Trading at GFT with MetaTrader 4
Whether you’re new to MetaTrader 4 or you’ve traded with it before, you may have questions about how it works. You can view some of our most frequently asked questions here.
Why did my order get filled at a different price?
When you use MetaTrader 4, your orders will be filled at the nearest market price. Sometimes, this may be worse than the price you requested. This is called slippage.
Slippage is possible on all orders during times such as when GFT is closed, around news announcements, and at times of extreme market volatility.
You can specify an acceptable rate of slippage when you place an order. For more information, see the Specifying Order Settings topic in the MetaTrader 4 and MetaEditor User Manual.
Are partial fills available?
Trades made on MetaTrader 4 will be filled completely or not filled at all.
I signed up for MetaTrader 4. Why did I get a DealBook® WEB login as well?
When you sign up for a live GFT account with MetaTrader 4, you will also receive access to a version of DealBook® WEB which you can use to generate reports and statements. This version will not allow you to place trades, however, it will show you the most accurate trading activity on your account.
When GFT looks at account information, we will consider all transaction/order history information that appears in DealBook® WEB as the most accurate and legally-binding. Because of this, we recommend that you have both MetaTrader 4 and DealBook® WEB open when trading to compare equity values. If you have questions about the difference in your account between the two platforms, contact GFT.
How do I login to DealBook® WEB for MetaTrader 4 users?
You can click the following link:
https://dealbookweb.live.gftforex.com/?vendor=ukm_us
I need to reset my password. How do I do that?
To reset your password at any time, click the link below:
https://www.gftuk.com/help/password-reset/?tid=5
There’s a difference in my account between MetaTrader 4 and DealBook® WEB. Why?
There may be times while you are trading that the equity values in MetaTrader 4 and DealBook® WEB do not match.
With live accounts, GFT recommends having both MetaTrader 4 and DealBook® WEB open when trading. To sync the two equity values, GFT uses an Account Reconciliation Tool on live accounts which will examine the equity values. If there’s a discrepancy between the values, the equity in MetaTrader 4 will be reconciled to the equity value in DealBook® WEB after a period of time. If your equity is updated, you will receive a notice in MetaTrader 4.
Please remember that the equity value in DealBook® WEB is the most accurate and legally binding. You should rely on this value when you are trading. If you have questions about the difference between the two platforms, contact GFT.
I placed the same trade in my practice and live accounts, but the equity doesn’t match. Why is that?
Your practice account is just for practice and isn’t like your live account. Practice accounts are also not connected to the Account Reconciliation Tool. If you place the same trade in your practice and live accounts, your live account is reconciled using the process discussed in the previous question, so you will see a discrepancy between the two accounts.
Why is my equity different in MetaTrader 4?
One reason might be that you opened hedged positions in MetaTrader 4. When you place a hedge (a long position and short position of equal size and in the same currency pair), GFT nets those positions so they cancel out and recognizes the earnings or losses. On MetaTrader 4, however, the two positions remain open.
Another reason is conversion rate risk. MetaTrader 4 uses the current conversion rate at the time a trade is placed, while GFT converts based on a static rate defined in the system daily. This is based on GFT’s Tomorrow Next (Tom Next) rates.
The final reason is financing charges. If you have MetaTrader 4, you are trading on a position-based system. All open positions at 15:00 ET are subject to financing charges. Meta Trade 4 does not account for financing charges, but you can view the amounts credited or debited to your account in DealBook® WEB.
Where do I generate reports on my live account?
You’ll need to use DealBook® WEB to generate reports. Once you log in, you can select the report you want using the tools in the Parameters bar at the top of the page. Once generated, you can save and print the reports.
If you have questions about any of the differences you notice between the two platforms, contact GFT.
I have a practice account. Where do I generate reports?
A practice account is just to show you how trading works and to help you become familiar with MetaTrader 4. Because of this, we do not supply DealBook® WEB logins to practice accounts.
With your practice account, however, you can view your account history within MetaTrader 4. The Account History tab in the Terminal window displays all of your executed trades. You can also view your profit and loss, credits, deposits and withdrawal information. Remember, the values that you see in this tab are only for practice and educational purposes.
How are financing charges reflected in my account?
If you have MetaTrader 4, you are trading on a position-based system. All open positions at 15:00 ET are subject to financing charges.
- If the first currency has a higher interest rate, then you are generally credited for holding a long position and debited interest for holding a short position.
- If the first currency has a lower interest rate, then you are generally debited for holding a long position and credited interest for holding a short position.
MetaTrader 4 does not account for financing charges, so you won’t see them on your live account; you can view the amounts credited or debited to your account in DealBook® WEB.
What is the margin requirement on my account?
If you’ve traded before, you know that all of GFT’s products are traded with a degree of leverage. This is the ability to maintain a position with a minimum amount of money. This can generate significant gains as well as significant losses.
