A trade from start to finish.

01

Choosing the size from the money at risk.

The trader does not begin with a size. They begin with a stop-loss and an amount they are prepared to lose, 50.00 USD, and the ticket works out the largest size that loses no more than that if the position is closed exactly at the stop.

02

The costs, shown before the click.

With the size set, the ticket states four costs in US dollars at the quote on screen. None of them is a surprise afterwards: they are the same rules the server applies.

03

The fill, and its receipt.

The order is sent with the price on screen, 1.08496. A demo order is filled by the server at the server’s own price when the order arrives, whatever the screen showed. In this example the price had moved two points, so the fill is at 1.08498. The receipt puts the two side by side.

04

The position while it is open.

An open buy is valued at the bid, the price it could be sold at. A while later the quote is 1.08710 / 1.08722, and the position shows a profit that is not yet anything: it is floating.

05

The close, and why it closed.

The price turns. When the server next looks, the bid is 1.08243: below the stop-loss at 1.08246. The server closes the position at the price available then, not at the level, and writes down why. The closing order has a receipt of its own.

Why 51.70 and not 50.00.

The amount at risk was a plan made at the price on screen. The trade lost a little more, and each part of the difference is on a receipt.

Planned loss at the stop

50.00

Entry filled two points above the screen

0.40

Stop filled three points beyond its level

0.60

Commission

0.70

Lost, in all

51.70 USD

The spread does not appear in this sum, and that is not an omission: the plan was already measured from the buying price to the stop, so the spread was inside it. In a fast market the two slippages can be much larger than a few points; on a live account they depend on the market at that moment.

06

The journal entry.

Nobody writes the trade into the journal. It appears there by itself when it closes, with the figures above, held for 3 h 35 min. What the trader adds is theirs alone: tags and a note. The week’s review counts it as one loss, and says that one trade is a small sample.

07

The line on the statement.

The client portal makes a statement for each account from the terminal’s records. On the statement of account the trade is one line under “Closed trades”; on the monthly statement it is inside the month’s totals. With one trade in the month, the two say the same thing.

Trades closed

1

Realised profit or loss, before costs

−51.00

Commission

0.70

Swap

0.00

Realised profit or loss, net

−51.70

Spread

Not recorded

Opening balance, closing balance

Not recorded

The monthly statement, for a month with this one trade. Net is the result before costs, plus swap, less commission. Two lines read “Not recorded”, and mean it: the statement does not carry the spread (the terminal’s receipts and its costs page do), and the terminal reports a balance at the time it is asked, not at a past date, so the statement gives no opening or closing balance. A demo statement says on its face that it is not a record of real money.

08

Where each figure is kept.

Every figure on this page has one home in the terminal’s records, written by the server when the thing happened. The screens read from those records; none keeps a copy of its own.

The price requested, and what it was

1.08496, “the price your terminal sent”

On the order, with the kind of request it was. Read by the receipt.

The price filled, and the quote at the fill

1.08498; 1.08486 / 1.08498

On the order. Slippage is not stored: the receipt works it out from the two prices each time.

The spread of each fill

1.20 and 1.20

On each order, worked out by the server at the fill. Read by the receipt, the costs page and the journal.

The commission

0.70

On the opening order and on the position; taken from the balance at the entry.

The time to the fill

38 ms

On the order, measured by the server from receiving the order to recording the fill.

Stop-loss and take-profit

1.08246, 1.08996

On the position, where the server watches them.

The result, and the swap inside it

−51.00; 0.00

On the position, written when it closes. Read by the journal, the costs page, the statement and a published track record.

Why it closed

Stop-loss

In the closing order’s events, with the level and the price. The sentence on the receipt is put together from that record by fixed rules.

Tags and the note

the trader’s own

In the journal’s own record, readable by the client alone. Nothing of the trade is copied into it.

A value the server did not record is shown as “not recorded” and is never filled in afterwards. On a live account the price requested and the quote at the fill are not recorded until the execution service passes them, so live slippage and spread read “not recorded” today. Live trading is not yet connected.