Learning paths

What owning a share of a company really means.

Lending instead of owning — the other building block.

The biggest market of all: trading currencies.

Oil, metals and crops — the raw-material markets.

How one number sums up a whole market.

Where buy and sell orders meet.

How you get access to a market — and what it costs.

The price of trading immediately.

Where buy and sell orders wait to be matched.

The firms that keep quotes available.

How easily you can get in and out.

How far prices typically swing.

What a sustained rise looks like.

What a sustained fall looks like.

How the size of a company is measured.

When markets are open, and what happens while they are closed.

Why some hours of the day are busier than others.

What goes into every order, and which type to use when.

Fast, but the price is not guaranteed.

Your price, but no guaranteed fill.

The exit that caps a loss.

The exit that locks in a gain.

A stop with a price limit — and its trade-off.

A stop that follows the price.

The gap between expected and actual fills.

Why stops sometimes fill far away.

Every decision starts with reading price history correctly.

The building block of almost every chart you will see.

What it means to hold, open and close a position.

The simplest position: buying because you expect a rise.

How to buy immediately — and what you give up for speed.

How to buy only at a price you choose.

How to define the loss you are willing to accept.

How to make sure one bad trade cannot hurt you badly.

How to work out what a trade really made, after costs.

Axes, timeframes, candles and scales.

Why the same market looks different on different charts.

Describing direction objectively.

The levels most traders watch.

Judging how much participation is behind a move.

What happens when price leaves a range.

The most common way to smooth price data.

Start from the familiar position so the contrast is clear.

Selling borrowed assets, with full worked examples.

Shorting shares always requires a margin account.

The daily cost of holding a short.

What happens when too many traders are short at once.

Why an exit plan is non-negotiable when losses are uncapped.

Decide the size of a position from the loss you can accept.

Turn that acceptable loss into a price level.

Decide in advance where you will take gains.

Compare what you risk with what you aim to make.

Understand how borrowing magnifies both sides.

Know the point at which a leveraged position is closed for you.

Measure how deep a losing streak has gone.

Smoothing price to see direction.

Momentum built from two moving averages.

Measuring the speed of moves.

Where price closes within its recent range.

What extreme readings do and do not mean.

When price and momentum disagree.

Volatility envelopes around an average.

Sizing stops to the market’s noise.

The intraday benchmark price.

Combining early warnings with reliable confirmation.

Drawing direction objectively.

When price goes sideways.

Leaving a range — and false breakouts.

Entering a trend after a dip.

Telling a turn from a pause.

Common retracement levels.

Two failed tests of a level.

The best-known reversal pattern.

Seconds to minutes.

Flat by the close.

Days to weeks.

Weeks to months.

Riding sustained moves.

Fading stretched prices.

Buying strength.

Writing your chosen style down as rules.

Why losses feel bigger than gains — and what that does to exits.

Early exits, chasing and doubling down.

The emotional spiral after losses.

Following the plan when emotions push the other way.

A hard stop for bad days.

Rules decided before the pressure starts.

Seeing your own patterns in the data.

The data everything else depends on.

How often you win — and why it is not enough.

Results measured in units of risk.

The average result per trade.

Gross wins divided by gross losses.

Testing rules on past data without fooling yourself.

Return per unit of volatility.

Return per unit of downside volatility.

Contracts for future delivery, marked to market daily.

How many contracts are outstanding.

Futures without expiry.

The payment that keeps perpetuals near spot.

Rights, not obligations.

What option prices say about expected moves.

Contracts for difference and their costs.

Using derivatives to offset risk.

The single most important number.

The chance a streak ends the account.

How deep declines go and how hard recovery is.

Why several trades can be one bet.

Spreading risk across unrelated positions.

Scheduled events that gap through stops.

When crowded positions unwind violently.