Populating a deal ticket

In this lesson, we’re explaining the process of how to populate the deal ticket to place your first trade.

Reminder: Before populating a deal ticket, you’ll need to have chosen the market you want to trade and a direction (buy or sell). You can find those steps here and here.

Deal and order tickets

To navigate to the deal or order tab, open the IG web trading platform, select your market, open it in your workspace and you’ll see both options on the right of the screen.

When you’re ready to place your trade, you can do so on either the deal or order ticket:

• The deal ticket is simply a market order where you are looking to enter a trade at the current market price (this is only possible if the market is open)
• The order ticket lets you choose a price that’s different from the one currently quoted (so your order will be fulfilled when your asset’s price reaches the one you have specified)

Deals and orders

An order is an instruction to buy or sell an asset. The types of orders available on IG.com will differ depending on your account type, the market you’re trading, and the expiry chosen. The deal ticket (or market order) is used to enter a market at the current price.

The order ticket is designed so that you can enter the market at a specific price. Let’s say you want to trade Commonwealth Bank (CBA) shares using a CFD on the ASX (Australian Securities Exchange). If the current price isn’t ideal, but you believe the market will reach a better entry level, you can use a limit order to open a trade only when that specific price is hit. For example, say CBA shares are trading at $105, but you only want to buy if the price drops to $100. You place a buy limit order at $100, and it will only trigger if the price falls to that level.

A benefit of CFD trading is that you can attach a limit to close a position before it’s even opened. This provides more flexibility and control over your trades when compared to standard share dealing. Confused? Don’t worry – we’ll take a more detailed look at stop and limit orders in the risk management lesson.

The most important thing to understand is that in volatile markets, prices can change quickly, so you might use an order to set your entry or exit in advance, helping manage risk by avoiding emotional or poorly timed decisions.

You might also use orders when you know you’re not going to be available to monitor the market. For example, if you’re going to be at work, you can place pending orders to enter or exit automatically when certain price levels are met.

To place your trade, decide whether you are going to use a deal (market order) or put in an order.

Placing a deal

Click on Sell or Buy, depending on the direction you’ve chosen, and the box will change colour to reflect your selection.

Position size

The next field you need to complete is Size (position size, or number of contracts you want to trade). Position size refers to the number of contracts you buy or sell in a single trade. It determines how big your exposure is in the market and plays a crucial role in managing risk and potential returns.

If you are trading share CFDs, the minimum contract size is one share. However, for other markets, the minimum contract size will vary depending on the underlying asset that you are trading. This will be shown in both deal and order tickets.

Importantly, you need to remember to determine the amount of margin required if you are trading with leverage. We’ll go into more detail about margin in the next lesson. But in a nutshell, in a leveraged trade you don’t need the full value to open the trade. Instead, you’re required to put down a fraction of the total value. However, although trading with leverage can amplify profits, it can also amplify losses if the market moves against you because your loss is calculated from the full value of the position. Confused? Jump to the next lesson for more info.

When you fill in your position size on IG, the platform will automatically calculate and display the margin on the deal or order ticket.

Once you’ve filled your ticket, click Place deal.

Placing an order

As with the deal ticket, when populating the order ticket, you’ll start by selecting your direction and selecting your position size. You’ll then need to set the price level at which your order will be filled, and when your order should expire. You can choose between “good until cancelled” (either the order will stand until filled or when you manually cancel it) or “good until date” (which allows you to set a time for when the order will expire if not filled).

To help manage your risk, you can use the next two fields on the ticket: stop and limit (also known as “take profit”). Again, we’ll go into more detail a bit later, but a stop loss is a tool that closes your trade automatically if the market moves against you, helping to limit your losses. A limit does the opposite, closing your trade when the market moves in your favour, so you can lock in profits.

It’s important to keep in mind that both of these tools can be affected by slippage, which means the trade might not be filled at the exact price you set – it could be a little better or a little worse.

Once you’ve populated the order ticket, click Place stop order or Place limit order.

Trading two positions in opposite directions in the same market

If you have an existing position open in the market and you want to enter another one in the opposite direction, you’ll need to decide whether you want to use the Net off or Force open options on the deal ticket.

If you select Net off, the new trade will combine with any existing position you have in the same market, effectively adjusting your overall exposure. For example, if you’ve taken a long position with 100 contracts and you then enter a new deal to short 50 contracts, your resulting position will be 50 long.

If you choose Force open, however, a new trade opens as a completely separate position in the opposite direction to an existing one. This means you could have a long and a short position open at the same time on the same market, which you might want to do when hedging or keeping positions separate for strategic reasons (such as testing different trading strategies in the same market).

Once you've double checked all the details, you’re ready to place your deal or order. Before you do, make sure you’re clear on leverage and margin and have your risk management processes in place, which is what we’re looking at in our next two lessons.

Apply your skills without risking real money, with a free IG demo account.