Reducing the list

Pakistan — Account types: five names, three questions behind them

The list arrives as names, which is why it feels like a decision about identity. It is not. Three questions sit behind the five names, and once each has an answer the name has already been chosen for you.

Standard, Standard Cent, Pro, Raw Spread and Zero differ on exactly three things: the unit the balance is counted in, the shape the trading cost takes, and whether the overnight line is switched off. Everything else on the screen — the instruments, the prices, the platforms, the way an order is sent — reads identically on all five.

Reading the list as three questions rather than five names has one immediate effect: the evening spent comparing names collapses into about ten minutes, because two of the three questions have an obvious answer for somebody who has not traded before, and the third is not urgent.

Question one: what is the balance counted in?

Standard Cent counts the balance in hundredths of a dollar; the other four count it in whole dollars. Nothing else about the account changes — same instruments, same prices, same charts. A balance that arrives looking a hundred times larger than expected is this question answering itself, and it is the single most common surprise on a first screen.

The practical consequence is size rather than money. Where a whole-dollar account has a smallest trade it will accept, a cent-counted one holds the same trade in units small enough to sit well under that floor. Anybody whose sums keep landing below the smallest accepted size — the practice calculator prints that case in words — has been answering question one without knowing it was being asked.

Question two: what shape does the cost take?

Two shapes exist. In the first, the whole cost of a trade sits inside the spread — the gap between the buying and the selling price — and nothing else is deducted. In the second, the spread is narrower and a separate per-trade charge is added beside it. Neither shape is cheaper by construction; they put the same kind of cost in different places on the ticket.

Standard and Pro carry the first shape. Raw Spread and Zero carry the second, and they are professional accounts, built for experienced traders with specific requirements about how pricing is presented. For a first account the question answers itself, and it answers itself again a year later for most people: one cost line is easier to check than two while the checking is still deliberate rather than automatic.

Question three: is the overnight line switched off?

A trade carried past the daily rollover meets a swap — a small overnight charge, occasionally a credit, shown on the platform before the trade is placed. A swap-free option removes that line on eligible instruments; the spread and any per-trade charge stay exactly as they were. Whether trading itself is permissible is a personal and scholarly question rather than something a broker settles.

This is the one question that is genuinely not urgent, because it only reaches trades held overnight. Anybody whose practice consists of opening and closing inside the same session has never met the line at all, and can leave the question until they do.

The three questions, answered in one sitting

The sitting is short and produces three words. Write them down before opening anything, because the sign-up screen asks in a different order and it is easy to answer a question you had not thought about.

Answer the unit question by looking at your own arithmetic

Run the sizing sum with the figure that will really be behind the account. If the answer sits under the smallest accepted trade, the unit question has an answer. If it sits comfortably above, it also has one, and the cent account is simply not needed.
Answer the cost-shape question by counting lines, not prices

One line or two. While every cost on the ticket is still being read deliberately rather than recognised at a glance, one line is the answer that keeps the reading honest.
Leave the overnight question until a trade is actually held overnight

It costs nothing to defer, and answering it in advance means answering it about trades that do not exist yet. When it does arrive, it arrives with a figure on the ticket in front of it.

This site is an independent guide: it writes about the broker and does not speak on its behalf. It opens no accounts and holds no money. Account choice and management live in the Exness personal area, the private dashboard that appears after signing up, and it carries what is available now — a page listing conditions would be stale by the time it was read.

Three questions the list is not asking

Reading five names invites three hopes that no answer on this page meets, and it is cheaper to notice them here than on a live account.

The first is how much to put in. That figure comes from what could be lost entirely without anything in your life changing, and it is settled on the safety rules rather than by a name. The second is how large the trades should be: a name sets the unit and the floor, not the size, and the size comes out of a sum. The third is whether the trading will go well. No account type makes trading safe or profitable; it decides how the steps are counted while the learning happens, and nothing beyond that.

Questions asked with the list of names open

Five names and three questions. Which name does not correspond to a distinct answer?

Two of the professional names sit close together: both put part of the cost outside the spread, and they differ in how that part is presented rather than in kind.

Does the choice change what the charts show?

No. Same instruments, same prices, same platforms. The three questions never reach the picture.

A balance arrived roughly a hundred times larger than expected. Which question was that?

The first. A cent-counted balance holds hundredths of a dollar, so the figure looks unfamiliar and the money is unchanged.

Is a narrower spread the same as a cheaper trade?

Not by itself. The second cost shape moves part of the cost off the spread and onto a separate line; comparing spreads alone compares one line out of two.

An overnight charge appeared and the chart does not explain it. Which question was left unanswered?

The third. The swap follows a position carried past the rollover, and it is shown on the platform beforehand.

Can the answers be changed later?

Yes — a different account is opened rather than the existing one rewritten, and the switch is made in the personal area.

An evening went on comparing all five. Was any of it useful?

Some. The useful part is the three questions; the rest is names, and names are the part that reads like a decision without being one.

Which question should be answered first?

The unit, because it is the only one that can make a planned trade impossible rather than merely differently priced.

Does a practice account have a type at all?

It does, and the answers show up on the practice ticket in the same places — which is where all three questions cost the least to look at.

None of the three feels answerable yet. Is that a reason to wait?

It is a reason to spend a session on the words first. Two of the three questions are only hard while the vocabulary is.

Where the three questions get their answers

The unit question

Where the sum lands, and what the floor does to it.

Run the sizing sum

The cost-shape question

Spread and swap, defined once.

The question the list is not asking

How much, and how large.

All three questions are visible on a screen that costs nothing

Virtual money, real prices, no documents, no time limit — and the same three answers on the ticket. The sign-up steps are here.

The button is a partner link — it leads to the official exness.com sign-up page.

Open a free demo at Exness