Every profession has its units. A trader who cannot say what a pip of their position is worth, in money, is trading blind. This lesson is the vocabulary — and the bill.
The units
- Pip — the standard price increment: 0.0001 for most pairs, 0.01 for JPY pairs. Platforms also show a fifth decimal (a point, one-tenth of a pip) for finer pricing.
- Lot — the standard trade size: 100,000 units of the base currency. A mini lot is 0.1 (10,000), a micro lot 0.01 (1,000).
- Pip value — what one pip is worth to you: roughly $10 per standard lot on USD-quoted pairs, and proportionally less for smaller sizes.
These three numbers convert every chart movement into money. A 30-pip move against one standard lot of EURUSD is about $300 — before you have thought about a strategy, you can already price a mistake.
The three lines on the bill
First, the spread: the gap between the price you can buy at (ask) and sell at (bid). It is paid on entry, priced in pips, and it varies by pair, session and account type — on an IEXS Standard account spreads start from 1 pip with no commission, while DMA accounts quote raw spreads from 0.1 pips with the venue cost shown as an explicit commission instead.
Second, the commission — where it applies, it is shown per trade, not hidden in the price. Third, the swap: an overnight financing charge (or credit) for positions held past the daily rollover, published per instrument inside the platform. Intraday positions never pay it; multi-week positions must budget for it.
Price the trade before you take it
The habit to build: before any order, know the spread cost in money, the pip value of your size, and the swap if you plan to hold. All three are in the contract specifications and the trading calculator on our Tools page. If a number affects your P&L, it is published before you trade — reading it is your job.