Learn Trading

Thirty short lessons in the order you actually need them. No account, no email, no upsell at the end.

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New to trading? This is the order

Most people start by looking for a strategy. That is the last step, not the first, and it is why so many first accounts do not survive.

1
LearnWork through the lessons below in order. They take an evening.
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CalculateUse the calculators on your own numbers until pip value and lot size stop being abstract.
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PractiseOpen a demo and set its balance to what you would really fund. Follow your own rules.
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JournalWrite a plan before each trade and record what happened after it.
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TradeSmall, with a stop, at a size a normal losing run can survive.

The market

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What Is Forex?Foreign exchange is the market where one currency is exchanged for another. Everything else follows from that one sentence.
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What Is a Currency Pair?A currency pair is a price for one currency expressed in another. It is written as two codes with a slash between them.
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Base and Quote CurrencyIn EUR/USD, the euro is the base and the dollar is the quote. The price says how much of the quote one unit of the base costs.

The units

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What Is a Pip?A pip is the standard unit of price movement. On most pairs it is the fourth decimal place.
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What Is a Lot?A lot is the contract size. It is how much currency one unit of position actually controls.
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What Is Leverage?Leverage lets you control a position larger than your deposit. It is a ratio, not a decision about risk.
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What Is Margin?Margin is the part of your balance a broker sets aside while a position is open. It is a deposit, not a cost.

What it costs

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What Is the Spread?The spread is the gap between the price you can buy at and the price you can sell at. It is the cost of entering.
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What Is Commission?Commission is a flat charge per lot traded, used by brokers that offer very tight spreads.
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What Is Swap?Swap is the financing charged or paid for holding a position overnight. It comes from the interest rate difference between the two currencies.

Placing a trade

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Buy vs SellBuying a pair is betting the base currency strengthens. Selling is betting it weakens. Both are ordinary trades.
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What Is a Market Order?A market order says: fill me now, at whatever the price is. It trades certainty of execution for certainty of price.
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What Is a Limit Order?A limit order says: fill me at this price or better, and not at all otherwise.
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What Is a Stop Order?A stop order triggers when price reaches a level, then becomes a market order. It is used to enter on a breakout, or to exit a losing trade.
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What Is a Stop Loss?A stop loss is an order that closes a losing trade at a level you choose in advance. It is the only thing that bounds a loss.
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What Is a Take Profit?A take profit is an order that closes a winning trade at a level you set in advance.

Managing risk

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Risk and RewardThe reward to risk ratio compares what a trade pays against what it costs when wrong. It fixes the win rate you need.
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Position SizingPosition size is how you decide how much a losing trade costs. It is the single most important calculation in trading.
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Risk ManagementRisk management is the set of decisions that keep you in the market long enough for an edge to show up.

Reading the market

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Trading SessionsForex runs almost around the clock because the world’s financial centres open in sequence. Four of them matter most.
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The Economic CalendarThe economic calendar lists scheduled data releases. It tells you when volatility is likely, not which way price will go.
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Fundamental AnalysisFundamental analysis asks why a currency should be worth more or less. In forex, the answer usually starts with interest rates.
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Technical AnalysisTechnical analysis studies price itself: where it has been, where it has reacted, and where it might react again.
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Support and ResistanceSupport is a level where price has repeatedly stopped falling. Resistance is where it has repeatedly stopped rising.
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Reading a CandlestickA candlestick shows four prices for one period: open, high, low and close. That is all it is.
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What Is a Trend?An uptrend is a sequence of higher highs and higher lows. A downtrend is the reverse. Anything else is a range.
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Market StructureMarket structure is the pattern of swing highs and lows that describes what price is currently doing.

Doing it

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Demo TradingA demo account trades real prices with fake money. It is excellent for learning the platform and poor at everything else.
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Trading PsychologyMost trading mistakes are not analytical. They are made by someone who knew better and did it anyway.
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How To Make Your First TradeEvery trade is the same seven steps in the same order. Doing them out of order is where beginners go wrong.

