Disclaimer: CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage.
You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.
Web Trader MT5
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Dark pool
Dark pools are private venues for trading where large orders can be executed away from the public eye. Dark pools do not display any pre-trade information, unlike a conventional stock market, where bids and offers are open to everybody. The order book is hidden, and that’s the idea.
These were mostly for institutional investors – pension funds, asset managers, big banks – that need to purchase or sell enormous numbers of shares without alerting the rest of the market.
If a fund has to sell five million shares in one firm, it’s likely that if they did it openly on an exchange, they would influence the price against them before they completed the sale. They can work the sequence in a quiet, dark pool. Dark pools have had a fraught relationship with regulators for years.
That same opaqueness that makes them beneficial to institutions also makes them harder to oversee, and there have been significant incidents of operators abusing the information they contain.
Example: A significant pension fund is looking to sell a large interest in an FTSE 100 company. Rather than overwhelming the exchange with sell orders and watching the price plunge in real time, it goes through a dark pool, finds a willing buyer on the other side, and completes the deal without the broader market ever seeing it coming.
Dash (DASH)
Dash is a cryptocurrency that is specifically made to be anonymous and provide quick payments. It was initially known as Darkcoin in 2014 and later renamed to Dash – short name: digital cash. Its initial objective was to overcome two convenient drawbacks of Bitcoin, the creators found: the speed of transactions and financial privacy.
Dash created PrivateSend, which mixes transactions to obscure their origin, and InstantSend, where transactions are combined to obscure their origin, and payments are confirmed almost instantly instead of waiting until multiple block confirmations are received. It was also the first to introduce a two-level network structure, which operates on masternodes; nodes that are holding a significant amount of Dash as collateral, and in return provide the network with advanced functionality, whilst sharing block rewards.
Once one of the biggest cryptocurrencies by market cap, Dash was especially popular in such countries where the currency was unstable. It has since lost some of its relevance in the context of the wider crypto market, but still has a following of devoted users based on its payments-focused offering.
Example: A customer in a nation where the domestic currency is losing its value rapidly makes a payment to a supplier in a different country, using Dash. The payment is made in seconds, the price is low, and neither of the parties needs a bank account or a currency conversion service to get it done.
DAX
DAX is the German flagship stock market index, which tracks the 40 largest companies listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. It is like the FTSE 100 of the UK or the S&P 500 of the US; it is the number that people go to when they want to take a quick read on the performance of German equities.
The industry, chemicals, automobiles, and financials comprise a major portion of the index, which reflects the structure of the German economy itself. Such names as Volkswagen, Siemens, BASF, and Deutsche Bank sit within it.
As the largest economy in Europe, with a strong export base to countries such as China and the United States, the DAX is vulnerable to the global trading environment, energy prices, and the well-being of major export markets. It is a total return index, meaning dividends are reinvested in the calculation, making direct comparisons with price-only indices, such as the Dow Jones, slightly misleading.
Example: In 2018, when trade tensions between the US and China spiked, the DAX sold off more violently than most other leading indices. German companies that were highly exposed to Chinese demand felt the heat first, and the DAX was quick and clear in reflecting that vulnerability.
Day order
A day order is not a strict instruction, and not as difficult as it sounds. It’s simply a buy or sell order that automatically expires at the end of the trading session if it doesn’t fill.
You don’t even have to bother about it because the market cancels it for you.
This feature distinguishes it from a Good Till Canceled (GTC) order, which stays in the system until the trader pulls it or it is executed.
Actually, on most exchanges, day orders are the default, so many traders use them without realizing it.
They have a logic: if you didn’t get the price you wanted during the session, perhaps because the conditions weren’t right, starting the following day afresh with a new piece of information would be the smarter move.
Example: A trader chooses a day order to buy shares in an FTSE 100 company at 842 pence. The stock moves around throughout the day, but just never gets there. By 4:30 pm, the order quietly lapses. No trade, no mess, automatic cancelation.
Day trader
A day trader is a person who buys and sells financial instruments in the same trading session and closes all positions before the market closes at the end of the day. No exposure in the night; no waking in the morning to realize that a position has moved against them at night. The appeal is control; all is decided in a set period of time.
The fact is that day trading is really challenging. The majority of retail day traders trade against professional desks, high-frequency algorithms, and other short-term participants with a strong advantage in speed, data, and experience.
The margins are already slim when dealing in short-term trades, and making good decisions under the pressure of live markets, again and again, is not as easy as it might appear on the outside.
It has been proven time and again that most retail day traders end up losing money in the long term. Successful ones are very disciplined, highly specialized in a limited number of instruments, and are merciless in cutting losses.
Example: A day trader will trade only two or three currency pairs during the London-New York overlap session every morning. Their strategy is defined, they have a strict limit on the number of losses per day, and the rule that they close the platform and leave is defined. Such a structure makes the difference between the ones that last and the ones that don’t.
Day trading
Day trading means transacting in a financial instrument during the same trading day, with all settled out by the end of the trading day. No holding of position overnight nor exposure to whatever may happen when you are asleep.
That is the attraction; as long as the market is open, your risk is limited to those hours, and you go home flat.
The fact is, however, that day trading is difficult. Retail traders are competing with algorithmic systems that execute in microseconds, have access to better information than retail traders, and with other experienced intraday traders who have spent years learning how prices move intraday.
The thin margins are rapidly devoured by transaction costs and slippage, and by emotional decision-making under live market pressure. Research consistently indicates that the majority of retail day traders lose money in the long run.
This is most common in equities, forex, and futures, where liquidity and volatility provide traders with sufficient price action to trade.
Example: At 8:00 a.m., following a weak U.S. jobs report, a trader in London goes long EUR/USD. The pair then rallies 40 pips on the New York open. By noon, the position is closed; good, clean, and flat. Done for the day.
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