Trading Foundations
What a market actually is, how an order reaches it, and how to read a price chart without reading anything into it. The starting point if you have never placed a trade.
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This course exists because most people start in the wrong place. They open a chart before they know what a market is, who fills their order, or what a round trip costs. Then they attribute the result to their chart reading.
Six lessons, in order. Nothing here tells you what to buy, and nothing here will make you profitable on its own. The aim is narrower and more useful: after this course, the words on your screen should mean something specific to you.
What you will learn
- Explain what a market is, who is on the other side of your order, and where the price you see comes from
- Place, read and reason about the main order types without guessing what they do
- Read a candlestick chart as a record of what happened, not as a prediction of what happens next
- Describe the real costs of a round trip before you take one
- Compare markets on the properties that matter for learning, and choose one against your own constraints
- Use a demo account for what it can teach, and recognise what it cannot
Prerequisites
None — this course assumes no prior knowledge.
Course contents
Module 1 — What you are actually doing
The mechanics underneath the interface, before any chart appears.
What Is Trading, Really?
Trading is the act of taking one side of a transaction with someone who disagrees with you about price. Everything else — charts, indicators, strategies — is machinery built on top of that single fact.
8 min read
How Orders Work
An order is a specific instruction to a venue, and each type makes a different trade-off between certainty of execution and certainty of price. Choosing the wrong one is a silent, recurring cost.
9 min read
Module 2 — Reading the record
Turning a price chart from decoration into information.
Reading a Price Chart
A candlestick chart is a compressed record of transactions over fixed intervals. Reading it well means knowing exactly what has been thrown away in the compression — and refusing to invent what is not there.
9 min read
Module 3 — Before your first trade
What a trade costs, where to practise, and what a simulator can and cannot teach you.
Costs of a Round Trip
A complete trade charges you twice — spread and commission on entry and again on exit, plus whatever slippage the book hands you and any financing on a position held overnight. Price has to move a known distance before you are level.
8 min read
Choosing a Market to Learn On
No market is the correct place to start. There are seven properties that determine how forgiving a market is to learn in — hours, liquidity, minimum size, volatility, leverage, cost structure and regulation — and this lesson gives you the criteria rather than an answer.
8 min read
Demo Accounts and Paper Trading
A demo account teaches mechanics and plan-following, which are worth learning. It cannot reproduce fill quality, slippage under stress, or the weight of real money — so a good demo record proves less than it feels like it proves.
8 min read