Market order
"Give it to me now, at whatever the price is."
It fills immediately. You do not control the price. In fast conditions you can get a worse one than you saw. See slippage in K4.
Use when getting in or out matters more than the exact price.
Limit order
"Only fill this at my price or better."
It waits. It might never fill. That is the trade: you control the price, you give up the certainty.
Most planned entries are limit orders, because a plan already knows what price it wants.
Stop order
This is the important one.
"If price reaches this level, get me out."
You set it in advance. It sits there. If price hits it, it triggers automatically, whether you are asleep, at work, or on a 16-hour shift.
That is the whole point. It makes the decision while you are calm and executes it when you are not there to panic.
A stop is not a suggestion and it is not a maximum loss guarantee. In a fast move, price can jump straight past your level and fill worse. Stops reduce damage. They do not cap it.
The thing to take from this page
Every plan needs its exit decided before its entry. Not roughly. Exactly.
Every account that has ever been destroyed was destroyed the same way: someone had a level, price reached it, and they decided the idea was still good and moved the line. Then moved it again.
Deciding the number in advance, and treating it as already spent, is the entire discipline.
Leverage: read this before you ever use it
Leverage means the platform lends you money so you can hold more than you have.
It does not multiply your skill. It multiplies the size of every move, in both directions.
With enough of it, a move of a few percent against you wipes out everything. The platform closes your position automatically and the money is gone. This is called liquidation and it happens fast.
Some of the markets Atlas reads are contracts that offer leverage. That is not an invitation. A beginner does not need it, and nothing in Atlas requires it.
If you are ever tempted: the amount of leverage a new trader should use is none.