Most people meet trading through someone selling them something. This course is the opposite: the plain, sourced, unsold basics — what a market is, what trades in one, how to read a chart, how orders and accounts actually work, and the two habits (risk first, probabilities always) that separate the people who last from the people who don't. Each lesson takes about five minutes and ends with a single question to check yourself.
I The world
Lessons 1–4 — markets, instruments, charts, plumbing LIVE
- 1What is a market? — buyers, sellers, and price as a live agreement; why prices move at all.
- 2What can you trade? — stocks, ETFs, futures, forex, and crypto in one honest paragraph each.
- 3Reading a chart — candles, timeframes, and trend at a glance.
- 4Orders & accounts — market vs. limit orders, brokers, cash vs. margin, and the 2026 day-trading rule change in plain English.
II The craft
Lessons 5–7 — analysis, risk, mindset LIVE
- 5The two ways to analyze — technical (the chart) vs. fundamental (the business), and why they're teammates, not rivals.
- 6Risk: the first skill — why you decide your loss before your entry, and the 1% idea that keeps beginners alive.
- 7Why most beginners lose — probabilities, patience, and the honest statistics nobody leads with.
III The map
Lesson 8 LIVE
- ★Where to go next — your personal route through the free Library, the three course ladders, and the Complete Trading Masterclass.
Sources & house rules
Plain-language lessons built on the same standard as the rest of the site: regulatory facts from official sources (FINRA, Investor.gov), everything else linked into the sourced reference Library. No performance promises, no invented statistics, no affiliate anything.