I need clarification on this

I was trading my demo account today and went long at the point in the picture. I always thought you bought the ask and sold the bid, but from reading Metatrader 4 when you go long at the ask price, you still use the ask price when you sell the pair.

But the enclosed picture has me confused. You can see from the stop that the trade almost got stopped out but the ask price did not trigger the stop.

But when you look at the higher bar in question, the take profit should have been triggered because the ask price is 4 pips above the bid. Please let me know what I am missing. Thanks.

I may not fully understand your description, but, you sell the bid and buy the ask in MetaTrader. Whatever you read that states you buy and sell the ask price in MT4 is incorrect. The bars in MetaTrader also only show the bid price, they do not show the ask price. They also do not indicate what the spread was like at the time the bar was formed.

I am a bit confused and the chart is nto helping me:
What was the price you Bought at:
What was the time:
What was your Stop Loss
What was your Take Profit

Quote

Disliked

Ask Line
Bars in the terminal are built and shown only for Bid prices. However, for opening of long positions and closing of short ones, Ask price is always used. But it is not shown in the chart in any way, it cannot be seen. To control over one's trading activities more attentively, one can enable the "Show Ask line" parameter. After this command has been executed, an additional horizontal line corresponding with Ask price of the last bar will appear in the chart.

Here is the way Metatrader explains it. I am now assuming when they say "and closing of short ones", they are saying when you buy back the pair after going short. So my initial thought was correct. You always buy the ask and sell the bid. This still does not explain the above chart. It was implemented using an EA, so maybe its in the programming.

Bottom line is: when you buy a pair at the ask price, you sell it back at the bid price, correct? Thanks again.

The trade was today. I bought at 1.8963 with a stop loss of 1.8933 and a take profit of 1.8988. The bar shows a high of 1.8986 (15:00 GMT Bar). But isn't this the bid price that is published?

Yes, buy the ask, sell the bid. The high of that bar represented the bid price at the time. However, we do not know what the ask price was. It could have been 1 pips or 15 pips away from that price.

Also, since you were in a long trade, you would have needed the BID to hit your TP amount, which means you were 2 pips shy of your target on the chart.

Athalon7, in Metatrader4 you can set the chart to display both bid and ask prices to help you avoid this kind of confusions

(right-click menu, properties, common Tab, show Ask line)