This is Part Three and final part of MetaTrader basics if you have not already done so I recommend you read Part One first and then Part Two.

Placing an order in MetaTrader is very simple. You simply need to double click (in the market watch window) on the symbol of the security you wish to buy and the order window will be displayed. Or if you have a chart open for the security you wish to buy you can simply press F9 or go to menu Tools -> “New Order”. The order window will pop-up as shown below.

As you can see a tick chart is displayed on the right that shows both the Bid and Ask prices. The Bid price is shown in red and the Ask price is shown in blue. In this window you can change the security you wish to buy or sell. You can also change the volume of the order with one lot being the default. The order window also allows you to specify hard stop loss and take profit levels. The next field is the comment field this allows for comments to be attached to an order.

The type field allows for the specification of the type of order. The default is instant execution or a market order. The second type of order that can be specified is a pending order. If a pending order is selected you can select a Buy Limit, Sell Limit, Buy Stop and Sell Stop type the price and expiry can also be set. The price set must differ from the market price by at least five pips.

Returning to a standard market order we can choose to buy or sell the given security. The final property we can change is enabling a maximum deviation from a quoted price. This means in times of extreme volatility you can guarantee your order gets filled at a given price, similar to a pending order.

MetaTrader allows for orders to be modified after they have initially been sent to the broker. This allows for stop losses to be set or changed, orders to be closed and trailing stops to be set. This functionality is provided via the terminal. In the terminal the trade tab needs to be activated. To activate the trade tab you simply need to click on it.

You can now right click on the order you wish to change and a contextual menu will pop-up like the one shown below.

By clicking on modify or delete order this will bring up a window similar to the initial order window. As you can see below the only fields that can be modified are the stop loss and take profit. Once again these must be set at minimum five pips away from the current price.

After this modified order has been processed the chart window will be updated to reflect stop loss and take profit levels. On the chart the price in which was paid for the security is shown with a dashed green line. The stop loss and take profit level are shown with a dashed red line. In this example the stop loss was set at 0.8545 and take profit at 0.8570 and the price paid for the lot was 0.8552. this is depicted graphically below.

This ends our whirlwind tour of the very basics of MetaTrader. You should now be able to place orders, modify orders and understand the basics of the User Interface.

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