Tracking Your Trading Activity

Orders vs. Trades: What's the Difference?

Before we dive into the Binance interface, it's important to understand the distinction between an "order" and a "trade."

• An Order is an instruction you send to the exchange. For example, "I want to buy 0.1 BTC at a price of $60,000." This is a limit order. If you place a market order, the instruction is "Buy 0.1 BTC at the best available price now."
• A Trade is the actual execution of that instruction. It's the moment your order is matched with someone else's, and the exchange of assets happens.

One order can result in one or more trades. For instance, if you place a large order, it might be filled by several smaller orders from different people on the other side of the order book.

Finding Your Activity on the Binance Interface

Binance consolidates all of your spot trading activity in one convenient place at the bottom of the main trading screen. There are three key tabs you'll use:

1. Open Orders: Shows your active limit orders that are waiting to be filled.
2. Order History: A log of all orders you have placed, including filled, canceled, and partially filled ones.
3. Trade History: A detailed record of every single trade that was executed.

Let's start with a guide from Binance Academy that points you to the right place.

Now, let's see it in action. The following video shows a trader placing a market order and then immediately checking the order history to see the record of the transaction.

A Closer Look at Order and Trade History

Let's break down the information you'll find in these sections.

Order History

Your Order History is a comprehensive log of your instructions to the exchange.

Here you can see all the critical information about each order:

• Date: When you placed the order.
• Pair: The trading pair, like BTC/USDT.
• Type: Limit, Market, etc.
• Side: Buy or Sell.
• Average: The average price at which the order was filled.
• Price: The target price you set for a limit order.
• Executed: The amount of the order that was successfully filled.
• Amount: The total amount of the order.
• Status: Whether the order is Filled, Canceled, or Partially Filled.

Trade History

The Trade History tab focuses only on the executions. If a single one of your limit orders was filled by three smaller trades, you would see one entry in "Order History" but three separate entries here.

The key columns here are:

• Date: The exact time the trade was executed.
• Price: The price at which that specific trade was executed.
• Amount: The quantity of the asset traded.
• Fee: The trading fee you paid to Binance for the transaction.
• Total: The total value of the trade (Price x Amount).

Filtering Your History

As you make more trades, these lists can get long. Binance provides powerful filtering options to help you find what you're looking for. You can filter by date, trading pair, and side (buy or sell).

This next video briefly touches on using the date filter.

Exporting Your History for Record-Keeping

A very useful feature on Binance is the ability to export your trade history as a file (e.g., an Excel spreadsheet). This is incredibly helpful for tracking your overall profit and loss, doing your own analysis, or for tax purposes. Given your interest in business, maintaining clear records is a valuable habit.

The following resource provides step-by-step instructions. We will focus only on exporting your Spot Trade History, as that's what we've been learning about.

Conclusion

You are now equipped with the essential skills to not only place trades but also to track and review them effectively. Being able to navigate your trading history is fundamental to being an organized and informed trader.

Key Takeaways:

• An order is an instruction, while a trade is the execution of that instruction.
• You can find your Open Orders, Order History, and Trade History in tabs at the bottom of the Binance trading screen.
• Order History shows all orders you've placed and their status (Filled, Canceled).
• Trade History provides a detailed log of every completed trade, including the fee paid.
• You can filter your history by date and trading pair to easily find specific transactions.
• Binance allows you to export your trade history, which is crucial for record-keeping and performance analysis.

What's Next?

So far, we have focused entirely on the mechanics of trading—how to use the tools Binance provides. You know how to buy, sell, and review your activity.

In the next module, we will shift our focus to the analysis behind trading. To decide when to buy or sell, traders analyze market data, and the most common tool for this is the price chart. In our next lesson, we will begin this journey by learning how to read a candlestick chart to understand price movements.