I placed my first 4 trades on my MT4 £10,000 demo account. I wanted to risk 1% on each. I went to the cashbackforex position size calculator, plugged in the pairs, my currency and stop losses and was given the lot size for £100 risk. I placed those amounts, and I expected to be risking £400. (I was careful not to make any mistakes with the numbers or other parameters.) I also placed a couple of limit orders for 1%. Yet when I click the MT4 exposure tab, my GBP figure is showing at just over £9,000. (That figure is on the line above the two pending limit orders, so presumably does not include them.) Does this mean that if all my trades are stopped out I will have lost £1000 give or take? Am I using the wrong calculator? There seems to be no way on MT4 to discover how much I am risking per trade.
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You can manually move the S/L on your entry chart by right clicking - which shows the exposure - and drag to the £100 mark if the price action does not trigger closure.
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Now you are safe, you can determine a lot size risk exposure for the leverage offered by the broker, and amend the pending trades ASAP.
I would also consider requesting the broker to reduce the account size to a more realistic live account you’ll be trading later, and also set a maximum leverage of 100:1.
This will ensure you trade sensibly…
Solid advice until the OP is more comfortable with the mechanics of trading and also learning more about how to use risk properly. 
Research properly before making any decision.
Steve, thank you so much for the tip, which will be very useful for in-trade adjustment. I’d been using ProRealTime before, and I’m still finding my way round MT4. The problem with what you suggest is that I’m using an ATR multiple to calculate my SL for a fixed % exposure, so I need to get the lot size right on the initial order. I’ve also now discovered that profit and pips appear when you hover over the SL or TP line, and I can see from that that I did actually get my calculations just about right.
My broker’s leverage is 1:30 on the majors and 1:20 on crosses, which will be plenty for me. I’m going to be a very sensible trader. (In fact, I’m probably not going to be a trader at all if I don’t show a profit on my demo over the next 6 months.) 
So it appears that I was simply failing to understand properly the function of the exposure tab in MT4’s terminal, which PRT doesn’t have. I’m pretty sure I’ve got a handle on it now, which I hadn’t when I posted this at 2 a.m.
So far as the wider question of account balance is concerned, if you have, say, a sports betting account for £1000 and place a £100 bet, your balance shows as £900. I guess what I would like is for MT4 to somehow tell me ‘You have a £10,000 account; you might lose £400 of it with these trades, so you now have £9,600 to trade with.’ I think other platforms I’ve seen have done something like that, treating live trades as unrealised P/L.
Craig - I really don’t need patronising, but thanks for trying.
Hunter - yes, a bit more research into the workings of MT4 is clearly required.
Actually, risk management practices matter a lot in trading activity, because if there would no risk management practices we would never reach success, we would just blow our accounts. To my mind, it’s kinda difficult to master risk management practices in case we speak about novices, because they often don’t understand how to manage funds wisely. As far as I concerned, they should just comply several rules. The main one is to open a deal with no more than 2-3% of the total amount of your deposit. This move can help you to keep your funds safe and never blow your account. Otherwise, you will be dived into losses.
You can adjust your stop loss and lot size in your active orders in the limit tab in MT4. Just click on order, and it will show you what the stop is. If you want the stop and lot size to show up in MT4, just go to layout and preferences and tick ‘limit orders visible.’
Just click on order, and it will show you what the stop is. You can also ask your broker what the stop is on your order. Additionally, you can see your stop loss value change in the ‘recent orders’ section of the trading terminal when you place an order using MT4.
Hi @Uptrending
I am contributing to a thread on testing a Backtesting application at the link below. At the time I was writing the content, I wondered if I was going a bit overboard on detail, but the content below may be of use to you and if you download the free trial copy the lessons take you through a simulation that is based on the general layout of the MT4 platform.
L23 What is leverage
L24 What is margin
L25 What is free margin
L26 What is margin level
L27 What is margin call
L28 What is balance
L29 What is equity
Having written this stuff very recently, this is the second time I have referred back to it in as many days. So it may be a useful thread to review 
Thanks for the heads-up