Because you are trading with leverage, GFT holds a portion of your equity as margin. When you place an order to trade, GFT will use leverage along with other factors to calculate your margin requirement. On your live account, you can view what these amounts are by generating reports and statements in DealBook® WEB.
Why is the margin requirement in MetaTrader 4 different than the required margin in my DealBook® Web statements?
When you are trading with MetaTrader 4, the margin for those trades is calculated at the time that you place a trade. The margin requirement in MetaTrader 4 will be the same over the entire time that you hold the trade, but you’ll notice that the margin in DealBook® WEB can fluctuate with the change in prices. This is because GFT continually reassesses the notional value of your position to ensure that you are trading at the same margin percentage throughout the life of your trade.
Let’s say that your account is based in USD. You enter a 100,000 lot trade of EUR/USD and your margin requirement is 1:50. The price you get in at is 1.39675.
Price (1.39675) X Lot Size (100,000 euros) = $139,675
Your margin requirement is 2% (1÷50)
$139,675 X 2% = $2,793.50
$2,793.50 is the margin requirement in both MetaTrader 4 and DealBook® WEB.
This margin requirement will not fluctuate in MetaTrader 4 as the market moves. It will remain at this amount until the position is closed out.
$2,793.50 is also the initial margin requirement in DealBook® WEB. Now, let’s say the market moves to 1.39850. Your margin requirement in GFT would change to $2797 (1.39850 X 100,000 euros = $139,850, $139,850 X 2% = $2797)
This difference in margin requirement can get wider as the market moves further from the price that you entered the market. Because of this, there may be differences in the margin requirements between the MetaTrader 4 platform and your DealBook® WEB statements.
While the Account Reconciliation Tool will be continuously monitoring and updating the equity balances within your account, there’s a chance that the margin differences in these positions may cause MetaTrader 4 to liquidate before your positions are liquidated in your DealBook® WEB statements or vice versa.
Please remember that the values you see in DealBook® WEB are the most accurate and legally-binding. You should rely on this value when you are trading. If you have questions about the difference between the two platforms, contact GFT.
Also, note that if the base currency of your account is the same as the base currency of the pair that you are trading, the margin requirement will stay the same in MetaTrader 4 and in the DealBook® WEB statements. For example, if you have an account with base currency of USD and you trade a 100,000 lot of USD/JPY, your lot is 100,000 dollars X 2% = $2000. $2000 will be your margin requirement until you close out this position.
How will I know if I’m close to a margin call?
The DealBook® WEB statements should be used to identify your current equity, floating P/L, margin requirement and risk level. Please review your account agreement documents for GFT’s policy regarding margin calls and liquidation alerts.
What is my lot size?
You can view lot size in the Volume field of the New Order window. In MetaTrader 4, 1.0 equals 100,000 units, .10 equals 10,000 units, and 01 is equal to 1,000 units.
How do I change my lot size?
You can request a lot size change by visiting the following link.
https://www.gftuk.com/Help/Lot-Size-Form/
Once your request is approved, you’ll also need to manually set the lot size in MetaTrader 4 in the New Order window. By default, MetaTrader is set to use the last entered lot size.
If you want to set a specific lot size as a default, you can click the Tools menu in the menu bar of MetaTrader 4 and select Options. When the Options window appears, select the Trade tab. In the Size by Default section, click Default and then select the lot size from the drop-down menu. When done, click OK.
Please note that the customer/trading agent has the responsibility to check if the designated lot size has been changed as delays can occur in inputting any adjustment to an account.
What is a trailing stop and how does it work in MetaTrader 4?
You can use trailing stop orders to help protect profits without limiting any potential gains on your open positions. If you’ve used these before in other applications, you may have noticed that MetaTrader 4 handles trailing stops differently.
When you enter a trailing stop on an open position, you select a specified number of points (10 points = 1 pip) between the stop and the current price. MetaTrader 4 will then place the trailing stop in two parts.
- 1. The market must first move in your favour by the number of points that you set and then it will place a stop loss order.
- 2. That stop loss order will then automatically update as long as the market moves your way so that it ‘trails’ the current price by the number of points you set.
When the market moves against your position after the trailing stop loss has been set, the stop loss remains set at the last trailing price that it reached when the market was moving in your favour. You can confirm this price by referring to the S/L column within the Trade tab. Remember, trailing stops are still subject to slippage. See “Why did my order get filled at a different price?” in this FAQ for more information.
In MetaTrader 4, trailing stops will run as long as you are logged into the platform.
- If you set a trailing stop and then log out of MetaTrader before the market moves in your favour by the number of points that you entered, then the trailing stop loss order will not be placed.
- If you set a trailing stop and log out of MetaTrader after the market moves in your favour, triggering the trailing stop, the stop loss order will not trail the market. It will work as a hard stop at the last price that the stop loss was at when you logged off.
In this scenario, when you log back into MetaTrader 4, if the stop loss hasn’t been triggered, it will resume trailing the current market price by the number of points that you specified between the stop and the current price.
