MT5 points vs pips: digits, pipettes and why the units get mixed up

A point is a platform unit and a pip is a convention. Learn the ten-to-one rule, where it breaks and how to keep your records consistent.

Open the symbol list in MetaTrader 5 and the spread is shown in points. Open a forum thread about the same pair and everybody talks about pips. Place a stop loss and the platform asks for a price, while a risk calculator asks for a distance in pips. Mixing these units is one of the quietest ways to get a position size or a stop distance wrong by a factor of ten. This page explains what a point is in MT5, how it relates to digits and pips, why gold and indices do not follow the forex rule, and how to keep your journal in one unit.

What a point is

A point is the smallest price change a symbol can show on your terminal. It follows directly from the number of decimal places, called digits, that the broker uses for that symbol. A symbol quoted with five digits has a point of 0.00001. A symbol quoted with three digits has a point of 0.001. A symbol with two digits has a point of 0.01. The digits and the point size are part of the contract details, which you can read in the symbol window as explained on the page about the MT5 symbol specification.

The point is a technical unit of the platform, not a market convention. The same pair can be offered with four digits by one broker and five digits by another, and the point is ten times smaller on the second. That is why a stop of “50 points” means different distances on different accounts, and why a number copied from a forum cannot be used before you check your own digits.

What a pip is

A pip is a trading convention. For most forex pairs a pip is the fourth decimal place, 0.0001, and for pairs that involve the Japanese yen it is the second decimal place, 0.01. On a five-digit pair, one pip is therefore ten points. On a three-digit yen pair, one pip is also ten points. The extra digit is sometimes called a pipette or a fractional pip. Brokers moved to the extra digit to quote finer prices, and the point became a tenth of a pip.

Where MT5 uses points

• The spread column in the Market Watch window is normally shown in points, not pips.
• Stop levels and freeze levels in the symbol specification are given in points. The rules are explained in stops level and freeze level.
• Many Expert Advisors take inputs such as stop loss and take profit in points. An input of 100 means ten pips on a five-digit pair, and one pip on a four-digit pair.
• The tick size, the smallest step in which a price can move, is often equal to one point but not always. See tick value and tick size.

Gold, indices and crypto do not follow the forex rule

The idea of a pip comes from currency quoting. For metals, indices and crypto symbols the word is used loosely and different people mean different things. On a gold symbol quoted with two digits, some traders call a move of 0.10 one pip and others call 0.01 one pip, while the platform itself only knows about points. The cleanest solution is to state the price distance in plain currency terms, for example “the stop was 4.50 away”. The page on gold pip value goes through the arithmetic, and the contract size is described in lot size and contract size.

A worked example (hypothetical)

A trader reads that a good stop for a pair is “20 pips” and types 20 into an Expert Advisor input that expects points. On a five-digit account that is only two pips, so the stop sits almost on top of the entry and is hit by normal noise. Another trader does the opposite on the same account and enters 200 for a distance they meant as 20 pips, which is two pips beyond what they planned to risk. Both numbers are invented, but the mistake is real, and it is invisible in a journal that only stores a result in currency. The fix is to write the unit next to every distance and to record the planned risk in money as well.

Keeping one unit in your journal

• Pick one unit for notes, either price distance or pips, and always write it down with the number.
• Record the planned risk in account currency; it does not depend on the digits.
• When you compare two brokers, check the digits of the symbol on each account before comparing spreads.
• If a calculator asks for pips, confirm whether it counts a pip as ten points on your symbol.

AI Trading Journal, a Windows app for MetaTrader 5 only, stores the result of each closed position in account currency: profit plus commission plus swap. It does not record the intended entry, the planned stop distance or the slippage, so any pip or point figure you want for a trade belongs in the trade’s notes. The app is read-only: it never places, modifies or closes a trade, and the journal is a file in Documents\AI Trading Journal on your own PC.

Limits and cautions

• Digits and contract details differ by broker and account type, so check your own terminal.
• Pip is a convention, not a platform unit, and it is used inconsistently outside forex.
• The examples use invented numbers and are not trading advice.

For the costs that those distances create, see trading costs in MT5 history, and for how the profit itself is computed, how MT5 calculates profit.

Frequently asked questions

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