Auditing Trading Symbol Specifications for Position Size and Costs
Summary
The document describes an indicator that gathers a trading symbol’s contract, pricing, margin, swap, execution, and session settings into a chart panel. It converts many values to account currency per standard lot, flags settings that can invalidate assumptions in trading code, and can export the same audit for symbols in Market Watch. Examples include unusual contract sizes, volume steps, tick sizes, trading restrictions, and spreads relative to recent volatility.
The method is a specification check rather than a trading strategy: compare the broker’s actual settings before moving an Expert Advisor between accounts, and use warnings to identify values that code should read dynamically. The document explains formula-based margin and point-value checks, and says some results matched platform calculations for several instrument modes. Limits include unavailable conversion quotes, server-side margin tiers, unsupported margin cases, and some swap calculations. Reference contract sizes and rollover days can also vary legitimately by broker, so warnings call for review rather than proving an error.
Key ideas
- Symbol contract and tick specifications can change position risk and trading costs.
- The indicator converts key values to account currency per standard lot and highlights unusual settings.
- A CSV export supports comparisons across all Market Watch symbols and between broker accounts.
- Margin and conversion calculations have instrument-specific limits and may show unavailable values.
- Reference values trigger review warnings but do not necessarily indicate broker errors.
Tags
This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.