Plain English for every word
you are about to hear
If you have never traded anything in your life, start here. Every term below is written for someone with zero forex experience, with a real example underneath it. Nothing is assumed, and there is no jargon for its own sake.
Who is who
A handful of names come up constantly. They are separate companies and people with separate jobs, and knowing which is which removes most of the confusion straight away.
Broker
Aeron Markets or BlueStarFXThe company that holds your money, opens your trading account, and actually places your trades into the market. Sterling Capital Technologies works with two brokers, so depending on which one you were set up with, your account sits with one or the other. Your funds are always with the broker, never with Sterling Capital Technologies.
The broker is the bank and the dealing desk rolled into one. You send money to them and they carry out the buying and selling.
Aeron Markets
BrokerOne of the two brokers Sterling Capital Technologies clients use. Aeron accounts run on MT5, and Aeron has its own social trading board built into the back office.
If your welcome email came from Aeron, your dashboard is the Aeron back office and your trading app is MT5.
BlueStarFX
Broker, also written BSFXThe other broker Sterling Capital Technologies clients use. Same job as Aeron, holding your funds and executing your trades, with its own back office dashboard and its own platform login.
If you were set up with BlueStarFX, everything in this glossary still applies. Only the login screens look different.
Sterling Capital Technologies
The educatorThe company that teaches you how the system works and provides the copier technology that mirrors trades onto your account. Sterling Capital Technologies does not hold, manage, or control client funds.
The broker is the bank. Sterling Capital Technologies is the driving instructor and the software.
Introducer
Your point of contactThe person who introduced you to your broker. They stay linked to your account so they can help you with setup, questions, and anything that comes up later.
If your friend Dave sent you the sign-up link, Dave is your introducer.
Trader
The person placing tradesA person who places buys and sells on a trading account. In social trading, the trader you follow trades their own account, and those trades are reproduced on yours.
When the trader behind a strategy sells gold, a matching gold sell appears on every account connected to them.
Liquidity Providers
LPsThe large banks and institutions that supply the real prices and take the other side of trades. Your broker connects to them so your order goes out into the genuine market.
When you buy euros, a bank somewhere is selling them to you. That bank is a liquidity provider.
Your account and your money
Balance, equity, and margin are the three numbers people mix up most. This is the section worth reading twice.
Trading account
Also called your wallet, or your MT5 accountAll three names mean exactly the same thing. It is the account at the broker that holds your money and shows every trade placed on it.
Log into MT5 and the number at the top is your trading account. When someone says wallet, they mean that same account.
One account, one trader
The golden ruleA single trading account can only follow one trader at a time. To follow two different traders you need two separate trading accounts.
Want to follow two strategies at once? Open a second account in your back office and connect one strategy to each.
Deposit
Sending money into your own trading account at the broker. It stays your money the entire time it is there.
You send $1,000 from your bank or crypto wallet to your trading account. Your balance now reads $1,000.
Withdraw
Taking money out of your trading account and back to your own bank account or crypto wallet.
You request $300 in the back office. It is sent back the same way it came in.
Balance
The settled cash in your account. It counts only trades that have finished. Trades still running do not affect it yet.
You deposited $1,000 and one closed trade made $50. Your balance is $1,050.
Equity
What your account is genuinely worth at this second, including trades that are still open. It is your balance plus or minus the profit or loss currently sitting on those open trades.
Balance $1,050, with one open trade currently down $20. Your equity is $1,030.
Floating P/L
Unrealised profit or lossThe profit or loss on trades that are still open. It moves every second, and it is not real money until the trade actually closes.
Seeing minus $40 on an open trade does not mean you have lost $40. It means you would lose $40 if it closed at this exact moment.
Margin
The slice of your money the broker sets aside while a trade is open, as a good-faith deposit. It is not a fee and it is not spent. It is released back to you the second the trade closes.
A trade needing $50 margin holds $50 of your funds aside. Close the trade and that $50 is available again.
Free margin
The money still available to open new trades. It is your equity minus whatever margin is currently being held.
Equity of $950 with $150 held as margin leaves $800 of free margin.
Margin level and stop out
The safety brakeMargin level is your equity compared to the margin being held, shown as a percentage. If it drops too low, the broker automatically closes trades so your account cannot go below zero. That automatic closing is called a stop out.
This only ever triggers when open losses have grown very large. It exists to protect you, not to punish you.
Drawdown
How far an account has fallen from its highest point before recovering. Every strategy in existence has drawdown. It is normal, and understanding it is the single most important thing to grasp before you start.
An account peaks at $1,200, dips to $1,050, then climbs again. That dip is a drawdown of 12.5%.
KYC
Know Your CustomerThe identity check every regulated broker is required to complete before you can deposit or withdraw. Normally photo identification plus a recent proof of address.
Upload your passport and a utility bill from the last three months in the back office, and your account is verified.
What it actually costs
There are only four costs to know about. Three go to the broker. One goes to Sterling Capital Technologies, and only when your account has made money.
Spread
The small gap between the buy price and the sell price of anything you trade. It is the standard cost of entering a trade, and it is built into the price rather than billed to you separately.
EURUSD shows a buy at 1.08502 and a sell at 1.08492. That gap of one pip is the spread.
Commissions
A small flat fee the broker charges per lot traded, normally taken once when a trade opens and once when it closes.
At $3 per lot per side, a one lot trade costs $3 to open and $3 to close.
Swap
Overnight financingA small charge or credit for holding a trade past the daily rollover point. Some positions pay you a little. Most cost you a little.
Holding a position through Wednesday night is usually charged at triple rate, because it covers the weekend.
