When you set up a trading account with a broker, you should receive a set of MT5 login credentials to your email inbox. To get the two platforms connected,  you can do either one of two things:

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• Download your broker’s specific version of MT5 via their website
• Download the latest version of MT5 from the MetaQuotes.net site

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Next, once you’ve got the platform installed & open, you’re going to need to log in to either your demo account or live account to place trades. From ‘Navigator’, right-click ‘Open an Account’ and search for your broker. Once you’ve found your broker, you can log in using the credentials in the email your broker has sent to you — the server, login number and password.

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• There’s no need to “find” your broker if you’ve downloaded your broker’s version of MT5 — it will be displayed right after you click ‘Open an Account’. Broker-specific MT5 versions are restricted to only the respective broker’s servers as opposed to all compatible MetaQuotes brokers.

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You’re almost ready to begin placing trades. Because we should now know managing risk is on our priority list, you can use a risk calculator tool to calculate the appropriate stop loss size for 0.5-2% of your capital per position — you’ll need to know your stop loss and take profit levels to get this figure.

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Now that you know what risk level to use on your position, right-click the currency pair you want to place a position on and then click ‘New Order’. You should be met with an ‘Order’ terminal that allows you to place different types of market orders. Note that:

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1. Instant Execution will instantly place a position,  an immediate ‘buy’ or ‘sell’ order at CMP (current market price) 
2. Pending Orders are made up of 6 different types, but we’ll focus on the main 2 that we use in our approach— buy & sell stop orders (or simply ‘buy/sell stops’):

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(Tip: Stop orders are separate to stop losses)

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• Sell stop orders are pending sell orders that only activate once CMP is below the order’s specified price level

• Buy stop orders work in exactly the same way but in reverse — if price trades ABOVE the specified price level, a buy order will be triggered

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