How to Read a Broker Statement

A broker statement, in five lines

A broker statement is the broker's own account of your account, in four blocks. Closed transactions: every finished trade with its open and close times, prices, size and profit. Open trades: what is still running, with its floating profit at the moment the statement was drawn. Working orders: pending orders that have not filled and so have no profit yet. The summary: deposits and withdrawals, closed profit and loss, floating profit and loss, balance and equity, where equity is the balance plus the running result of anything still open. And three small columns on every closed row, commission, swap and taxes, which are deducted before the profit column and are where a statement most often surprises its reader.

A utility bill

Picture a utility bill. The meter reading at the start, the units used, the standing charges for having the supply at all, and the meter now; issued by the supplier, not by the meter on the wall. A broker statement is that bill. The trades are the units used, the commission and swap are the standing charges, the balance is the meter, and it is issued by the broker, whose server holds the account, rather than by the platform on your desk, which only reads it.

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