Stop Loss and Take Profit in MetaTrader

The two prices, in five lines

A stop loss is a price at which the platform closes the trade to end a loss; a take profit is a price at which it closes the trade to bank a gain. They are two fields on the order window and two dashed lines on the chart. The broker's server watches them, so they work with your computer switched off. In the example, a buy of 0.10 lot at 1.15678 with the stop loss at 1.15478 and the take profit at 1.16078: 20 pips under and 40 pips over, where a pip is the fourth decimal place of the price, which at 0.10 lot is minus 20 dollars or plus 40, whichever line the market reaches first.

A net and a tape

Picture a climb with a safety net below and a finishing tape above. The trade is the blue dot, bought at 1.15678. The net is the stop loss at 1.15478, 20 pips below; the tape is the take profit at 1.16078, 40 pips above. The climber does not have to watch the ground: the net is already there, and the tape is already stretched, so the trade ends at whichever it meets and nobody has to be looking at the screen when it does.

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