FOUNDATIONS: COURSE 3 | LESSON 1

Demo account setup and your first platform tour

Learning objectives

By the end you can open a demo account and log in to MT4/MT5 on desktop or in the Alpari App.
By the end you can find the four things you'll use constantly: Market Watch, the chart, the order ticket, and the Terminal/Toolbox.
By the end you can place a demo trade and close it — and explain why the account balance moved the way it did.

Getting started (at last)

Welcome to the part of the course where you stop reading about trading and start doing it — with pretend money, which is exactly how everyone should start.

A demo account gives you the live market, real prices, and a virtual balance. You cannot lose real money on it, and you cannot make real money on it. That second part matters: a demo win is practice, not proof.

Why demo first (and how long to stay)

The honest case for demo trading isn't "learn to win" — it's "learn to operate the machine before the machine can hurt you." Most early losses in live trading have nothing to do with market analysis. They come from fat-fingering a lot size, confusing buy-stop with buy-limit, or not knowing where the close button is while a position runs against you. Those are platform errors, and they're 100% avoidable with a few weeks of demo practice.

How long should you stay on demo? Long enough that placing, modifying, and closing an order feels boring. For most people that's 2–6 weeks of regular practice. Staying on demo forever has its own problem — no real emotions, no real lessons about yourself — but that's a bridge for a later course. Right now, demo is home.

One setup tip: when you create the demo account, choose a virtual balance close to what you'd realistically fund a live account with. If that's $1,000, don't practise on a $100,000 demo. Position sizing habits (Lesson 3) only transfer if the numbers feel real.

Opening your demo account

The flow is simple with Alpari:

Register on the website or in the app (email, phone, basic details). A demo account doesn't require full verification — that comes when you go live.
Create a demo account from your account dashboard (your Alpari profile). You'll choose a platform (MT4 or MT5 — pick MT5 if you have no reason not to; it's the newer platform with more timeframes and instruments), an account currency, a leverage setting, and a virtual balance.
Note your login credentials: a login number, a password, and a server name. These are what you'll enter in the trading platform — they're separate from your website login.
Download the platform — MT4/MT5 for desktop, or the mobile version, or trade directly inside the Alpari App.
Log in with the login number, password, and server from step 3.

If the platform connects, you'll see live prices ticking in the quotes list and a connection indicator (bottom-right on desktop MT4/MT5) showing data flowing. If prices are frozen, you're not logged in — the usual culprit is picking the wrong server from the list.

The 60-second platform tour

MT4 and MT5 look intimidating and are actually simple. Four areas do almost everything:

Market Watch (quotes list) — every instrument you can trade, with live bid and ask prices. EUR/USD might show 1.0846 / 1.0847 — that one-pip gap is the spread, your cost of entry. Right-click to show more symbols if the list looks short.
The chart — price history for whichever symbol you drag onto it. Switch timeframes (M15, H1, D1...) from the toolbar. Candlestick view is the default you want; you learned to read it in Trading Mechanics.
The order ticket — opens when you press F9, click "New Order", or double-click a symbol. This is where you set the instrument, the volume (lot size), stop-loss, take-profit, and buy or sell. It's the most important window in the platform, and Lesson 2 is built around filling it in properly.
Terminal (MT4) / Toolbox (MT5) — the panel along the bottom. The Trade tab shows open positions and, crucially, three numbers: Balance (your cash), Equity (balance plus the running profit/loss of open trades), and Free Margin (what's left to open new trades). Watch how Equity ticks up and down while a trade is open — that's your P/L breathing in real time.

Your first (deliberately tiny) trade

Let's place one trade purely to learn the mechanics. On your demo:

Open the order ticket for EUR/USD.
Set volume to 0.01 lots — the minimum, worth about $0.10 per pip. Tiny on purpose.
Click Buy by Market. You'll be filled at the ask — say 1.0847.
Look at the Trade tab. You'll likely see roughly −$0.10 immediately. Nothing is wrong: you bought at the ask and the position is valued at the bid, so you start the trade one spread behind. Every trade begins slightly negative. Internalise this now and it will never surprise you again.
Watch it for a few minutes. If EUR/USD ticks up 5 pips to 1.0852, you're +$0.50. Down 5 pips, −$0.50.
Close it: right-click the position → Close, or use the ✕ on the position row. The result — probably a few cents either way — moves from Equity into Balance.

Congratulations: you've now done the thing most people only read about. Notice what you didn't do — set a stop-loss or have any reason for the trade. That was fine for a mechanics drill and is not fine ever again. Lesson 2 fixes it.

Key takeaways

Demo trading is for learning the platform and your process — demo profits prove nothing about live profits.
Set your demo balance close to your realistic live starting capital so the practice transfers.
The four workspaces that matter: Market Watch, chart, order ticket (F9), and Terminal/Toolbox.
Every trade opens slightly negative because of the spread — that's the cost of doing business, not an error.
Balance is cash; Equity is balance plus open-trade P/L. When no trades are open, they're equal.