20 pips is roughly $2. Next step: write that figure down before confirming. Check it independently.

  4. Pick a direction, and give it thirty seconds

    What you see: two buttons. What to check: nothing — this ticket is not a prediction. Next step: press one. Treating the direction as the important field is the single most common way a first trade turns stressful for no reason.

  5. Confirm, then read the immediate minus

    What you see: a small negative number the instant the trade opens. What to check: that it matches the gap you pointed at in step one. Next step: nothing — the spread is a cost, not an error, and it does not need fixing.

  6. Close it deliberately and write one line

    What you see: a result you did not control. What to check: whether the size and stop were set before the click or after it. Next step: record four items — size, stop level, cost paid, and whether a swap appeared overnight. That line is the deliverable; the result is not.

Reading the trade while it is open

Two numbers move: the price, in pips, and the running profit or loss. They move together, which is the most useful thing a first ticket demonstrates — the second number is not an opinion about the trade, it is the first number multiplied by the size you chose.

Watch for a few minutes, then stop watching. Continuous observation adds nothing to either number and a great deal to the temptation to touch the stop. If the picture behind the price is unfamiliar, reading a chart covers it separately.

What one ticket does and does not establish

  • It establishes the screen. Field positions, the confirm flow, how a stop behaves — and that knowledge transfers to every account type and every platform.
  • It establishes the cost. Spread on entry, swap overnight, both visible in advance.
  • It establishes nothing about ability. A single outcome is noise; a run of tickets with the fields filled in the same order is a routine.
  • It cannot establish how a real loss feels. Practice removes that, deliberately. It is the one thing an account with money in it teaches and this one cannot.

Questions about the ticket

The trade showed a loss immediately. Was something set wrong?

No. A position opens on the far side of the spread, so it starts slightly behind by design. It is the same on every account type and it is printed before you confirm.

Should the stop be moved if the price approaches it?

Moving it further away converts a known loss back into an unknown one and undoes the only field that was protecting you. If the level was wrong, that is a finding for the note, not an edit to make mid-trade.

Why set size before direction?

Because size typed after a direction is chosen tends to match how convincing the idea felt, and conviction is not a risk measure. Set the figure you can lose first, then look for something to do with it.

Does the ticket look different on a professional account type?

The fields are the same. The cost reading splits: part of the spread is replaced by a commission per trade, so two numbers appear where one did. The decisions on the left-hand side do not change.

What if the position is still open at the end of the day?

Then the swap reading matters. It is shown before confirmation and applied each night past the daily rollover; a swap-free option removes it on eligible instruments, set at account opening or requested in the personal area.

Next

The three switches

Size, stop and leverage — where each is set and what none of them repairs.

Set them

The calculator

Turn a size and a stop distance into the figure the ticket puts at risk.

Check a ticket

The account card

What the type froze — including the floor under the size field above.

Read the card

Fill the ticket where the readings cost nothing.

A demo takes an email and a password and runs on live prices with virtual money — the same six fields, in the same places, with no bill attached.

The button is a partner link — it leads to the official exness.com sign-up page.

Open a free demo at Exness