Trading Lab/ Guide/Placing & managing trades
Placing & managing trades

Simple mode vs the full order ticket

Why BUY sometimes enters instantly and sometimes opens a form — and which sessions use which.

The Lab has two ways of entering a trade, and it picks for you based on what the session is trying to teach.

Simple mode — one click

BUY or SELL puts you straight into the trade at a default size. No form, no fields.

Used in: free practice in the Arena, the Daily Challenge, and lesson 1 — Protect every trade with a stop.

The reasoning: the first thing a trader has to learn is where do I get out. Asking someone to size a position before they have internalised the stop is asking them to learn two things at once, badly. So lesson one has exactly one job.

The full ticket

BUY or SELL opens the order ticket, where you set quantity, stop and target and watch exposure and risk update live before you commit.

Used from lesson 2 — Position sizing onwards, because from there the ticket is the thing being taught.

Nothing is taken away. Even in simple mode you can set and move your stop and target from the position bar, trim, trail and exit. The only thing simple mode decides for you is the opening quantity.

Which am I in?

Look at the hint on the trade bar. In simple mode it reads "press BUY or SELL to enter, then set your stop". With the full ticket it reads "decide size & stop, then place".

Reminder. The Trading Lab is an educational simulation running on synthetic data with play capital. Nothing here is investment advice, no buy or sell call is given on any real security, and no claim is made about returns.

Try it in the Arena.

Reading about it only goes so far — the skill comes from the reps.

Enter the Lab

The Trading Lab is an educational simulation running on synthetic data. It is not investment advice, gives no buy or sell calls, and makes no claim about returns.