Placing your first trade — stop loss and take profit
Video: Hola Prime
To open a trade, press F9, or double-click a symbol in Market Watch, or right-click the chart and choose Trading → New Order. All three open the same New Order window.
Inside it: Symbol (what you're trading), Volume (the lot size from the previous lesson — start at the smallest your broker allows), and two price fields most beginners skip and shouldn't — Stop Loss and Take Profit. Fill both in before you click anything. Then it's just Sell (if you think price is going down) or Buy (if you think it's going up).
Stop Loss is the price where the trade closes itself automatically if you're wrong — it's what turns "I hope this doesn't get worse" into an actual limit. Take Profit does the same on the winning side: the price where the trade closes itself once your target is hit, so you don't have to sit there watching it.
You don't have to type exact prices into those two fields either — once a trade is open, the Trade tab in your Toolbox shows it live, and you can drag the stop loss and take profit lines directly on the chart to adjust them. Right-click the open position there (or click the X next to it) to close it manually any time, win or lose, without waiting for either level to be hit.
Set both before you confirm, every single time, even on demo. The habit is the whole point — Module 4 is built entirely around what happens to an account where this becomes optional instead of automatic.
Key takeaway
Every trade is three decisions made before you click Buy or Sell: how big (Volume), how wrong you're willing to be (Stop Loss), and what you're aiming for (Take Profit).
Example
Say you buy a micro lot of EUR/USD with a 20-pip stop loss — from Lesson 2-4, that's roughly $2 at risk if you're wrong. Knowing that number before you click, not after, is the difference between a planned trade and a gamble.
Try this
On your demo account, place one trade — any pair, smallest lot size. Set a stop loss and take profit before confirming. Watch it for a few minutes, then close it manually from the Trade tab. Every mechanical step you'll repeat for the rest of this course, done once, on purpose.
This lesson is part of the free TDWK Academy — 40 lessons from zero to funded trader, with progress tracking and a certificate exam.
Continue in the full Academy →