Trading
Updated 7 October 2026, 5 min readA stop loss and a take profit are two prices stored with a position on your Broker's Server. When the market reaches one of them, the Server closes the position at the price it has at that moment. Nothing on your side has to be open. This guide covers the rules the terminal checks, the fastest ways to set and move both levels, and what you see afterwards. Opening the order itself is in Placing orders.
Which price triggers them
A position is always closed on the opposite side of the quote from the one it opened on. A buy opens at the ask and closes at the bid. A sell opens at the bid and closes at the ask. The stop loss and the take profit follow the same rule:
- On a buy, the stop loss triggers when the bid falls to it, and the take profit when the bid rises to it.
- On a sell, the stop loss triggers when the ask rises to it, and the take profit when the ask falls to it.
This is why a sell's stop can be hit on a chart where the candles never touched it. The candles are drawn from the bid, and a sell is closed at the ask. If you trade close to your levels, switch on Show Ask Line in Settings (Chart Colours, at the bottom of the chart type menu) so you can see both sides.
The close happens at the market price when the level is reached. In a fast market or over a weekend gap that price can be worse than your stop, or better than your target. The level is the trigger, not a promise of the exact fill.
The rules the terminal checks
Every stop loss and take profit is checked against the current price before it is saved, on the ticket, in Edit Position and when you drag a line:
| Position | Stop loss must be | Take profit must be |
|---|---|---|
| Buy | below the price | above the price |
| Sell | above the price | below the price |
For a new market order "the price" is the one you would open at. For an open position it is the price the position would close at now. For a pending order it is the order price. The two levels can never be the same price. Break any of these rules and the terminal shows Invalid SL/TP with the reason, and nothing is changed.
Each position carries one stop loss and one take profit. To take profit in more than one place, close part of the position yourself with Partial Close, covered in Closing positions.
Setting them after the order is open
In the web terminal, open the Trade tab, find the position under Open Positions and press Edit. The Edit Position window shows the open price, the current price, how long the position has been open, and two fields: Stop Loss and Take Profit. Type the prices and press Save. To remove a level, empty its field and save.
On the iPhone and Android apps, tap Modify on the position card. The fields are the same, and an empty field reads None.
Set SL to Entry Price sits under the stop loss field. In the web terminal it moves the stop to your open price and saves at once. In the phone apps it fills in the field, and you confirm with Save Changes. It only works once the price has moved far enough in your favour: a buy's stop at entry must still be below the current bid, so right after opening, the rules above refuse it.
Setting them on the chart
An open position draws three lines on its chart: the entry, the stop loss and the take profit. You can create a level you have not set yet by dragging the entry line itself. Drag it towards profit and you are placing the take profit. Drag it the other way and you are placing the stop loss. Let go and the level is saved.
Existing lines drag the same way. While you drag, the label on the line shows the distance from your entry in pips and what that distance is worth in your account currency, signed as a gain or a loss. The readout stays on the label after you let go, so you can read your risk on the chart at any time.
If a dragged level breaks one of the rules, the line jumps back to where it was and the terminal says why. The same happens if the Server refuses the change.
Pending orders draw their stop loss and take profit as short SL and TP lines beside the order line. They drag too. When the order fills, the new position inherits both levels.
When a level is hit
The position moves to the History tab. The Closed By column reads Stop Loss or Take Profit, and the level that ended the trade is coloured in the SL or TP column. Click the row and the Trade window marks it as Stop Loss (hit) or Take Profit (hit), next to the open price, the close price, the swap, the commission and the net result.
The phone apps and the browser can send a notification when a stop loss or take profit closes a position. The switch is Stop Loss and Take Profit, under Push Notifications in the web terminal's Account Settings. See Push notifications for the details.
A stop that follows the price as it moves your way is a trailing stop, with its own rules. It is explained in Trailing stop.