Learning to trade: the basics, explained simply
Never placed an order and the vocabulary loses you? This course starts from zero, in eighteen steps: what a price really is, how to read a candle, what leverage is, how an order is placed and what all of it costs. No prerequisites, and nothing to buy.
Who this course is for
Someone who has never placed an order. Not someone who has been trading for six months and is looking for a method: here we assume you do not know what a candle is, that the word “leverage” means nothing precise to you, and that nobody has yet explained how a broker earns its living.
It is deliberately slow. Eighteen steps, four modules, and not one of them tries to sell you anything. You can read the whole thing in two hours, but the order matters: each module assumes the previous one, and module 3 — the one about risk — makes no sense if you have not read what leverage is in module 1.
This course contains no entry method. That is deliberate. A method applied without these foundations produces reasoning that sounds knowledgeable and rests on nothing — and you would have no way to judge whether the one being offered to you is worth anything.
How to use it
Each module opens on its own page and runs step by step: a question, its answer, usually a diagram, and one line to remember. You move with the buttons at the bottom, and every step has its own address — so you can pick up where you left off, or send someone a specific step.
Do it with a chart open beside you. TradingView is enough, on its free tier, and module 4 explains how to set it up. Reading that “a long wick means a rejection” is useless until you have watched one form in front of you.
Finally, do not skip the steps about money because they are less fun than the charts. They are the only ones that decide whether you are still here in six months.
The course
4 modules · 18 steps
Module 1
Understanding what you are getting into
What a price actually is, who is on the other side, what a broker earns, and why the leverage handed to you unasked is the first thing to understand.
- 01What is trading, exactly?
- 02Who is on the other side?
- 03Buying or selling: the two directions of a trade
- 04Leverage and margin
Module 2
Reading a chart
The candle, timeframes, what you can see on a chart before having any method at all, and how the movement is counted.
- 05What is a candle?
- 06Timeframes: one market, several stories
- 07What you can see before having a method
- 08Pip, point, tick: counting the movement
Module 3
Placing a trade without hurting yourself
Order types, the stop-loss, the only number that matters at the start, why you can be wrong six times out of ten and still win, and what all of it actually costs.
- 09Order types: market, limit, stop
- 10The stop-loss: where to put it, why you stop touching it
- 11The only number that matters at the start
- 12Being wrong six times out of ten and still winning
- 13What it actually costs
Module 4
Getting started
Which market to choose, the three tools that are enough, the journal nobody keeps, what actually makes beginners fail, and your first month week by week.
- 14Which market to learn on
- 15What do you need?
- 16The journal: what to write, how to review it
- 17What makes most beginners fail
- 18Your first month, week by week
What this course will not do for you
It will not make you profitable. The basics are not an edge, they are a prerequisite: everybody has them, including the people losing money. What they give you is the ability to understand what you are doing and to judge what you are told — which, at this stage, is worth far more than a method.
It will not replace the hours spent in front of a chart. No amount of reading does. Expect several months before the things described here become obvious to the eye, and that is normal.
And it will not tell you what to buy or when. This site gives no personalised investment advice: what you read here is educational content, and the decisions remain yours.