Start at the instrument list

Hong Kong — One account, many markets — start by reading a single line of the list

Most beginner guides open with the buttons. This one opens with the thing being bought. A single account reaches more than a hundred instruments — currency pairs, metals, index and share CFDs, crypto CFDs, energies — and every one of them is opened with the same two buttons on the same screen. That sameness is the trap: the buttons are identical, the quantities behind them are not. What forex, a CFD and a broker are have their own pages; this one is about the list.

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This site is an independent guide, not a broker: it opens no accounts, holds no money and takes no documents. Accounts and trading themselves live on the official Exness website. CFDs are complex instruments, trading is risky and may not be suitable for everyone.

The whole page in one paragraph. Five fields are re-set every time the symbol changes: what the price counts, how much of the thing sits behind one unit of size, what one step of the price is worth, which hours it quotes, and what a night held costs. Everything under those five is the account's and does not move: one login, four platforms, one record, one route for money, one identity check. Beginners lose money on the first list because they read the top half as fixed and the bottom half as interesting — it is the other way round.

Field by field

One line of the instrument list, read field by field

Open any platform and the list is the first real screen: a column of names, a buy price and a sell price beside each. Six fields hang off one of those names. The last column is the one worth memorising.

The field	What it holds	Where the platform states it	Re-set by the symbol?
The name	EUR/USD, XAU/USD, US500, BTC/USD — two things compared, or one level named	The list itself	Yes
What the price counts	A ratio between currencies, dollars per measure of metal, points of an index level, dollars per coin	The contract details for that symbol	Yes
One unit of size	How much of the thing the number «1» in the size field actually covers	The same contract details	Yes — reread this one first
One step of price	What the smallest move is worth once converted into the account currency	The order screen, before confirming	Yes, and by more than beginners expect
The timetable	Which hours the symbol quotes at all, and which it does not	The contract details, and the list itself when it goes still	Yes
The account underneath	One login, one balance, one record, one way in and out for money	The account area	No — this part is the same all day

Five rows say yes and one says no. A beginner who reads the specification of one symbol end to end has learned more about the list than one who has skimmed thirty names. A route through it in order sits on the Start Here page.

Carried over by mistake

Three fields that travel badly from one symbol to the next

Each of these is right on the instrument it was learned on and wrong on the next one. That is the whole difficulty of a multi-market list.

What one unit of size holds

On a currency pair the size unit counts currency. On gold it counts a weight of metal; on an index CFD it counts a level in points; on a crypto CFD it counts coins. The same figure typed into the size field therefore buys quantities that have nothing to do with each other, and the field does not warn you.

The words that change per symbol

What one step of price is worth

A step on a pair is a fourth decimal place; on an index CFD it is a whole point; on a metal it is a movement per measure. No page can print your figure, because it follows from the symbol and from the size you chose. The order screen prints it before you confirm — that is the number to read.

Work one out for yourself

When the symbol quotes

A platform can be wide awake while an instrument is asleep, and beginners read the still line as a fault. Crypto CFDs quote 24/7. Currency pairs run round the clock on weekdays. Gold trades nearly 24 hours a day, five days a week. Index and share CFDs follow the session of what they track.

Why a chart has gaps

The clock

The list does not all wake up at once

Hours belong to the market, not to the company that shows it to you. That single sentence settles most of the «is it broken?» questions a first week produces.

Currency pairs. Round the clock on weekdays. There is no bell and no building: as one part of the world finishes its working day the next one starts, so the quotes never stop between Monday and Friday. At weekends they rest, and a price can leave Friday's close and reappear elsewhere at Monday's open.
Metals. Gold trades nearly 24 hours a day, five days a week — close to a pair, and not identical to one. «Nearly» is doing real work in that sentence, and the contract details say where.
Crypto CFDs. Quoted 24/7. This is why a Saturday chart is a flat line on most of the list and a moving one here.
Index, share and energy CFDs. They follow the timetable of the thing they track, so a long horizontal stretch is usually an ordinary closed session rather than a frozen screen.

What to do with it, at no cost: open the instrument list at your own hour — an ordinary morning where you live, then again late in the evening — and write down which names are moving and which are still. Asia's working hours and Europe's do not show you the same list, and one look at each teaches the timetable better than any paragraph about it, this one included.

