Start Here: New to Trading?
Welcome. This is where to begin if charts, indicators and trading words still feel like a foreign language.
Who this site is for
- New traders who want the basics in the right order, in plain English.
- People who watch trading videos and want each idea written out, with a worked example.
- Long-term investors who want funds, accounts and costs explained without a sales pitch.
Every page gives the short answer first, shows the idea on a chart, and has a section on what it looks like when it fails. Nothing here tells you what to buy.
Your first four pages, in this order
Each one assumes the one before it. Together they are the whole of reading a chart.
Step 1How to Read a Candlestick: Open, High, Low, Close and What Color MeansWhat a single bar on the chart is actually telling you.
Step 2What Is Support and Resistance?The prices the market has stopped at before.
Step 3Market Structure in Trading: Highs, Lows, BOS and CHoCHHow those prices join up into a trend, and where it ends.
Step 4What Is Risk Management in Trading? 1% vs 5% Risk on 33 Years of SPYWhat a trade can cost you, decided before you take it.
Then pick a subject
Each path is a short course built from pages already on the site, in the order the ideas depend on each other.
11 pages, in orderSmart Money Concepts: Where to StartEleven pages in the order smart money concepts should be learned: swing points, structure, liquidity, then the zones, then one written procedure.
11 pages, in orderTechnical Indicators: Where to StartEleven indicator pages in a deliberate order: the test first, then the average everything is built on, then momentum, volatility and volume.
12 pages, in orderRisk Management: Where to StartTwelve pages in order: why traders lose, where the stop goes, how size follows from it, and the arithmetic of streaks, drawdowns and ruin.
12 pages, in orderInvesting Basics: Where to StartTwelve pages in the order a first-time investor meets the decisions: cash buffer, horizon, account, index funds, fees, allocation, then the purchase.
12 pages, in orderRetirement Accounts: Where to StartTwelve pages in order: the account as a tax wrapper, the workplace match, Roth or traditional, the HSA, rollovers, and taking the money back out.
12 pages, in orderCrypto: Where to StartTwelve crypto pages in order: how the market differs, what a wallet holds, buying, custody, sizing, tax, and the checks that catch a scam.
Looking for one word? Use the search box at the top of the page, or browse the glossary and the step-by-step guides.
About these paths
A glossary is alphabetical, and nobody learns a subject in alphabetical order. Each path above is a short course built from pages already on the site: the order is set by which ideas depend on which, and every step says in one line why it comes where it does.
6 reading paths. Educational, not financial advice.