Setting up MT5 and opening a demo account — step by step

MT5 (MetaTrader 5) is the actual software — desktop, mobile or web — that you look at charts and place trades on. It's free, and every broker that supports it lets you download it either from their own site or straight from the MetaQuotes app/website.

Once it's installed, you don't need a broker or a deposit to start looking at real, moving prices. On first launch (or via File → Open an Account), MT5 lets you open a Demo Account: pick a server from the list, set a starting balance — $10,000 is the common default, and it's fake money either way — and you're in. No card details, no ID, nothing real on the line.

The screen you land on has four areas worth knowing by name, because every lesson from here on assumes you can find them: Market Watch on the left (the live list of prices for every symbol), the Chart in the middle (whatever symbol you've got open), Navigator (your account and any indicators), and the Toolbox along the bottom — its Trade tab shows anything you currently have open, its History tab shows everything you've already closed.

If a symbol you want isn't showing in Market Watch, right-click inside it and choose "Symbols" to find and add it — Deriv's synthetic indices in particular are sometimes hidden under a separate group the first time you connect to a synthetic-indices-enabled server. Once a symbol is visible in Market Watch, double-click it to open its chart, or right-click it and choose "Chart Window."

This is also the point where the demo-vs-live distinction from the previous lesson stops being theoretical. Everything you do from here — placing a trade, moving a stop loss, watching a position float in profit or loss — happens on this exact same interface whether the account underneath it is fake or real. Learning the buttons now, with nothing at stake, is the entire point.