To show you how a trailing stop works in MetaTrader 4, let’s look at an example. We’ll say that you are long EUR/USD at 1.35000. You want to protect what you’ve earned so far; so you enter a 200-point trailing stop order.
Once the market hits 1.35200, the trailing stop becomes active in MetaTrader 4. At 1.35200, the stop will trail the current price as long as the market moves your way and you are still logged in.
But you need to log out of MetaTrader. The market is at 1.35300. Even though market moves activated your trailing stop, your trailing stop becomes a regular stop loss order at 1.35100, 200 points below the last market price.
Now, let’s say that you log back in. While you were logged out, the EUR/USD didn’t move below 1.35100 (so your stop loss was never triggered). In fact, the EUR/US D rose steadily to 1.36000. In this case, MetaTrader will adjust the stop loss to 1.35800 and resume trailing the current market moves by 200 points.
How do I place a trailing stop on an order?
You can place one quickly by right-clicking in an order row on the Trade tab of the Terminal window and select Trailing Stop. This displays a drop-down menu where you can select the number of points (10 points = 1 pip) you want.
The Trailing Stop drop-down menu also contains the Custom… menu option. When you select this, you can enter a specific number of points in the Custom window.
Once active, the trailing stop appears in the S/L column of the Trade tab. For more information, see the
Placing a Trailing Stop on an Order topic in the MetaTrader 4 and
MetaEditor User Manual.
What are expert advisors? Are these created by GFT?
With MetaTrader, you can use automated trading strategies called expert advisors (EA) to perform prompt technical analysis of price data and manage trading activities based on current market conditions. If you are using an EA and do not have a Virtual Private Server subscription, your EAs will stop running when you are logged out of Meta Trader.
Because EAs are created by separate and independent third parties, GFT is not responsible for their completeness, reliability or accuracy. In other words, you use them at your own risk.
If you have questions on how an EA works, you will need to contact the EA provider. But, if you need help managing EAs in MetaTrader 4, our customer service will be happy to help you.
Can I hedge trades using MetaTrader 4?
At GFT, placing a buy and a sell order for the same number of lots in a currency pair is seen as having no position. While you can have both a long and short position in the same currency pair with equal number of lots and see it in MetaTrader 4, we advise customers not to do this. When you print reports in DealBook® WEB, you’ll notice that the sell order will close your long position.
When can I place trades in MetaTrader 4?
You can place orders and monitor your positions on MetaTrader 4 from 17:00 ET on Sunday until 16:55 ET on Friday. You won’t be able to place trades from Friday 16:56 ET to Sunday 16:59 ET.
During this time, working orders, like your stops, limits and OCO orders, are not active and will not be filled until Sunday at 17:00 ET. Orders will then only be filled based on real-time prices and not the previous prices that might have occurred while GFT was closed.
If there is a change to these hours due to a holiday, GFT will send out an advanced notice.
Can prices change over a weekend or holiday?
If an extreme world event happens over the weekend, there may be a significant difference in the price of a market when it closed on Friday and when it will open on Sunday. This is called gapping and it means that there are no tradable prices between the closing price on Friday and the opening price on Sunday.
All orders which are triggered by the jump in price will be filled at the opening rate which GFT is quoting at 17:00 ET on Sunday.
GFT follows a First In, First Out (FIFO) policy. What is this?
Under this requirement, the first position that you open in a currency pair must be closed before you close any subsequent positions in that same currency pair.
How does this work? Let’s say you’re watching the USD/JPY in MetaTrader 4. Currently, the currency pair is trading at 88.950. After doing a little research, you believe the USD/JPY will continue to rise. You open a two-lot long position at 89.000. As the market continues to rise, you open more two-lot long positions at 89.200, 89.400 and 89.600.
Under FIFO requirements, you must close the first USD/JPY position that you opened (at 89.000) before you close any of the others.
It’s important to note that MetaTrader 4 does not require users to follow FIFO. You can continue to close positions in any order in MetaTrader 4, but this will create a discrepancy between what you see in MetaTrader 4 and DealBook® WEB. That’s why we advise customers to follow FIFO rules themselves when placing and closing trades. GFT recommends having both MetaTrader 4 and DealBook® WEB open when trading.
If you have two offset positions in the same currency pair in the same size, you can use the Multiple Close By menu option to close out opposing positions for the currency pair selected.
For example, let’s say you have two long EUR/USD positions and one short EUR/USD position in MetaTrader 4.
You can use the Multiple Close By command to close the offset positions.
Right-click in a position row in the Trade tab of the Terminal window and select Close Order to open the Order window. From there, you can select Close by Market from the Order Type drop-down menu. When the Order window appears, click Multiple Close by. When done, click OK to close the window.
Once this is executed, there will be one remaining long position open.
Can I place an order over the phone?
You can place an order by phone by calling our 24-hour dealing desk at +44 (0) 207 170 0750.
CD01G.063.022112