MetaTrader Broker & EA Glossary

Pip

The standard price increment for a pair — 0.0001 for most FX (0.01 for JPY pairs). Pip value depends on contract size and lot; use the pip-value calculator.

Point

The smallest price change a broker quotes — on a 5-digit FX feed, ten points make one pip. MetaTrader stops levels are quoted in points.

Contract size

Units of the base instrument in one lot — 100,000 for standard FX, 100 oz for gold on many brokers. It's broker-invariant and drives pip and margin maths.

Lot / min lot / lot step

A lot is one contract-size unit; min lot (often 0.01) is the smallest tradable size; lot step is the increment between sizes.

Spread

Ask minus bid — the immediate cost of entering a trade. Compare with commission for true cost (see cost = spread + commission + swap).

Swap / rollover

Financing charged or paid for holding a position overnight. Booked once per night, with a 3× (triple swap) charge one weekday to cover the weekend.

Triple swap

The weekday a broker books three days of swap at once (typically Wednesday for FX/metals) to account for weekend financing.

Stops level

SYMBOL_TRADE_STOPS_LEVEL — minimum distance in points that an SL/TP or pending order must be from price. Violating it causes error 130.

Freeze level

Distance from price within which you cannot modify or close an order — orders inside the freeze level are locked until price moves away.

Server time / GMT offset

The time zone a broker's MetaTrader server runs on. Most are UTC+2/UTC+3; the offset must match your EA's assumption or sessions and candles drift.

Market execution

Orders fill at the current market price with no requotes — preferred for EAs and scalping.

Instant execution

Orders are sent at a requested price and can be requoted if the market moved — a common source of rejected EA orders.

Fill policy (FOK / IOC)

FOK (fill-or-kill) fills the whole order or none; IOC (immediate-or-cancel) fills what it can and cancels the rest; BOC is book-or-cancel.

Hedging

Account model allowing multiple positions per symbol, including opposite buy and sell — MT4 default; an MT5 account option.

Netting

Account model with one aggregated position per symbol — an opposite order reduces the net position instead of opening a new one.

FIFO

First-In-First-Out — you must close the oldest position of a symbol first, required by US NFA-regulated brokers.

ECN / raw account

An account type quoting raw interbank spreads plus a commission per lot, versus a standard account with a wider, commission-free spread.

Slippage

The difference between expected and executed price — positive or negative. Matters most for scalping and news trading.