Trading Academy — Learn Forex & CFD Trading for Beginners
Exness publishes free learning material for beginners; this page walks through the mechanics that material starts from — orders, lots, pips, leverage, margin and the real cost of a trade. No profit promises: just how the machinery works and where the risk sits.
Open Exness Account →Exness publishes free learning material — written guides, video lessons and webinars, plus a demo account to practise on; nothing in it is paid. This page covers the ground that material starts from: what forex and CFD trading are, how an order works, what lots, pips, leverage and margin mean, and how spread, commission and swap form the cost of a trade. Most retail accounts trading CFDs lose money.
Forex and CFD basics: orders, lots, pips, leverage and margin
- The Exness education material is free: written guides and video lessons on trading basics, webinars run by market professionals, and a help centre for platform and account questions. General learning material opens from the public website without an account; the demo and account-specific material sit inside the Personal Area after registration. There is no subscription and no paid course tier.
- A workable academy route through the basics is five steps: (1) platform — open, modify and close a market order on demo, about 30 minutes; (2) size — convert lot to units to pip value, three times by hand; (3) protection — stop loss and take profit set before the order is sent, never after; (4) cost — measure what spread, commission and swap took out of 20 demo trades; (5) journal — 20 logged demo trades with entry reason and outcome before any live money.
- A CFD is a contract on a price movement, with no ownership of the underlying asset. It can be opened long or short, which also means a position can lose whichever way it was opened. The instrument range covers currency pairs, metals, indices, energies, stock CFDs and crypto CFDs. Forex trades around the clock five days a week and stops at the weekend, so a chart that stands still on Saturday is normal — and Monday can open away from Friday's close, straight through a stop loss level.
- A lot is the unit of position size: 1 standard lot = 100,000 units of the base currency, 0.1 lot = 10,000 units, 0.01 lot = 1,000 units. On EUR/USD one pip (0.0001) is exactly $10 per standard lot, $1 per 0.1 lot and $0.10 per 0.01 lot, because the pair is quoted in USD. On pairs not quoted in USD — USD/JPY, where a pip is 0.01, or EUR/GBP — the pip value moves with the exchange rate and is shown by the platform's calculator.
- Four order building blocks cover almost everything: a market order fills at the current price, a pending order waits for a preset price level, a stop loss closes a losing trade at a fixed point, a take profit closes a winning one. A position without a stop loss has no defined risk.
- Leverage lets a small deposit hold a larger position and scales profit and loss by exactly the same factor — at 1:100, $100 of margin holds a $10,000 position; the full margin maths is covered on the leverage page. Margin level = equity ÷ used margin × 100%. At the stop out level the platform begins closing open positions automatically, least profitable first: that is forced liquidation, not a safety net, and in a fast or gapping market the closing price can be worse than the level itself. Exness applies a low stop out level — 0% on Standard and Standard Cent accounts. Terms and conditions apply, and each account type states its own margin call and stop out levels in its specification.
- Position size is calculated, not felt: (balance × risk %) ÷ (stop in pips × pip value per 0.01 lot). A $500 balance risking 1% is $5; with a 50-pip stop on EUR/USD, $5 ÷ (50 × $0.10) = 0.01 lot. Applied to every trade, ten losses in a row cost about 10% of the balance instead of all of it.
- The cost of a trade is spread + commission + swap, and which of the three applies depends on the account type: some are priced through the spread alone, others carry a tighter spread plus a commission per lot — on those the spread can sit at or near 0.0 pips on major pairs in liquid hours. Spreads are variable and widen around news releases and in thin liquidity; terms and conditions apply. Swap is applied at the daily rollover (00:00 server time), charged in triple size on one weekday to cover the weekend, and some instruments carry no swap at all — the exact figures sit in each instrument's specification, and the full cost comparison on the fees page. Most retail accounts trading CFDs lose money, so only capital whose total loss is affordable should be involved.
The six terms that trip up most beginners
| Term | Plain meaning | Concrete example |
|---|---|---|
| Lot | Unit of trade size | 0.01 lot on EUR/USD = 1,000 units of EUR |
| Pip | Smallest standard price step | 1.1050 → 1.1051 is one pip; $0.10 at 0.01 lot |
| Spread | Gap between buy and sell price | Buy 1.1051 / sell 1.1050 = 1 pip spread |
| Leverage | Ratio of position size to margin | 1:100 — $100 margin holds $10,000 |
| Margin | Funds locked by an open position | $10,000 position at 1:100 locks $100 |
| Stop out | Forced closure when margin level falls too low | Equity $50 against $100 used margin = margin level 50%; at the account's stop out level positions start closing, least profitable first |
Frequently asked questions
What does the Exness education section include, and does it cost anything?
It is free. The material covers trading basics in written guides and video lessons, with webinars run by market professionals and a help centre for platform and account questions. General learning material opens from the public website without an account; the demo and account-specific material sit in the Personal Area after registration. No subscription and no paid course tier are involved.
Where should a complete beginner start?
On a demo account, with one instrument at the smallest size (0.01 lot). The first sessions go on mechanics only: open a market order, set a stop loss and a take profit before entry, watch how margin level moves, close manually. Every trade gets logged with its reason. A move to real money makes sense after 20 logged demo trades in which the stop loss was set before entry and never widened — and then at 0.01 lot. What demo cannot reproduce is fill quality: real orders meet real liquidity, so slippage around news and at the session open behaves differently there.
Can a loss exceed the money deposited?
Exness applies Negative Balance Protection, so an account balance is not taken below zero by market movement. Terms and conditions apply. It caps the downside at the amount deposited — it does not reduce the chance of losing that amount in full.
How much money is needed to start trading?
The $10 entry applies to the entry-level account types; other types carry higher minimums, and the exact figure also depends on the funding method chosen. Position size matters more than the deposit: a $10 balance trading 0.01 lot on EUR/USD moves about $0.10 per pip, so a 100-pip move against the position is the whole balance. A Standard Cent account denominates the balance in cents — a $10 deposit shows as 1,000 cents — and trades in cent lots, which makes it the usual bridge between demo and full-size live trading.
Is the broker behind this material regulated?
Exness is a globally regulated broker, holding multiple licenses from respected financial regulators around the world. The broker has operated since 2008. Regulation and length of track record say nothing about the outcome of any individual account: market risk is unchanged, and most retail accounts trading CFDs lose money.