Reading a Spread for the First Time — Cambodia

The whole list, before narrowing to one instrument

Typical = the median of all readings. The min–p90 strip shows how far the spread stretched under load; a stable in sample badge means the spread never moved across the whole sample — on Exness Standard many instruments are quoted with stable target spreads, so identical min, median and p90 is expected there, not an error. Forex pairs are quoted in pips; metals, indices, energy and crypto in points — the cost column converts each instrument into the dollar cost of opening the selected lot size at the typical spread. Confidence dots: ●●● at least 2,000 readings, ●● at least 800, ● below that — treat single-dot rows as indicative. Dollar costs differ in magnitude because contract sizes differ: 1 lot of JP225 (Nikkei 225) is a contract of just 1 — a fraction of other instruments’ notional — so a cost of a few cents per lot is genuine, not an error; the “cost vs daily move” column is the fair cross-instrument comparison. Server Exness-MT5Trial11, captured 06 Sep 2026, 07:46 server time.

The same instrument, hour by hour — pick yours

If the plan holds past the rollover

Values shown per 0.1 lot — the lot toggle above rescales this table too.

Read from the platform’s contract specifications at the same capture (2026-09-06). Negative = a nightly charge, positive = a nightly credit; on the triple-swap day three nights are applied at once. “Held 5 nights” counts 7 charges where the instrument has a triple-swap day — a Monday→Saturday hold crosses it once; energies (US Oil, UK Oil) have no triple day, so five nights mean five charges — the realistic cost of a week-long position, not the per-night teaser. See swap rates for how swaps work.

Why the advertised number is not the number you pay

The number in an advertisement and the number a beginner pays are usually not the same number, and the difference is which account it belongs to. The advertised “from 0.0” belongs to the Raw Spread account, which charges a commission per side on top. The readings here are from the Standard account, where there is no commission to add. Compare the all-in cost of one trade, never the headline:

Does the number hold from one day to the next? (44 captures)

One capture per day from the same MT5 feed. A narrow range means the median spread held steady across the period. Spreads may fluctuate and widen due to volatility, news, and market conditions.

How these readings were taken

What a beginner does with a spread number

Convert it into the same units as the plan. If the plan says the target is thirty pips away and the stop is twenty, then a spread has to be read in pips too before any of those distances mean anything.

Check it at the hour you actually trade rather than at the tightest hour of the day. A number measured during the busiest session says nothing about the one you can reach after work.

Watch it on the demo before it costs anything. Opening a practice position and immediately looking at the unrealised loss is the clearest possible demonstration of what a spread is.

Where beginners misread this page

Reading a tight spread as a reason to trade. A cheap entry into a setup the plan did not authorise is still an unauthorised trade, and cost is the smaller of the two problems.

Assuming the number is fixed. Spreads may fluctuate and widen due to factors including market volatility, news events and market open or close — which is precisely why they are measured repeatedly rather than quoted once.

Comparing account types too early. Trading a tighter spread for a commission only pays off for a plan whose edge has already been measured, and a first month has not measured anything yet.

Where this sits in a four-week practice run

Week one does not use this page at all. The job then is the order ticket: place, attach a stop loss and a take profit, modify, close. Nothing here helps with that, and reading it early mostly produces an opinion about a broker instead of a skill.

Week two is where it belongs. The plan is being written, the target and the stop are being given distances, and this is the page that says whether those distances make sense against what an entry costs. Write the answer into the plan rather than remembering it.

Weeks three and four use it as a checkpoint. If the demo log fills up with near misses, the first thing to re-read is not the strategy but the relationship between the target and the cost of getting in. That is a diagnosis this page can actually give a beginner.

Three habits this page is meant to build

Look before the order, not after the loss. The number that matters is the one at the hour the plan trades, on the instrument the plan names — a single line out of the whole table.

Write it into the plan in the plan's own units. A spread quoted in pips next to a target quoted in pips is a comparison; a spread remembered vaguely as small is not.

Re-read it rather than remembering it. Readings move, and a beginner who memorised one number in week two will still be quoting it in month six.

Why a beginner should not shop on this number

It is tempting to treat a table like this as a scoreboard, and that instinct wastes the first month. The entry cost is one input into a plan, and it is not the one that decides whether a beginner ends the year still trading — position size and a rule that gets followed are.

There is also a measurement problem underneath the shopping instinct. Comparing a figure captured here against a figure quoted somewhere else, at a different hour, on a different account type, is not a comparison at all, and a first month has no way to correct for any of that.

The defensible use is narrower and more useful: take the figure for the one instrument the plan names, at the one hour the plan trades, and check that the plan's target survives it. That question can be answered honestly with this page, and almost nothing else can.

What a first month is actually being judged on

Nothing on this page decides whether a beginner is still trading in a year. That is decided by whether a written plan existed, whether it was followed, and whether every loss was the size it was supposed to be. Those three things are visible only in a journal, and a journal only exists if somebody starts one in week one.

The habit of keeping a log is unglamorous and it is the whole discipline. Pair, timeframe, the reason for entry written before the outcome was known, where the stop went, what the position size was, what happened. Six fields, thirty seconds, every trade, including the ones taken against the rules.

By the end of four weeks that log answers questions no reference page can. Which rule gets broken. Which day of the week the breaks happen on. Whether the trades that were skipped would have worked. A beginner who has that document is in a completely different position from one who has read every page on this site and traded nothing.

The four steps, and where reading fits into them

Step one is a free demo account and the order ticket, learned until placing a protected order is automatic. There is no reading to do here at all, only repetition.

Step two is one page of written rules: which market, which hours, what puts you in, where the stop goes, what a loss is allowed to cost. This is where a reference page earns its place, and it is the only stage where any of the numbers on this site should be copied into anything.

Step three is several weeks of trading those rules unchanged and logging every trade. Reading during this stage is mostly procrastination: the rules are already written and changing them mid-run destroys the sample.

Step four is reading the log, changing exactly one rule, and running it again. A deposit belongs after that, and it belongs small enough to be a test of composure rather than of the plan.

Two things a beginner should refuse to do

Refuse to trade an idea that is not written down. The rule sounds pedantic until the first time a position is opened for a reason that evaporates the moment it moves against you, and the journal has nothing in it to review afterwards.

Refuse to change the size after the plan is written. A lot size raised because the last trade won, or because this setup looks obvious, turns a measurable run of trades into an unmeasurable one. Consistency is not caution here — it is the only thing that makes the month interpretable.

One page, one line, once a week

The temptation with a table this size is to read all of it, which produces an opinion rather than a plan. The disciplined use is one row and one hour, checked at the start of each practice week and written into the plan.

Everything else here is background that will matter later, once a log exists and it says that cost is the thing standing between the plan and a result. Until then the constraint is almost always a rule that keeps getting broken.

Turning this page into three lines of a plan

1. Name the instrument the plan trades and find its single row. Ignore the other twenty-two.
2. Name the hour the plan trades and read the figure for that hour, not for the tightest hour of the day.
3. Write the number into the plan in the same units the target and the stop are written in.
4. Divide the dollar column down to the lot size the plan actually uses — the defaults here are far larger than a first trade.
5. Compare the entry cost with the intended target. If the target is not comfortably larger, change the target or the timeframe before the practice run starts.
6. Re-read the row at the start of each practice week rather than trusting the number remembered from last time.

Six lines, ten minutes, once a week. That is the whole intended use of this page at the beginner stage.

What you see here, what to check, what to do next

Every row is a sizing decision, not a broker verdict.

What to read next on the way in