Charts, Platforms, Orders and Execution.

You now know what a currency pair is and how a long or short makes or loses money. The next step is the screen you will stare at every day: the chart.

A price chart is a record of where trades happened over time. Time runs left to right along the bottom. Price runs up the right-hand side. That is all it is. It is a history, not a forecast. Anything you draw on it is your interpretation of that history.

Most platforms build their charts from the bid price, the price at which you can sell. When you buy, you pay the slightly higher ask. So a buy order can fill a little above the line you see on the chart, and a sell stop can be triggered by the bid. Keep that in mind when a trade seems to have filled at a price the chart never showed. Often the spread is the explanation.

The most common chart style is the candlestick chart. Each candle summarises one slice of time, such as one hour. It shows four prices: the open (the first price in that slice), the high (the highest), the low (the lowest) and the close (the last).

The thick part is the body. It runs from the open to the close. The thin lines above and below are the wicks, sometimes called shadows. They reach up to the high and down to the low. If the close is above the open, the price rose during that slice and the candle is usually drawn green or white. If the close is below the open, it fell and the candle is usually red or black. Colours vary by platform, so check your settings.

Here is what a candle does not tell you: the order in which things happened. A green hourly candle might have dropped first and then rallied, or rallied, dropped and rallied again. If you were in a trade during that hour, the path mattered a great deal. The candle only shows the summary.

Your platform is the software where you see charts and send orders. On OA Funded the platform is TradeLocker. Every platform looks a little different, but every order ticket asks the same questions, and you should be able to answer each one before you open it.

Account: which account will this order go to? Many traders have a practice account and another account open at the same time. Symbol: which pair? Side: buy or sell? Size: how many units? Many platforms show size in lots. One standard lot is 100,000 units of the base currency, 0.10 lots is 10,000 units and 0.01 lots is 1,000 units. Order type: market, limit or stop (explained next). Stop-loss: the price at which the trade closes automatically if you are wrong. Take-profit: the price at which it closes automatically if it reaches your target.

A good habit: decide every one of those answers on paper or in your journal first. The ticket is where you copy your decisions in, not where you make them.

Here is a simple way to remember the difference. A limit order says 'only at this price or better'. You use it when you want to buy cheaper or sell higher than the market is now. A stop order says 'once price gets here, get me in or out'. You use it when you want the market to prove something first, such as breaking above a level, or when you want out because your idea has failed.

A stop-loss is a stop order that closes a trade. When the price touches your stop level, the platform sends an order to close at the next available price. Most of the time that price is at or very close to your level. But in a fast market, after big news or when the market reopens after a weekend, the next available price can be well beyond your stop. Traders on forums regularly post screenshots asking whether their stop 'failed'. Usually it worked exactly as designed. The price simply jumped past it.

Some providers offer guaranteed stops for an extra charge. Most accounts do not have them. Assume yours does not unless the provider says so in writing.

Many of the most painful losses beginners describe come from typing, not from analysis. One common example: you mean to type 0.20 lots and type 2.0. On the trade above, the loss at the stop becomes 200,000 x 0.0025 = $500 instead of $50. That is 5% of a $10,000 account, gone because of one decimal point. Other classics: pressing sell when you meant buy, sending the order to the wrong account, or trading GBP/USD when your plan was for EUR/GBP.

The fix is boring and it works. Before every order, stop for ten seconds and read the ticket out loud, in this order. Account. Symbol. Side. Size, and what that size loses in dollars at the stop. Order type. Stop-loss on the correct side: below a long, above a short. Take-profit on the correct side. Then send.

After the order fills, check the open position immediately. Is the size what you meant? Is the stop really attached? If anything is wrong, close or fix it straight away, before the market decides for you.