Before it goes in your pocket

Safety basics for a screen that leaves your hand (Philippines)

A trade opened on a phone does not pause when the phone does. Everything below exists because of that one sentence: the position keeps running through a meeting, a commute and a night's sleep, and the decisions that protect it can only be made while you are still looking at it.

Two numbers, decided before the app is open, do most of the work: how much of the account a single trade may spend, and where the exit sits. On a phone the exit matters more than anywhere else, because a stop loss is a level the platform enforces without you — it closes the position once the price has moved far enough against you, whether or not the screen is on. Everything after that is checking: the right account, the right size, the level actually saved, and the figures on the account line still making sense.

The before-lock checklist

Five checks, all of them on screens you already have open. None takes longer than reading this row.

Check	Where you read it	What a wrong answer means
Which account is open	The account label	Everything below is about the wrong money
The size that was actually sent	The position row, not your memory	Each pip is worth more than you planned
The exit level is saved	The row, where the level is shown	Nothing closes the trade while you are away
Free margin left	The account line	Little room for the position to breathe
Gap between balance and equity	The same line, by subtraction	That gap is what your open rows currently cost

Three figures on the account line, and what each is telling you

They sit centimetres apart on a phone and they are not the same money.

Balance — what stands still

The account with nothing running. It does not move while a position is open, which is exactly why reading only this one is misleading in the middle of a trade.
Equity — what moves in your pocket

Balance plus whatever the open rows currently come to. This is the figure that is different when you take the phone out again, and the one to look at first.
Free margin — what is left to work with

What remains after open positions have taken their share. When it shrinks, the account has less room before positions start being closed for you.

Deciding the number away from the app

The order screen will happily accept any size it can support. That is not a judgement about your month — it is a field. So the limit is settled elsewhere: one figure, written down, for what could disappear entirely without changing how you live, and a second for the share of the account a single trade may spend. A common beginner figure for the second is one per cent, and the calculator turns it into a size in three fields.

Write both in the same phone note you keep for practice. A number decided in advance stays a limit; a number decided with the order screen already open becomes whatever the screen proposes. Many people lose money when they start trading, and the gap between those two ways of arriving at a figure is a large part of the reason.

What no setting on the phone can do

Guarantee an exact exit price. A level closes the position when reached; the fill happens against what exists at that moment.
Wake you up. A notification is not a plan, and a phone on silent is the normal state of a phone.
Undo a confirmed order. The confirm screen is the last point where reading is cheaper than acting.
Make a size safe. Leverage lets a small margin support a larger position, and enlarges the outcome in both directions.
Hold your money here. This site is an independent guide: no balance, no payments, nothing but explanation.

Questions asked with the phone about to go into a pocket

Does closing the app close my trades?

No. A position runs until it is closed or a level is reached. Closing the app only closes your view of it.

What if the phone battery dies with a trade open?

The trade is unaffected — it lives with the broker. That is precisely why the exit level is set before the screen goes dark rather than after.

Balance and equity are different. Which should worry me?

The gap. It is what the open rows currently come to, and it is the number that changes while you are not watching.

Is one per cent per trade a rule?

It is a common beginner figure, not a law. The important part is that a figure exists before the order screen does.

Should notifications be relied on to warn me?

No. Treat them as information after the fact. The level saved on the position is what acts in your absence.

Can a trade lose more than the figure I planned?

An exit level is enforced at the level, and fills happen against the market at that moment — so plan with the level, and treat the outcome as approximate rather than exact.

What does free margin falling actually mean?

Less room to open anything else, and less cushion for the positions already open. It is a figure to read before adding a second trade, not after.

Is checking the phone constantly a form of safety?

It is a form of attention, which is not the same thing. The level does the work; watching mostly produces improvised decisions in bad places.

Where should the two numbers be written?

Anywhere you will actually re-read — a phone note works. Re-read them once a month rather than adding to them.

How can all this be rehearsed safely?

On a demo account: open a position, set a level, lock the phone, and look again in the morning. Virtual money, real habits.

The screens these checks live on

The order screen

Where the size and the exit level are actually typed and saved.

See the fields

The size, in advance

Three inputs, one figure, decided before the app is unlocked.

Open the calculator

Phone-specific mistakes

The eight that only happen on a device you carry around.

Read the list

Rehearse a night with a position open

A demo account lets a trade run overnight on virtual money — exit level, overnight adjustment, morning figures — with an email, a password, no documents and no time limit.

Open a free demo at Exness