Chart reading

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Drawing a TrendlineA trendline is two or more swing points joined up. It is the cheapest way to see whether a market is still doing what it was doing.
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Moving AveragesA moving average is the average closing price of the last N candles, redrawn each candle. That is the whole of it.
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RSI, and What Overbought Really MeansRSI compares the size of recent gains to the size of recent losses and expresses it from 0 to 100. It measures momentum, not value.
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Bollinger BandsBollinger Bands are a moving average with a line two standard deviations above and below it. They measure how far price has strayed from its own recent average.
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Fibonacci RetracementA Fibonacci retracement measures how far a pullback has undone the move before it, in percentages. It is a measuring tool, not a forecast.
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MACD, and What the Histogram Is Telling YouMACD is the distance between a fast average and a slow one. Everything it can tell you follows from that, including what it cannot.

Chart patterns

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Reversal PatternsA reversal pattern is a shape a chart makes when a trend runs out of buyers or sellers. The shape is not the signal — the line it breaks is.
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Continuation PatternsA continuation pattern is a rest, not a reversal. Price moves hard, goes quiet in a small tidy range, and then more often than not carries on the way it was going.
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Breakout and RetestA breakout is price leaving a level it had been respecting. A retest is price coming back to touch that level from the other side, and the two are not the same trade.
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Fakeouts and False BreakoutsA fakeout is a break that does not hold: price closes beyond an obvious level, everyone watching takes the trade, and then it comes straight back. It is the single most expensive thing that happens to new traders.

Reading deeper

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Volume, and What Forex Does Not HaveEvery forex platform shows a volume bar under the chart. It is not volume. Knowing what it really counts is the difference between using it and being misled by it.
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Multi-Timeframe AnalysisThe same market is a strong uptrend on the daily and a collapse on the five-minute. Both charts are correct. Multi-timeframe analysis is deciding in advance which one you are obeying.
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Order Blocks and Fair Value GapsSmart money concepts are a vocabulary for one observation: big orders cannot be filled all at once, so the places where they were being filled tend to matter again. The vocabulary is newer than the observation.
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Supply and Demand ZonesA supply zone is an area price left in a hurry downwards; a demand zone is one it left in a hurry upwards. The speed of the leaving is the evidence — not the shape.

The economy

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Interest Rates, and Why They Move CurrenciesAlmost every economic figure you will ever read matters for one reason: it changes what people expect a central bank to do with its interest rate.
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Central Banks, and How To Read ThemA handful of committees set the price of money in the world’s largest economies. Everything on the economic calendar is, in the end, evidence about what they will do next.
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Inflation and the CPI ReleaseCPI is a monthly measurement of how much prices changed. It moves currencies because it is the number that decides what a central bank has to do next.
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The Jobs Report and Non-Farm PayrollsOne release, three numbers, and they do not always point the same way. That is why the reaction to the jobs report is so often confused for the first few minutes.
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The Unemployment Rate, and What It HidesThe unemployment rate is not the share of people without work. It is the share of people who want work and cannot find it — and the difference between those two sentences is where the surprises come from.
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The FOMC: Decision, Statement, Press ConferenceThe Federal Open Market Committee sets US interest rates. Because the dollar sits on one side of most pairs, its meetings are the largest scheduled events in the forex week.
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GDP, Growth, and Why It Moves Less Than You ExpectGDP is the broadest measure of an economy there is, and it usually moves a currency less than a jobs report does. The reason is timing.
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The Dollar, and Why It Touches EverythingThe dollar is on one side of most of the pairs you can trade. That single fact explains why your positions so often win together and lose together.
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Trading Around the NewsThere is a way to use a scheduled release, and it is not the one that involves clicking during it.

Staying in the game

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Drawdown, and Getting BackDrawdown is how far your account has fallen from its highest point. It is the one number that decides whether you are still trading next month, and its arithmetic is not symmetrical.
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Writing a Trading PlanA trading plan is a set of rules written when you are calm, to be obeyed when you are not. If it is not specific enough that you could be caught breaking it, it is not a plan.

