PROPREVO ACADEMY

Instruments you
can trade

Financial markets

Instruments you can trade

7 min readLesson 5

Currencies, metals, energy, indices, shares and crypto, and how each one behaves.

The platform offers six groups of instruments. They differ in how they move, when they trade and what drives them, so it pays to know their personalities.

Currency pairs

A currency pair shows how much of the second currency (the quote) buys one unit of the first (the base). EUR/USD at 1.0850 means one euro costs 1.0850 US dollars.

  • Majors pair the US dollar with another large currency: EUR/USD, GBP/USD, USD/JPY, USD/CHF, AUD/USD, USD/CAD, NZD/USD. They are the most liquid and have the tightest spreads.
  • Crosses pair two currencies without the dollar, such as EUR/GBP or GBP/JPY. Spreads are wider and moves can be sharper.

Forex trades 24 hours a day from Sunday evening to Friday evening.

Metals

Gold (XAU/USD) and silver (XAG/USD) are priced in dollars per ounce. Gold is a classic safe haven: it often rises when investors are nervous or when real interest rates fall. It is also one of the most volatile instruments on the platform, so position sizes need to be smaller than on currency pairs.

Energy

WTI crude oil reacts to supply decisions by producing countries, weekly inventory data and the economic outlook. Oil moves fast around scheduled reports.

Stock indices

An index tracks a basket of shares:

  • US30: 30 large US companies (Dow Jones)
  • US100: the 100 largest non-financial companies on Nasdaq, dominated by technology
  • US500: 500 large US companies (S&P 500)
  • GER40: 40 large German companies (DAX)

Indices respond to earnings, interest rates and overall risk appetite. They tend to drift upwards over long periods but fall quickly in sell-offs.

Shares

Individual company shares such as Apple, Tesla and NVIDIA trade only during US market hours (09:30 to 16:00 New York time). Company news, earnings releases and analyst updates can move them by several percent in minutes.

Cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin and Ether trade around the clock, including weekends. They are the most volatile group, routinely moving several percent in a day.

Choosing what to trade

Beginners usually do better by mastering two or three instruments than by watching twenty. Pick instruments that are active during the hours you can trade, and learn how far they typically move in a day before sizing a position.

Group Typical daily range Trading hours
FX majors 0.4–1% 24 hours, Mon–Fri
Gold 1–2% 24 hours, Mon–Fri
Indices 1–2% Nearly 24 hours, Mon–Fri
Shares 2–4% US session only
Crypto 3–6% 24 hours, 7 days

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