General trading FAQs

Online trading generally refers to buying and selling OTC securities (or ‘trading instruments’) via the Internet or other electronic means – such as wireless access or touch-tone telephones. In most cases, customers access a brokerage firm’s Client Portal (or website) through their regular Internet Service Provider. Once there, customers may consult provided information, monitor activity and place or close orders by logging into their personal, secure accounts.

Anyone from any background can trade online – all that’s required is sufficient funds for opening an account and a verified bank account. We support all levels of traders with tiered accounts, dedicated managers, multilingual customer support and competitive pricing – Standard accounts start with deposits from $500.

Although we provide customer support 24/5, STP Trading is an execution-only broker and does not provide any advisory management or investment advice. We encourage all levels of traders to seek professional advice and utilize risk management.

Arguably the most popular tool for reducing risk, stop-loss orders are designed to limit loss on a security position that’s made an unfavorable move. When you place a stop-loss order with a broker, you’re requesting to close the position once the instrument reaches a certain price. This is helpful as it means your trades need less monitoring and can help to limit losses, particularly in volatile markets.

Please also note that a stop loss is by no means a guarantee, positions may be affected by price gaps over market closures, data release or other economic factors.

Trading CFDs is based on the speculation that the value of one asset will increase relative to another, which creates potential to maximize profit but there’s no guaranteed strategy or market that will always deliver profits. If your current broker says otherwise, check if they’re regulated!

Investing in global markets by purchasing forex, commodities, ETFs or other CFD products will free up your capital and give you the opportunity to profit – but we always encourage our clients to risk only what they can afford to lose. Markets are known to be unpredictable which means both losses and profits can equally increase.

Spreads are measured in pips and show the difference between buy and sell price. In trading, ‘ask price’ (or ‘offer price’) means the price you’d like to buy at, and ‘bid price’ is what you’d like to sell at. In practice, if EURUSD has a bid price of 1.55310 and an ask price of 1.55313, the spread would be 0.3 pips.

A pip, short for ‘point in percentage’, is a very small measure of change in a currency pair in the forex market. It can be measured in terms of the quote or the underlying currency. A pip is a standardized unit for the smallest amount by which a currency quote can change. It is usually $0.0001 for USD-related currency pairs. A fractional pip or point is equivalent to 1/10 of a pip. There are 10 points to every 1 pip.

The basic contract unit of the Retail Foreign Exchange is called a ‘lot’.

The standard lot size is 100,000 units of the base currency (1st currency in the currency pair), however you can also trade multiples or fractions of lots. The minimum at STP Trading is 0.01 lot.

Example: Buying 1 lot on the GBP/USD market is the equivalent to buying £100,000 and selling the equivalent amount of USD at the current rate.

We offer leverage using margins, where we provide borrowed funds from our deep liquidity pool to increase your trading position. This means traders can increase their market exposure by paying a fraction of the initial investment. In practice, 1:20 leverage means you can invest $10 and trade with $200 – allowing for higher potential gains AND losses. Make sure you understand your risk appetite. Try to minimize your losses by using stop loss tools or other risk management strategies.

We offer up to 1:200 leverage on selected products including precious metals, gold, oil & natural gas commodity CFDs.

CFDs or ‘contracts for difference’ are derivative products designed so that you can trade on the price change of an underlying asset.

This means you can trade on the price movements or performance of assets without needing to own them outright – which allows you to go long or short and potentially benefit from either rising or falling markets.

Start trading commodity CFDs

You can also trade CFD indices such as the US500, UK100, AUS200, FRA40, NAS100 & GER40.

Start trading index CFDs.

CFD (or ‘contracts for difference’) trading involves different types of contracts covering a diverse set of financial instruments such as indices & commodities – whereas forex refers to pure currency pair trading.

Another way of looking at it is that forex is mostly driven by global events & CFDs are mostly impacted by the supply/demand of the performance of underlying instruments. However, all instruments will be affected by multiple factors and can also be impacted by unprecedented events. There is no fixed guide to trading, so we always recommend seeking independent advice and to keep a close eye on all your open trades.

Yes, we take every precaution to ensure the security & privacy of our client’s private data. We guarantee to keep all personal information highly secured – we do not pass your personal information to any third party, and we do not sell your personal information for any purposes.

We are compliant with Comoros regulations and guarantee to fulfil our data protection obligations in regard to your personal data security.

The Forex market is open almost 24 hours a day, 5 days a week – with a small trading break over rollover.

The Crypto market is open almost 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – with a small trading break over rollover on Saturdays for 3 hours from 12 to 15.

The time on MT5 is shown as GMT+3.

The end of our trading day always aligns with the market close in New York.

Precious metals operate on similar trading hours to forex with the additional daily break at 21.00-22.00 GMT during BST (British Summer Time) and 22.00-23.00 GMT during DST (Daylight Saving Time).

Unfortunately, no. Trades can only be placed during open market hours – but the markets will continue to evolve 24/7. Some traders prefer to use stop loss orders to minimize risk, to always check rolling fees & to contract expiry dates before placing a trade to ensure they run as planned.

Yes, we do. At STP Trading, we welcome any trading strategies that are in line with SVGFSA rules and our internal terms & conditions.

The margin requirement is the amount of funds needed to hold a position open. Read our legal documentation.

Yes, we offer margin-free hedging where any hedged positions are set to ‘zero’. This means you do not need a margin to maintain the position which will be your net position equal to zero. This allows you to benefit from more available funds, but it can also pose the risk of triggering ‘margin call’ or ‘stop out’ events when sudden spread widening (e.g., during news releases).

Please consider rolling fees over weekends in your financial planning as margin-free hedged positions are not swap-free – unless you are trading on a swap-free account.

Our margin requirement for hedged positions is ‘zero’.

When you decide to hedge a position in one particular instrument (respectively buying or selling the same amount of that instrument), there will not be any margin needed to maintain the hedged position. As such, your net position will be equal to zero.

As a result of the decreased margin, you will have the benefit of more available funds.

Example:

Margin requirement for hedged positions FAQ

Margin-free hedging however can also pose a risk of triggering either “Margin Call” or “Stop Out” events – such as if one of the positions is closed and the other requires a margin that equals or exceeds the one available for trading, or in the case where a spread widening might occur that affects your equity negatively and increases your losses.

While there is no margin requirement requested for fully hedged positions, this does not protect your orders to be closed out at one point.

Mainly this is related to spread widening. Spreads may widen depending on the product you are trading during overnight hours, over news releases or during market opening and market closure (as liquidity is thin & volatility is high).

This can also be related to the overnight financial charges, which apply to each position if you keep them open over rollover, which takes place at midnight MT5 platform time each trading day.

The moment the equity on your account falls below zero your open positions will be closed out – so it is important to ensure you have funds to support your account.

No, there is never a guarantee in trading. We will always to our best to place your orders, but when trading with high volatility prices may change and we may not be able to obtain a quote at the initially requested price as per best practices in the industry.

Yes, all trades offer the chance for profits or losses. As per industry best practices, we operate a stop-out system. This means that if the equity on your account falls below 30% of the required margin for the open position, the system will be instructed to start closing out positions, beginning with the position making the greatest loss. The cost of trading is cumulative, so you must have enough funds to support all of your open positions, or you may be stopped out.

However, the forex market is highly volatile and if you have a very low margin level at the time of economic news releases (or under other abnormal conditions), the market can rapidly move against you and the system will close open positions at the next best available price, which could cause you to lose the whole deposit or even more.

If you are holding positions over a weekend when we are closed, the market can open out-of-line from the close on Friday, which can also cause extended losses.