Fixed underneath

What a change of market does not touch

The reassuring half of the list. Four things are set by the account, and no symbol on it re-opens them.

One login and four ways in

MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, the Exness Terminal in a browser and the Exness Trade app all open the same account. The instrument does not pick the platform, and the platform does not shorten the list. Try them on virtual money
One record, in one shape

Every filled order leaves the same kind of entry — price, size, time, cost, result — whether it was a currency pair or an index CFD. This is what makes a month of trades readable back at all.
The shape of the cost

Spread on the open, a fixed fee per trade on some account types, and a swap for a night held. The shape is constant across the list; the amount of each is set per symbol. A swap-free option removes the overnight swap on eligible instruments. What the account type changes
One route for money, one identity check

Deposits and withdrawals happen in the account currency and use the same screens whatever is open; the document check is asked of the person once, not once per market. Money in and money out

The honest part: what no instrument on the list hands over

A page about markets owes the reader the boundary of what a market can tell you.

A direction. A specification says what a symbol is — never what it will do. Nobody predicts these moves reliably, and a longer list does not improve the odds of guessing.
A gentle family. Leverage works the same way everywhere on the list, so a familiar-sounding name is not a safer one. Losses can be rapid on any of them — see risk basics.
A guarantee. Nobody can promise trading profits, and anyone who does is showing a warning sign rather than sharing information.
An escape from the amount at stake. Negative balance protection means an account balance cannot go below zero. Everything deposited can still be lost, and many people lose money when they start, usually by hurrying. Never trade money you need for living.

One rule survives all four: learn one symbol properly before adding a second. The habits that break it are collected in the common beginner mistakes.

Questions

Questions asked when the symbol changes

How many markets does one account actually reach?

More than a hundred instruments, spread across currency pairs, metals, cryptocurrencies, energies, and stock and index CFDs. They sit on one list under one login, and they are all traded as CFDs, so a position can be opened in either direction.

Do I need a separate account for a second market?

No. One account reaches the whole list. What changes when you move along it is the quantity behind the size field and the worth of one step — not the login, the balance or the record.

Which figure is carried over wrongly most often?

The worth of one step. It is set per symbol and it also depends on the size you chose, so the only trustworthy version of it is the one printed beside your own order before you confirm.

Why is one symbol still while the rest of the list moves?

Because each symbol carries its own timetable. Index, share and energy CFDs follow the session of what they track, so a closed session looks exactly like a frozen screen and almost never is one.

Why does the weekend chart move on a few names only?

Crypto CFDs are quoted 24/7. Currency pairs run round the clock on weekdays and rest at the weekend, which is also why a price can reappear at a different level on Monday.

Is an index CFD a share in the companies inside it?

No — nothing is owned and nothing is delivered. It prices a level, counted in points. What is actually held is set out on the CFD page.

Does gold behave like a currency pair because it is quoted in dollars?

Only in the shape of the quote. The size unit counts a weight of metal rather than an amount of currency, and the hours are close to a pair's without matching them.

Is the cost different on one family from another?

The parts are the same everywhere — spread, any per-trade fee, swap for a night held. The amount of each is set per symbol, and the platform states it before the order goes in.

Which symbol should a beginner open first?

This guide names none, and a page that names one for you is guessing. What it can say is the method: pick a single symbol, read its specification end to end, and watch it for a week before adding anything.

Can the whole list be watched before any money moves?

Yes. A demo account runs on virtual money with no time limit and shows every family quoting side by side — see the demo page. Demo results do not guarantee the same results on a real account.

Where do the figures on this page rank against the ones on my screen?

Below them, always. This page was written in advance; contract details and the order screen are printed for your symbol and your size. Where the two disagree, the screen is right.

Something on the list does not match what I read. Where does the question go?

Say which symbol, which field, and what the screen shows. The Help page takes questions about wording on this site, Exness support works around the clock for anything about an account, and more answers sit in the FAQ.

Read one specification before you read another opinion

A demo account runs on virtual money, asks for no documents and has no time limit — the cheapest way to open the instrument list, pick one name and see what its own fields say. Exness has operated as a global multi-asset broker since 2008, and its list runs across all the families above.

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