Monthly performance fee
Charged on new profit onlyA percentage taken from new profit made on your account, calculated at the end of each month. If your account made no new profit that month, there is no fee to pay.
Any previous losses have to be recovered before a fee applies again. This is called a high-water mark, and it means you never pay twice for the same profit.
Social trading and the copiers
This is the part most people are here for. It is far simpler than it sounds.
Social trading
Also called copy tradingConnecting your own trading account to a trade copier so the trades of a chosen trader appear automatically on your account. You keep full control, and you can disconnect whenever you want.
The trader buys gold at 10am. Within about a second, a matching gold buy appears on your account, sized to your balance.
Trade copier
The software that does the mirroring. It watches one account, the trader’s, and instantly repeats every buy, sell, and close onto the accounts connected to it.
It is a photocopier for trades. Nothing new is invented on your side. It simply reproduces what the trader did.
Social Trading Copier
Built into AeronThe copier that lives inside Aeron Markets. You connect to it from your own back office, and it copies the traders listed on Aeron’s social trading board.
No extra software to install. You pick a strategy from the board, connect your account, and it runs.
Direct Connect
External to AeronA separate, faster copier that runs outside Aeron. It is used only for the high-velocity trading of The Sentinel Suite, where trades happen too quickly for a standard copier to keep pace.
Same idea as the Aeron copier, built for speed. Your account is still your account and your funds still sit at the broker.
Markets and the charts
You do not need to read a chart to use social trading. You will hear these words constantly, though, so here is what they mean.
Forex
Foreign exchange, or FXThe business of swapping one currency for another. It is the largest market in the world, open 24 hours a day from Sunday evening to Friday evening. Prices are always quoted in pairs.
EURUSD is the euro priced in US dollars. If it rises, the euro is getting stronger against the dollar.
Markets
Also called instruments or symbolsThe things you can trade. Alongside currency pairs, most brokers also offer gold, oil, and stock indices such as the US30.
XAUUSD is the symbol for gold priced in US dollars. It is one of the most traded markets there is.
Buys
Going longA trade that makes money if the price goes up.
Buy gold at $2,400 and close it at $2,420. You are up $20 per unit held.
Sells
Going shortA trade that makes money if the price goes down. In these markets you are able to sell first and buy back cheaper later.
Sell gold at $2,400 and close it at $2,380. You are up $20 per unit held.
Lots
Trade sizeHow big a trade is. Lot size decides what every price movement is worth to you, in both directions. Bigger lots mean bigger swings.
On most currency pairs, 1.00 lot moves roughly $10 for every pip. 0.10 lots moves roughly $1. Same trade, one tenth of the size.
Pip
The smallest standard step a price moves. It is the unit traders count profit and loss in.
EURUSD moving from 1.0850 to 1.0851 is one pip.
Leverage
A facility from the broker that lets you control a larger position than your deposit alone would allow. It magnifies profit and loss equally, which is exactly why trade size matters so much.
At 1:100 leverage, $1,000 of your own money can hold a position worth $100,000.
Chart
A picture of how a price has moved over time. Time runs left to right along the bottom. Price runs bottom to top up the side.
A rising line on a gold chart means gold got more expensive over that period.
Candles
CandlesticksEach candle sums up everything that happened in one block of time. The thick body shows where price opened and closed. The thin wicks show the highest and lowest points reached. Green closed higher than it opened. Red closed lower.
A green candle with a long lower wick means price dropped hard during that period, then buyers pushed it back up before the close.
1hr candle
H1One candle covering one hour of price movement. A fresh one begins every hour, on the hour.
The candle that opened at 9am closes at 10am, and the 10am candle starts building immediately.
Timeframe
How much time each candle on your chart represents. Changing timeframe does not change the price. It only changes how zoomed in you are.
The M5 chart shows five-minute candles, useful for detail. The D1 chart shows one candle per day, useful for the bigger picture.
Support
The floorA price level underneath the current price where buyers have repeatedly stepped in before, so price has tended to stop falling there.
Gold bounced off $2,350 three separate times in a month. Traders call $2,350 support.
Resistance
The ceilingA price level above the current price where sellers have repeatedly stepped in before, so price has tended to stop rising there.
Gold stalled at $2,450 on four separate attempts. That level is resistance.
The two screens you will use
Whichever broker you are with, you log into two different places and they do two different jobs. A back office for your money, and a trading platform for your charts and trades. Once that clicks, the setup takes minutes.
MT5
MetaTrader 5The free trading app most trading accounts live in, available on phone, desktop, and browser. It is where you see the charts, watch trades open and close, and follow your balance and equity in real time.
Your broker login opens the back office. Your MT5 login opens the trading terminal itself. They are two separate sets of credentials.
cTrader
The alternative to MT5A different trading platform that does the same job as MT5. Charts, live trades, balance and equity. Some accounts run on cTrader rather than MT5, so which one you use depends on the account you were set up with.
If your login details mention cTrader, use cTrader. Everything in this glossary means exactly the same thing on either platform.
Back Office
Your Aeron Markets dashboardThe area you land in after logging into Aeron Markets. This is where you open accounts, deposit, withdraw, complete KYC, and connect to Aeron’s social trading board.
Need to add funds or start a withdrawal? That happens in the back office, never in MT5.
Back Office
Your BlueStarFX dashboardThe same thing on the BlueStarFX side. Log in and you can open accounts, deposit, withdraw, complete KYC, and manage your account details.
Different brand, different colours, same control panel. If you hold accounts at both brokers, you will have two back office logins.
Try a shorter search, or ask your introducer. If a term is missing here, it should be added.