Out of the box

The demo account: the settings you never chose (Nigeria)

A demo does not arrive empty. It comes with money already in it, an account already selected, every control where the platform put it. Most of that follows you to a real account; one part cannot.

Nothing on a demo asks what you wanted. The virtual money is there before the first login, the account was picked during sign-up, the layout came with the platform. Most of that is harmless — a real account runs on the same platform. One default is not: the balance, a number nobody asked you about, sets how big everything else feels.

What arrives already decided

Four things are live before anything is clicked, and none was a decision of yours:

Already set	Who set it	What a real account does with it
The balance	filled with virtual money at sign-up	replaces it with what was deposited
Which account is selected	picked when the demo was created	keeps the choice, now with consequences
The arrangement on screen	the platform’s default layout	opens exactly the same way
The instrument in front of you	whatever the market list opened on	the same list, in the same order

Three of the four survive the move to real money untouched. The fourth cannot.

The balance is the default that cannot follow you

Virtual money arrives with no deposit behind it. Nobody asked what you could afford to lose. The figure does a job anyway: a number typed into the volume field feels careful or reckless only next to the balance above it.

A real balance is whatever was deposited — money that had somewhere else to be. A size that looked modest against virtual money can be the opposite against a deposit, and the field accepts both.

The volume field does not know which kind of balance is behind it.
Nothing on screen rescales a size that suited one balance into one that suits the other — the practice calculator does that from your own figures.

So this is the default to break early: take the size from the loss you would accept, not from the number you were handed — which is what risk basics is about.

Where each of these is switched

Every default here has a control. What each stays until it is opened:

The default	The control that changes it	Left alone, it stays
Account in use	the account line at the edge of the screen	whichever one the platform had open last
Trade size	the volume field in the order window	whatever number the field is showing
Protective exit	the stop-loss field beside it	empty — the order goes out with no automatic exit
Chart period	the timeframe buttons at the edge of the chart	the period the platform opens on
Instrument	the market list	the one that happened to be there

The same controls sit on a real account: a default you override now is one you can override later. What the period changes: the chart page. The order window in use: first trade.

Habits that came with the settings, not with you

A habit picked up from a default is hard to spot later, because it never felt like a choice:

Size read off a balance. The yardstick moves the day the money is real. The habit does not.
One account learned as «how it works». Nothing here sets the selected account beside the alternatives, so its conditions get memorised as the shape of the market — account types compares them.
An exit field that starts blank. A stop-loss is an automatic exit at a level you set, and nothing fills it in for you. Skipping it costs nothing here — which is the climate a habit forms in.
Calm supplied by the account. Demo results don’t guarantee real-account results: the composure came from the money being virtual.

Borrowed settings, kept by accident

A new phone comes with a ringtone, a wallpaper and an alarm sound somebody in an office picked out. Years later most of them are still there — not because they were right, but because that menu was never opened. Practice accounts are the same, except the leftovers here cost something.

Breaking the spell is cheap. On the first day change one default deliberately — move the chart to another period, or type a size that is not the number already offered — then put it back if you prefer. The new value is not the point; learning that the value was ever yours to set is. After that an untouched field reads as an unanswered question rather than an instruction, which is much of what separates a careful beginner from the common mistakes.

Questions about what arrived switched on

Where did the money on a demo come from?

Nowhere. The platform loads it when the demo is created, with no deposit behind it — so the amount says nothing about you.

Was the starting balance a number I picked?

No, it was filled in before the first login. Adjust the size you type, not the figure.

Which of these defaults will a real account repeat exactly?

The platform ones: the layout, the market list, the order window fields.

Which one is certain not to repeat?

The balance. A real account holds whatever was deposited into it.

The account was picked for me during sign-up. Does that matter later?

It sets the scale everything else is read at. The comparison lives on account types.

Nothing was set up and the order still went through. Is something broken?

No — the exit field was empty and nothing objected. Here that is free, which is how the habit sets in.

Is a demo a simplified version of the real screen?

No. Same platform, same controls; only the account behind them holds virtual money.

Does changing any of this need MetaTrader?

No. MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 are aimed at more experienced traders; Exness Terminal and the Exness Trade app hold the same controls.

How long can a demo keep its defaults before I have to move on?

Indefinitely. There is no time limit, so a setting can stay wrong for months.

Do documents come into changing a setting?

Not on a demo — an email and a password open it. Documents come up only for a real account.

Can a demo stay open once a real account exists?

Yes, and it is normal practice: somewhere to try a setting at no cost.

Is any default here worth keeping?

Most of them. The layout and the market list are the ones a real account repeats.

The settings with a page of their own

The account that was selected

What the sign-up choice changes once the money is real.

Compare the types

The size, taken from elsewhere

A trade size derived from the loss you accept, not from the balance.

Set the ceiling

Fields left as they were

Mistakes that begin as an untouched box, not a bad decision.

See the list

Nothing preset to inspect yet?

An email and a password open a free demo with virtual money in it — no deposit, no documents, no time limit. The button opens exness.com; check the address bar first — it should say exness.com.

Open a free demo at Exness