Worked example

Practising on TradeStation Global's numbers

This is an exercise sheet, not a review. We are going to take three things that TradeStation Global publishes — a spread, a ladder of account types and a list of licences — and turn each of them into something you can do arithmetic with. By the end you should be able to repeat the whole exercise on any firm you come across, which is the actual skill being taught.

Attached to: Turning a spread into money·The lesson this practises

The figures we are working from

Nothing below is our estimate. Where a firm has not published something, or we could not read it on a source we trust, the box says so instead of guessing — a habit worth copying when you build your own broker notes.

1.4Published EUR/USD spread, pips

$1000Minimum to open, USD

2004Trading since

London, United KingdomHead office

not verifiedRetail leverage cap

1Licence lines on file

Exercise one — turn the spread into money

The spread is the gap between the price you can buy at and the price you can sell at, and you pay it the instant you enter. TradeStation Global publishes 1.4 pips on EUR/USD. On its own that number means nothing. Here is how it becomes money.

1Fix what one pip is worthOn a one standard lot EUR/USD position — 100,000 units — a one-pip move is worth $10. That is a property of the contract size, not of TradeStation Global, and it holds wherever you trade.

2Multiply the spread by the pip value1.4 pips × $10 a pip = $14.00. That is what it costs to open and close one standard lot here, before any commission the account may also charge.

3Scale it down to a size you should actually tradeA beginner has no business trading a standard lot. At 0.01 lots — a micro — every figure divides by a hundred: the same round turn costs $0.14. Small enough to practise with, large enough to be real.

4Ask what the cost buys youA $500 float would be entirely consumed by 35 standard-lot round turns at this spread and nothing else. That is the number that should change how often you click.

A 1.0-lot EUR/USD round turn here costs about $14.00 in spread at $10 a pip — before any commission.

Now do it without us

Take the spread of any other firm on the practice index, run the same four steps, and write both figures down — per lot and per micro. When you can do that in your head you have stopped shopping on marketing copy and started shopping on cost. The pip value calculator will check your working on pairs where the pip is not a flat ten dollars.

Exercise two — read the account ladder

Account tiers are a pricing structure dressed as a status ladder. TradeStation Global offers 2 rungs. Read them as a question — what does each rung ask of me, and what does it give back? — rather than as a set of prizes to climb towards.

TradeStation Global (Interactive Brokers U.K. account)The entry rung. Whatever the published spread applies to, it is almost always this one — so this is the rung your arithmetic above describes.
TradeStation Securities (US account)A higher rung usually trades a tighter spread for a commission, a larger deposit, or a status test. Convert both pricing models to money per lot before you decide either is cheaper.

Account names as published: TradeStation Global (Interactive Brokers U.K. account), TradeStation Securities (US account). Platforms listed: TradeStation Global platform, Interactive Brokers infrastructure.

Exercise three — what this licence list means for you

A long licence list is not automatically a good sign. What matters to a beginner is a narrower question: which entity would hold my money, and who supervises that entity? Those are often not the same as the impressive name at the top of the list. Here are TradeStation Global's lines, each with a plain reading.

Regulator	Entity on the register	Number	What that means for a beginner
FCA · United Kingdom	TradeStation International Ltd	445531	a top-tier regulator: compensation scheme, capital rules and a public register you can search yourself

How to use that table

1 of these line is top-tier — held by TradeStation International Ltd. If you are onboarded to a different entity than those, the protections attached to the top-tier line are not yours, however prominently the regulator's initials appear in the marketing.

The record behind these numbers

TradeStation International Ltd states it is authorised and regulated by the FCA under registration number 445531.
TradeStation Global is an introduced-account offering: TradeStation International Ltd acts as an introducer and the underlying brokerage account is held with an Interactive Brokers entity.
TradeStation International markets access to more than 160 markets across 36 countries through the Interactive Brokers universal account.
TradeStation Group is owned by Monex Group of Japan.
TradeStation International Ltd is incorporated in England and Wales as company 05166374 (incorporated 30 June 2004; formerly TradeStation Europe Ltd until 21 November 2016), with registered office at The Old Powerstation, 121 Mortlake High Street, London (https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/05166374).
TradeStation Global's terms of business (May 2025) state that both TradeStation International Ltd (FCA 445531) and Interactive Brokers (U.K.) Ltd are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, and that the firm is covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (https://www.tradestation-international.com/global/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Terms-of-Business-and-Subscription-Agreement-TradeStation-International-IBUK-0525-secure.pdf).
The broker's forex page publishes a representative EUR/USD total spread of 1.4 pips, composed of a 0.1 pip interbank quoted spread plus a 1.3 pip equivalent of its 0.6 basis point commission (https://www.tradestation-international.com/global/forex-trading/).

What we could not verify

The following are unconfirmed and are deliberately left blank rather than estimated: founding year of the UK entity; minimum deposit; maximum leverage; EUR/USD spread; account types; segregated funds; negative balance protection; current status of the IBKR introducing arrangement; founding year; public listing status; founded — recorded as the UK entity's Companies House incorporation date (30 June 2004); the TradeStation brand's platform lineage traces to Omega Research (founded 1982), which is not the incorporation date of any current UK entity; maxLeverage — no leverage ratio published; margin requirements follow Interactive Brokers' policies (https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=24176); forex is available on a leveraged basis to qualified clients only; negativeBalanceProtection — no negative-balance-protection statement published; TradeStation Global is a securities/futures/FX introducing-broker arrangement rather than a retail CFD provider; minDeposit — the current FAQ answer on minimum deposit is truncated on the live site; the forex page states 'Initial funding minimum $1,000' and an archived FAQ (Oct 2022) stated 'the minimum initial funding deposit is $1000USD'; segregatedFunds — sourced from Interactive Brokers (U.K.) Ltd documents because client accounts and money are held with IBUK; TradeStation International Ltd's own terms contain no segregation statement. Confidence in this file overall: medium. When you build your own notes on a firm, keep a list like this one — the gaps are more useful than the figures, because they tell you what to go and check.

Back to the lesson →All worked examples Size a trade with these figures

Run the same exercise on another firm

ActivTrades0.5 pips published, $5.00 per standard lot.Practise →ATFX0.8 pips published, $8.00 per standard lot.Practise →Capital.com0.6 pips published, $6.00 per standard lot.Practise →CMC Markets0.5 pips published, $5.00 per standard lot.Practise →Decode Global0.9 pips published, $9.00 per standard lot.Practise →Eightcap0.1 pips published, $1.00 per standard lot.Practise →

pipdojo.com does not rank brokers, does not award badges and does not tell you where to open an account. This page exists so the arithmetic you learn in the curriculum has real numbers to bite on.