Close By in MT5: A Smarter Way to Manage Hedged Positions

Every trader who has ever managed a hedged account knows the feeling. You open a buy position on EURUSD, then later a sell position on the same pair. The market moves, and now you have two opposite positions staring back at you from the Trade tab. Closing them one by one seems straightforward—right-click the buy, close it; right-click the sell, close it. But there's a catch: you pay the spread twice.

This is where MT5's Close By feature comes in. It's designed for exactly this scenario—closing two opposing positions on the same instrument simultaneously. Instead of closing each position individually against the market, Close By closes them against each other . If both positions are the same size, they cancel each other out completely. If one is larger, the smaller one closes entirely, and the larger one remains open at a reduced volume . The result? You save an entire spread. Close each position separately, and you pay the spread twice—once on the buy close at Bid, once on the sell close at Ask. Close By offsets them against each other, and you only bear the net cost once .

It sounds simple enough. In practice, though, executing a Close By operation requires navigating through MT5's Trade tab. You right-click a position, select Close By, choose the opposing position from the list, and confirm. For a trader who uses hedging strategies frequently, these steps add up. And if you're managing multiple pairs or scaling in and out of positions, the friction becomes noticeable.

There's also a lesser-known nuance to the Close By interface. Some traders have reported that if you sort the order list in MT5, the selection no longer matches the actual order that gets closed—meaning you might think you're closing one pair when the platform picks a different one . It's the kind of UI quirk that can catch you off guard, especially in fast-moving markets.

The Close By function is a powerful tool, but like many MT5 features, it lives inside the terminal window—the same window that demands your attention, occupies screen real estate, and forces you to click through menus at exactly the moments when you'd rather be focused on the charts . For traders who value speed and efficiency, that extra friction is more than just an inconvenience; it's an opportunity cost.

This is where the way you interact with MT5 matters. For traders who want to keep their terminal running without being tethered to it, having a lightweight way to manage positions—including Close By-like functionality—can change the daily rhythm of trading. Camovia Tray takes this approach by turning MT5 into a tray tool, allowing you to check quotes and manage positions directly from the system tray [citation:product_knowledge]. The goal isn't to replace MT5's features but to make them more accessible—so you can monitor open positions and act on them without having to restore the full terminal window every time.

The Close By function itself remains an MT5 platform feature, but if you're looking for a smoother way to interact with your positions without the overhead of the terminal UI, tools that sit alongside MT5 can help reduce the friction between you and your trades.