Can't Understand Lot Sizes on MT4

Beginner Questions
1

Hey traders!

I know lot sizes must be a popular topic here, but after much scouring I’ve been unable to find an actual answer to my confusion with lot sizes and I’m hoping someone can help me out.

I have already read the pages on lot sizes here at babypips, but they don’t help me with my confusion issue either.

I’ve been using trading view to chart, but also to place orders on there directly. It’s a really simple process and it’s been working great for me. It does all the calculations and I haven’t had to do any figuring out of lot sizes or anything the entire time I’ve been trading.

So now that I’m looking to take a funded challenge, I’m having to learn to use Metatrader 4 (The mobile app) and after weeks of trying to figure this out I now have so much frustration and confusion over not being able to understand lot sizes that I could honestly cry. (I have ADHD and dyslexia so I really struggle with complicated information which doesn’t help.)

On trading view I’m looking at a long trade on AUDJPY.
Buy stop order will enter me at a price of 99.850
Stop loss 19 pips.

That’s all I had to enter. The rest was auto filled for me by trading view.
The lot size says 14. However coming to MT4, that doesn’t seem to be right at all and I can’t get my orders to work. (I’m using a demo account until I figure out how on earth to use it).

Using online lot size calculators, I get completely different results, and different again when I do the calculations myself.

Trading View Lots: 14
Example one: 15.00 Money,GBP Standard Lot Units 0.113 Lots
Example two: 0.0144 = £15.00
Then my own calculation (risk / pip) or (15 / 18) gave me 0.833333.

I tried to include screenshots of all the information on these calculators but I can’t add links.
Essentially it looks like this:

Pair: AUDJPY
Account size: £1,500
Risk %: 1
Stop Loss (Pips): (19)
Result: Completely different on every calculator.

At this point I’m so deeply lost and confused that even though I’m sure the answer is simple I can’t see it. And as a result I feel completely hopeless and stupid right now.

I appreciate any answers, but I would love even more if they were simplified and easy to understand because I’m in complete information overload and burn out, and as I said I struggle.

I guess just need some extra help and a dumbed down explanation.

Thanks so much in advance.

2

Hi and welcome in BP community :slightly_smiling_face: on this level you should not touch any type of challenges. Finish the BP school at first, with that kind healthy problems, achieve main goal, long term profitable trading, will be harder for you. You can visit this topic which can help you Program your success good luck Regards Greg

4

Thank you, however I’ve been trading with good results on a live account for around a year and it’s something I am ready to try.
I’ve just never considered switching my platform. I will be taking the exact same trades I have been taking up until now, just on the MT4 platform instead. Using trading view for so long, it is completely set in stone to me and I’m struggling to learn and figure out how to transfer my trading over in terms of the differences in how lot sizes are entered between the two platforms.

I’m just looking for some specific help on how to do that.

I appreciate the kind response though, thank you.

5

that’s completely change view about you :wink: I don’t use TV, I am using MT4, basically you can use trade manager, which helps trade, google will give some results.

6

I wish you good luck, but you’re the only person I’ve ever heard of switching TO MT4!!

There are loads of funding challenges you can do on other platforrns, including TradingView.

They’re generally much better, as you might expect.

Metaquotes is withdrawing MT4 licences from many funding firms, right now, and announced that they’re no longer supporting MT4 anyway.

I know Lux Trading has TV for funding challenges, but you can search hundreds of funding firms according to “platform availability,” I think, at sites like www.propfirmmatch.com

3 Likes
7

Almost all - maybe just “all” - the funding company challenges that have Tradovate available (and that’s a lot) can also be done with TradingView, just by plugging TV into Tradovate.

They trade futures, not CFDs, which of course also has enormous advantages, by comparison - the main one being that if you pass, you get an actual, live, verifiable, genuinely funded account on a real exchange.

Almost nobody who can do this profitably, long term, would choose voluntarily to stay with spot/CFD forex anyway, when they could so easily switch to forex futures and have far better and safer regulation, a genuine broker who wants them to win, not lose, far better protection of funds, high leverage, no spreads to pay, and the ability to trade in a transparent, honest market in which all brokers have the same prices at the same time, rather than just betting against a counterparty on the price-movements of the counterparty’s own “products”!

2 Likes
8

Hi @LindsayG , all replies above are valid and pertinent but I’ll try to help with practical details :crossed_fingers:
I have put your numbers in Babypip’s own position calculator. I also don’t know how to post a screenshot so I have to describe what it shows but you can try it yourself:
Account currency = GBP
account balance = 1500
risk percentage = 1
stop loss pips = 19
currency pair = AUDJPY
current GBPJPY price = 192.19 ( that’s when I looked so for sure it will be slightly different when you do and that will affect the results, but only just)
Results: 15172 units or 0.1517 standard lots or 1.5173 mini lots or 15.17 micro lots
So it very much looks like on TradingView you have been dealing with micro lots.
BTW there are 1000 units in a micro lot, 10 micros in a mini, 100 micros (= 100 000 units) in a standard. Do not stress with dyslexia over that, they are just definitions, but when you change platforms you need to be clear which one the entry ticket is based on.

here you divide your risk in money by the number of pips risked, doing that gives you pip value in GBP, useful but not a lot size. You are betting on AUDJPY so calculation must include a conversion of your £15 into JPY.
I wish it was simpler and I was clearer but hope it makes some sense

2 Likes
9

That actually helps a ton, thank you!

I messed around a lot on a demo account over the last few days and nothing I found seems fully accurate but I seem to have it a bit better figured out at least.

I hate numbers and information overload. :melting_face: