A quick tip for beginners who are using Metatrader 4. If you’ve got two opposing hedged orders, say long 1.0 lots of EURUSD and short 1.0 lots of EURUSD then of course you are hedged. However, if you want to close out both positions rather than legging out of them (i.e. closing each individually) which carries a certain risk if the market moves whilst you’re in the process of closing them out, then you can simply offset one order against the other. What’s more this way you won’t incur so much commission charges as the second order is now just treated as a closing out order so you only get charged for one round-turn instead of two.
To do this, double-click on one of the orders to bring up the order ticket. In the Type field select “Close By”, this will then give you a list of orders which will offset this first order. Select the appropriate order in the list and then click on the Close button and voilá, you’ve offset your two hedged orders.
Note that the offsetting orders don’t need to be the same size. You can be long 1.0 lots and short say 0.5 lots and you can still do this offsetting which will result in a single long position of +0.5 lots.
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