The terms you'll see most often:
Term | What it means |
Balance | The money in your account, not counting profit or loss on open positions |
Equity | Your balance plus or minus the profit or loss on your open positions |
Margin | The money needed to open a position or keep it open |
Margin level | Your equity divided by your margin, shown as a percentage |
Stop-out | The margin level at which positions close automatically: 50% at ACG Markets |
Leverage | Opening a position worth more than the margin you pay. At 1:500, margin is 0.2% of the position's value |
Lot | A unit of trade size. One lot of a currency pair is 100,000 units |
Pip | The fourth decimal place on most currency pairs (0.0001), or 0.01 on yen pairs |
Spread | The difference between the buy and sell price |
Commission | A fee per lot, charged on the Raw account only |
Swap | Overnight financing added to or taken from your account when you hold a position past the daily rollover |
Gapping | When a price jumps from one level to another without trading in between |
Underlying asset | The currency pair, index, metal or commodity a CFD is based on |
Quote | The buy and sell prices at which you can trade an instrument |
Risk warning: CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. Only trade with money you can afford to lose.