hello everyone, i don’t know if i’m doing something wrong but my lot sizes aren’t correct on spx500
if i use the calculator like this 
and i place that lot size into mt5 i get a invalid number, i had to manually check what my lot size is by placing and closing positions, i found it to be 7.5
i want to know if i’m doing something wrong so that if i start trading with actual money one day i won’t have to open/close positions to check if my lot size is correct
I’m not entirely sure how you’re getting 7.5. I can only talk from my own personal experience with US500 and MT5. My broker is IG Index who allows trading on MT4 for the US500, this isn’t SPX but is in fact SPY which means that for every 0.01 of an increment is equal to 1 point. Example: current price 5246.26 and I want to place a 10 point S/L that would be at 5246.16. You then need to adjust for lot sizing too, 0.1 lots for me on IG index is the equivalent of £1.00 (not 0.1p as I had originally assumed and got a nasty shock the first time I opened a trade and nearly got margin called in the space of a minute)
thanks christopher i think i’m starting to understand better
is there any tips you can give me for trading s&p500?
i mostly trade euro/usd and i understand the lot sizes perfectly on that pair, i’m still on demo so there’s lots of room for improvement 
if there’s maybe a video you can recommend about lot sizes that would be great too!
First and foremost, be aware that you’re not trading the S&P: you’re trading a CFD “product” of your “broker” (who is actually your counterparty), in other words, you’re betting against them on the price movements of a “product” that was artificially created just for people to bet against them on its price-movements. I’m not saying there’s necessarily anything wrong with doing that (and certainly plenty of people are doing it), just that you should be aware that that’s what you’re doing, and don’t confuse it with “trading the S&P”.
That said, its price movements should roughly mirror those of the S&P but there will also be times when they don’t (e.g. there will be sometimes be “spikes” on the chart/feed of your “broker” that don’t appear anywhere else. As so many people have discovered, sometimes to their cost!).
CFD brokers offering an “S&P-mirroring product” of their own usually have a lot value of either $1 per pip or $10 per pip for it. As you can imagine, it’s pretty important to know which! (Ask them!). Some then further divide the pip into 4 (copying the actual S&P), and some into 10 sub-units. Again, it obviously helps to know which.
In general, don’t try to learn from videos. Videos are generally put online by people selling things. There’s no quality control. Anyone can publish anything to sell anything. This is how misinformation is promoted and publicized and how misunderstandings spread and multiply, all from apparently authoritative-looking sources. You would be much better looking at the information in the BabyPips School, it’s far more reliable than almost anything on Youtube. You’ll find almost everything you want to know answered in there, anyway. It really IS worth the effort.
is there any tips you can give me for trading s&p500?
The VIX is your friend, use the VIX with Standard Deviation. Really, the only indicator you need.
thank you so much christopher i’ll definitely do that!
