Beginner Learning Path

This path takes you from knowing nothing about trading to placing well planned trades with controlled risk. It pulls lessons from several tracks into one order, so each lesson builds on the ones before it. Expect it to take a few weeks if you read a lesson or two a day and practise as you go.

How to use this path#

Read the lessons in order, and after each stage do the practice task before moving on. If a lesson is not published yet, it appears as plain text; skip it for now and come back later. You do not need to memorise everything. The goal is to understand the ideas well enough to recognise them when they matter.

Stage 1: What trading is#

1. What Is Trading?
2. Investing vs Trading
3. Trading Myths
4. Common Beginner Mistakes

Practice: write down why you want to trade and how much time you can give it each week. This becomes the first line of your trading plan.

Stage 2: How markets work#

1. Market Basics
2. What Is a Stock?
3. What Is an ETF?
4. Bid-Ask Spread
5. Liquidity
6. Volatility
7. Volume
8. Trading Sessions

Practice: pick three assets, one large company stock, one ETF and one smaller stock, and compare their spreads and daily volume at different times of day.

Stage 3: Placing orders#

1. Order Types Explained
2. Market Orders
3. Limit Orders
4. Market vs Limit Orders
5. Stop Orders
6. Stop-Limit Orders
7. Trailing Stop Orders
8. Bracket Orders
9. Slippage

Practice: place one paper trade with each order type and write down what filled, at what price and why.

Stage 4: Reading charts#

1. How to Read Candlesticks
2. Market Structure Basics
3. Trend Structure: Higher Highs and Lower Lows
4. Support and Resistance
5. Trend Lines
6. Moving Averages Explained
7. Volume Analysis Basics
8. Multi-Timeframe Analysis

Practice: mark the trend, two support levels and two resistance levels on three charts, then check a week later what happened at each level.

Stage 5: Managing risk#

This is the most important stage. Do not skip it.

1. Position Sizing
2. Stop Loss Strategies
3. Risk/Reward Ratio
4. Expectancy
5. Maximum Trade Risk and Daily Loss Limits
6. Risk of Ruin
7. Leverage
8. Margin

Practice: for your next ten paper trades, calculate the position size from your stop distance before entering, and risk the same percentage on each.

Stage 6: Your mind#

1. Discipline
2. Fear and Greed
3. FOMO
4. Overtrading
5. Revenge Trading
6. Loss Aversion

Practice: add a line to each journal entry describing how you felt before and after the trade.

Stage 7: A simple strategy and a plan#

1. Swing Trading
2. Trend Following
3. Breakout Trading
4. Building a Trading Plan
5. Pre-Trade Checklist
6. Trading Journal
7. Post-Trade Analysis

Practice: write a one page plan for one setup, then take at least 30 paper trades following it exactly.

Stage 8: Going live#

1. Moving From Paper to Live Trading
2. Trading Routine and Reviews
3. How to Choose a Broker
4. Trading Taxes and Capital Gains

Practice: start live with the smallest size your broker allows, and keep following the same plan and journal.

After this path#

Once you are comfortable here, choose a direction: the Options Learning Path, the Crypto and Prediction Markets Learning Path for crypto and prediction markets, or the Quant Trading Learning Path if you want to test strategies with data.

Frequently asked questions#

How long does it take to learn to trade?#

Learning the concepts in this path takes weeks. Becoming consistently disciplined with real money usually takes much longer, often a year or more of practice and review.

What should I learn first in trading?#

How markets and orders work, then risk management. Chart reading and strategies are much more useful once you understand position sizing and stop losses.

Do I need to finish the path before trading real money?#

It is strongly recommended to complete at least the risk management stage and to have followed a plan on paper before trading live.