01Foundation
Reading a candlestick
Four prices, one shape. How a single candle tells you who won a period, and by how much.
6 min · interactive →
6 lessons · 40 minutes · free
Learn to read the market.
Short, honest lessons with a working figure in each one. Start at the beginning, or jump to what you need. Your progress is saved in this browser.
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02Foundation
Support and resistance
Why price keeps turning at the same levels, and how to draw them without fooling yourself.
7 min · interactive →
03Core
Risk and reward
Measure every trade in R, the amount you risk, and the maths of a strategy becomes obvious.
6 min · interactive →
04Core
Position sizing
The single most important number on the ticket is not the price. It is the size.
8 min · interactive →
05Core
Leverage and margin
Leverage does not change how much a market moves. It changes how much that move means to you.
7 min · interactive →
06Practice
Order types
Market, limit, stop and trailing stop: when to use each, and what they cost you.
6 min · interactive →
Glossary
Twenty words every trader uses.
Plain-language definitions, searchable.
- Ask
- The price at which you can buy. Always slightly above the bid.
- Bid
- The price at which you can sell.
- Spread
- The gap between bid and ask: the built-in cost of opening a trade.
- Pip
- The standard unit of movement in a currency pair, usually the fourth decimal place (second for yen pairs).
- Lot
- A standard trade size. One lot of a currency pair is 100,000 units of the base currency.
- Leverage
- Borrowed exposure: controlling a larger position with a smaller deposit.
- Margin
- The part of your balance set aside to keep a leveraged position open.
- Margin level
- Equity divided by used margin, as a percentage. Too low triggers a margin call or stop-out.
- Equity
- Your balance plus or minus the profit or loss on open positions.
- Stop-loss
- An order that closes a position at a set price to cap the loss.
- Take-profit
- An order that closes a position at a set price to bank the gain.
- Trailing stop
- A stop-loss that follows price in your favour at a set distance.
- Long
- A position that profits if price rises.
- Short
- A position that profits if price falls.
- Volatility
- How much and how quickly price moves. Higher volatility means wider swings both ways.
- Liquidity
- How easily something can be bought or sold without moving its price.
- Slippage
- The difference between the price you expected and the price you got, common in fast markets.
- CFD
- Contract for difference: a derivative that pays the change in an asset's price without owning it.
- Drawdown
- The fall from an account's peak to its lowest point before a new peak.
- R multiple
- A trade's result measured in units of its initial risk.