Monitoring open positions

Once you’ve entered your trade(s), you’ll need to know how to manage and monitor open positions. In addition to looking at that in this lesson, we’ll do a refresher on leverage and margin, and how to set alerts.

Positions and orders

An open position is a trade that’s still running, which means it can either make a profit or result in a loss, depending on how the market moves. Once you close the position, the trade ends and any profits or losses are realised. You might have several open positions at one time, depending on the markets you’re trading and the strategy you’re using.

Entry orders allow you to set positions to automatically open when the market reaches a specific level. This can be useful if you’re speculating on a market trend, or support and resistance levels. You can set these in the “order” tab of the deal ticket.

To see your open positions and any orders, use the navigation menu on the left of the screen.

Click on the Positions button to see all your open positions, or the Orders button to see a list of your orders.

From these lists, you can quickly change certain parameters. For example, in the Positions list, you can change your stops and limits or close the position.

In the Orders list, you can change the price level at which your position should open, as well as edit stops and limits, or cancel the order.

Where can I see my trading history?

You can see any positions closed within a 24-hour period on the History tab, as well as an option to see your full trading history on My IG for less recent trades.

How do I use alerts?

From the Alerts tab, you can set alerts to trigger when a market moves a certain amount, hits a specific price, or meets other technical conditions. This helps you to be able to react as soon as the market moves.

You can set alerts using the Alerts tab next to the Deal and Order tickets.

Price alerts

A price change alert tells you when a market moves by a certain number of points or when it reaches a certain level within a set time frame. For example, you can set an alert to notify you if GBP/USD moves 20 points in a day. These alerts reset automatically after triggering, so they stay active until you delete them in the alerts panel (where you can view or edit your alerts at any time).

A price level alert notifies you when a market hits a specific level or moves by a certain number of points. Just enter your chosen level, add a note to remind yourself why it matters (for example if you’re keeping tabs on when a market hits support, resistance or breakout), and click Set alert.

Technical indicator alerts

Next to the Price alerts option you’ll find the Indicator option, where you can set up buy and sell alerts using up to four popular indicators at a time, including: Moving Average, Exponential Moving Average, MACD, RSI, Standard Deviation, Stochastic, Bollinger Bands, Market Price (share CFDs only).

Margin, leverage and margin calls

It’s important to keep tabs not only on any open positions and orders, but also your total exposure across all trades and markets. On IG.com, when you’re in the web trading platform, you can always see your total funds (account balance), profit/loss (across all open positions), margin (equity required to open a position/s), and available funds (funds available to trade or withdraw) at the top of your screen.

You can click on this for more information if needed.

A quick refresher on leverage and margin

Leverage, also known as “gearing” or “geared trading”, lets you control a larger position size without putting up the full value of the trade yourself. Instead, leveraged trades require an upfront deposit of only a percentage of the value of the trade, known as margin. Leverage can allow you to take a larger exposure with a smaller amount of money. It can increase the profit you make, but it can also amplify losses. In fact, depending on trading rules in your region, losses can exceed your deposit, so it’s important to manage your risk carefully and to keep track of your total margin at any time. You can explore leverage in more detail, including trade examples, here.

If your equity drops below your margin required, we may issue a margin call.

At that point, you’ll need to do one of two things:

• Add more funds to your account to increase your equity
• Close some positions to reduce your margin required

If you don’t, IG.com may automatically close one or more of your positions to limit further losses.

Equity vs equity used

When looking at their account summary, it’s important for traders to understand the difference between Equity and Equity used because it directly affects how much you can trade, how much risk you’re taking on, and whether you’re at risk of a margin call or automatic close-out.

• Equity is the net value of your account – your funds plus or minus any running profit/loss
• Equity used is margin divided by equity (showing you what proportion of your equity is being used as margin)

Equity used is a valuable metric because it shows how much of your equity is being used for trading positions. In other words, it measures the extent to which margin is being used relative to equity and helps you understand your exposure to risk.

A higher ratio indicates greater use of margin, which can indicate higher potential profits, but also higher risk. Investors can also assess whether their use of equity is efficient in generating returns, as excessive leverage can lead to unsustainable financial positions.

There are other factors that can reduce your account balance and even push it into deficit. These include funding charges and commissions on shares. That’s why it’s important to remember that the initial cost of opening a trade isn’t the full picture. More on costs in our final lesson.

Practise placing your first trade with a free IG demo account.