Strategies

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Strategy: Breakout and RetestWait for an obvious level to break on a close, wait again for price to come back and touch it from the other side, and enter there with the stop just behind the level.
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Strategy: RSI Divergence with a Moving AveragePrice makes a higher high, RSI makes a lower high. Something has changed in the momentum behind the move — but momentum weakening is not the same as direction turning, so the entry waits for structure.
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Strategy: Fair Value Gap EntryFind a three-candle gap left by a fast move in the direction of the trend, wait for price to come back into it, and enter there with the stop beyond the gap.
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Strategy: Moving Average CrossoverA fast moving average crossing a slow one says the recent average price has moved past the longer one. It is the simplest trend rule that exists, it works when there is a trend, and it bleeds when there is not.
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Strategy: Bollinger and RSI ScalpingPrice touching the lower Bollinger band while RSI is below 30 is a stretched market in a range. This is a scalping method, which means the spread is not a detail — it is the main problem.
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Strategy: Fibonacci PullbackIn a trend, wait for the pullback to reach the area between 50% and 61.8% of the last leg, and take the trend back up from there — but only where something else is already at that level.
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Strategy: Trading Supply and Demand ZonesMark the areas price left in a hurry, wait for it to come back to the first untouched one in the direction of the trend, and enter with a stop just beyond the zone.
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Strategy: Opening Range BreakoutMark the high and low of a fixed window around a session open, trade the first clean break of that box, and be finished by lunchtime. It is the most mechanical strategy here, which is its main advantage.
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Strategy: Scalping a Session LevelScalping is taking small pieces out of a busy hour. It is the style most affected by cost, so the arithmetic comes before the rules.
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Strategy: Swing Trading From the DailyA swing trade is held for days or weeks. The stop is wider, so the position is smaller, and the whole method fits around a job.

Gold

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XAUUSD: What You Are Actually TradingXAUUSD is the price of one ounce of gold in US dollars. It sits on a forex platform and is quoted like a pair, and almost everything else about it is different.
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What Actually Moves GoldGold pays no interest and produces nothing. That single fact explains most of what moves it: when holding cash pays well, gold is less attractive, and when it does not, gold is.
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Sizing a Gold TradeGold does not need a different method. It needs the same method applied honestly, and the honest answer is a smaller position than people expect.
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Trading Gold IntradayGold trades around the clock and only really moves for part of it. Knowing which part turns a full day of watching into two or three hours.
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The Mistakes Gold PunishesGold does not invent new mistakes. It charges far more for the ordinary ones, and it charges quickly.

Prop firms

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What a Prop Firm Actually IsA prop firm gives you an account you did not fund and takes a share of what it makes. To get one you pass a challenge, and the challenge costs money whether you pass or not.
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How a Challenge WorksAlmost every challenge is three numbers: a profit target, a daily loss limit and a maximum drawdown. Passing is a matter of arithmetic long before it is a matter of skill.
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Passing, and What Comes AfterPassing a challenge is not a different skill from trading well. It is trading well with someone else’s specific limits written down in front of you.

Becoming a trader

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The Week of Somebody Who Does This ProperlyMost of what separates people who last from people who do not is not analysis. It is a routine dull enough to repeat when nothing exciting is happening.
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Judging Yourself HonestlyNobody can tell you whether you are ready. What can be done is to break the question into five parts that each have a checkable answer.
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What to Do With All ThisYou have read the material. The material is the cheap part. What follows is the order in which to turn it into something that behaves like a method.

What this course does not do

It does not tell you what to trade, sell a strategy, or suggest that trading is likely to make you money. Most retail accounts lose money, and brokers regulated in Europe are required to publish that figure precisely because it is easy to imply otherwise.

What it does is explain the mechanics — what a pip is, how margin works, what a stop order actually does — so that the decisions you make afterwards are informed ones. Trading forex and CFDs on margin carries a high level of risk. Most retail accounts lose money. Nothing on this page is financial advice or a recommendation to trade.