Trading and Markets Basics
How a market really sets a price, how orders and charts work, and how traders size and limit risk, in animated diagrams you step through one frame at a time. Education, not financial advice.
For anyone who has seen a price chart, heard friends talk about trading, and wants to know what is actually going on before risking a single coin. No prior knowledge needed, only simple arithmetic. Every lesson has an animated diagram you step through: an order book filling, a spread, a candle forming, a stop-loss firing, leverage magnifying a small move. You finish able to read an order book and a candlestick chart, work out how big a position can be for a given risk, explain what leverage and fees really cost, and see from the numbers why most short-term traders lose money. This course is education, not financial advice: it never tells you what to buy or sell.
By the end you can
- Read an order book: find the bid, the ask and the spread, and predict how a market or limit order will fill
- Read a candlestick chart and describe a trend, support and resistance without treating them as predictions
- Size a position from your account, your risk per trade and your stop-loss, and say what leverage does to that risk
- Count what fees and the spread cost over many trades, explain why most short-term traders lose, and keep a plan and a journal
How a market sets a price
- What a market is: buyers, sellers and a price
See how a price is simply the last deal a buyer and a seller agreed on, and why it moves when one side gets more eager than the other.
- The order book: who wants what, at what price
Read the list of waiting buy and sell orders that every exchange keeps, and see how a big order eats through it level by level.
- Bid, ask and the spread
Learn why you buy at one price and sell at a lower one, what that gap costs you on every round trip, and when it gets wide.
Orders and charts
- Market orders and limit orders
Choose between getting filled for sure and getting your price for sure, and see slippage when a market order walks up the book.
- Reading candlestick charts
Turn a period of trading into one candle: open, high, low and close, and learn what a chart can describe and what it cannot predict.
- Trends, support and resistance
Spot an uptrend by its higher highs and higher lows, mark the levels where price keeps stalling, and learn why these are zones of probability, not promises.
Managing risk
- Position sizing: decide the loss before the size
Work out how many shares to buy from your account, the most you will risk on one trade and where your stop-loss sits.
- Stop-losses: where you admit you were wrong
Place a stop-loss where your idea is proven wrong, see how it turns into a market order, and learn how gaps and slippage can push the loss past it.
- Leverage and margin: small moves, big results
See how borrowing multiplies every gain and every loss by the same number, what a margin call is, and how fast a leveraged account can be wiped out.
The honest numbers
- Fees: the cost you pay on every trade
Add up commission, spread and financing on one trade, then over a year, and see how many trades a strategy must win just to stand still.
- Why most short-term traders lose
Look at what the research actually found, the arithmetic of losses and win rates, and the habits of mind that push traders to break their own rules.
- Putting it together: a trading plan and a journal
Write down your rules before you trade, record every trade in R, and use the numbers, not your feelings, to judge whether anything is working.
Keep it, don't just read it
Pathwise brings each idea back just before you'd forget it, with a quick question. Free on Android and on the web, in English and Persian.