Getting started
Updated 7 October 2026, 5 min readMost traders arrive at eTrader because their Broker or prop firm now offers it. The good news is that the terminal was built for people who already trade: the screens are where you expect them and the words mean what they always meant. This guide covers the few things that do change, in the order you meet them.
Your Login
Your Broker issues an eTrader account: a Server, an account number and a password. Sometimes it is the account you already trade on, made available in eTrader as well. Sometimes it is a new account. Either way, the platform holds no money and opens no live accounts of its own, so the person to ask is your Broker.
In the terminal, choose your Broker from the list, pick the Server, and sign in. If you are only looking, skip that and open a demo account: it takes a name and an email and trades virtual money on live prices.
Open positions
A position lives on the account it was opened on. If your Broker gives you a new account for eTrader, the positions on the old one stay there until you close them. If the Broker connects the account you already had, the positions are the same positions, drawn on a new chart. Ask before you move anything, and do not assume a stop loss on one platform protects a position shown on another.
The words are the same
Lots, pips, leverage, margin, free margin, swap, spread, stop loss, take profit, limit and stop orders: all of it means what it did before. The ticket shows the required margin and the free margin after the order before you send it, which some platforms make you work out yourself.
One difference in vocabulary: a program that trades for you is a bot, and it runs in the cloud, not on your computer. More on that below.
Where things live
| You are looking for | In eTrader |
|---|---|
| The list of instruments and their prices | Market Watch. Add or remove symbols from its menu. |
| The order form | New Order in the toolbar, or the ticket that opens when you click a price. |
| Your open trades | The Trade tab under the chart, under Open Positions, with live profit and the stop and target on each row. |
| Waiting orders | Pending Orders, in the same Trade tab below your open positions. |
| Closed trades | History, with a date range and a CSV export. |
| Account balance and margin | The account bar: Balance, Equity, Margin, Free Margin. |
| Alerts | Alerts, next to History, and the alert tool on the chart. |
| Your programs | Indicators, then Custom, for your own indicators. Bots, in the account menu, for your bots from eTrader Code. |
| Password and notifications | Account Settings, from the account chip at the top right. |
| One-click trading | Offered the first time you press SELL or BUY on the chart. |
What is different on the chart
Orders are drawn on the chart and they drag. Move the stop loss line and the stop moves on the Server when you let go. Move a pending order across the market price and it changes from a limit to a stop on its own. This is the one habit worth changing: instead of opening a modify dialog, take hold of the line.
Your trades sync, your chart setup stays put. Positions, orders, history and alerts are on the account and show on every device. Drawings, indicators and colours are kept by the device you set them on, so set up each screen once. There is no template to export and no profile to copy.
Indicators
The built-in list covers what most traders use: moving averages, Bollinger Bands, Parabolic SAR, RSI, MACD, Stochastic, CCI, ATR, Momentum, Williams %R and Volume, each with its own settings. The charts guide has the details.
Custom indicators are written in Tide, eTrader's own language, in eTrader Code. A finished indicator is one file that you upload in the chart's Indicators list, and it draws on the chart alongside the built-in ones. The Tide guide is short, and an indicator that reads a moving average is a few lines.
Robots
This is the biggest change. On most platforms a robot runs inside the terminal on your machine, which is why people rent a server to keep it running. In eTrader a bot runs in the cloud. You add it to your account from the Bots window, fill in its inputs, switch it on, and close the laptop. It keeps trading. Every bot also has a Signals only mode, where it sends you a notification instead of placing the order.
If you already have robots or indicators written for another platform, eTrader Code has a converter. It uses an AI model on your own key to rewrite the program in Tide, compiles every attempt, and gives you a report of what converted cleanly, what converted with a different meaning and what did not convert. Treat the result as a first draft: run it in the strategy tester before it trades money.
Two things you will not find
There is no deposit or withdrawal screen. eTrader is the terminal; your Broker holds the money, and funding happens on the Broker's own portal. And there is no account opening for live trading inside the app, for the same reason. A demo account is the only account eTrader issues itself.
A sensible first day
Open a demo. Add the instruments you trade to Market Watch. Set up one chart the way you like it, then open the same account on your phone and check the position list. Place a pending order and drag it. Add a stop loss and drag that. Close half the position. By then the terminal will feel familiar, and the live account is the same terminal with real money behind it.