The free trading school
Standard trading education, written plainly: what the chart is showing you, what each indicator reading actually means, and what it cannot tell you. No account, no payment, no upsell inside a lesson.
- Crypto first, because that is what we publish signals on. The arithmetic in these lessons is the same arithmetic stock and commodity traders use - only the market hours differ.
- Nothing in the school is an instruction to trade. It teaches you to read what you are looking at, so that when you read a signal - ours or anyone else’s - you know what it is claiming and what it is not. See the risk disclaimer.
- Every worked number here is arithmetic you can check on a calculator. If you cannot reproduce a figure from the numbers given, tell us and we will fix the lesson.
Market basics
What a candle is, what the order book is doing underneath it, and why a price is a negotiation and not a fact.
- What a price isThere is no single price: there is a bid, an ask, and a last trade that already happened. What each one is, and what it costs to cross between them.
- CandlesA candle is four numbers out of thousands of trades. What the body and the wicks are, how timeframes aggregate, and what a candle has already discarded.
- OrdersA market order takes any price and always fills; a limit order names a price and may get nothing. What a stop triggers, and why slippage happens.
- Spot, futures, perpetualsWhat you actually hold in a spot trade, a dated future and a perpetual swap, plus the arithmetic of margin, funding and liquidation.
- FeesMaker and taker fees, the spread, funding and slippage added up properly, per round trip, and why they are charged on notional.
- Liquidity and depthDepth is how much size sits near the price, and it decides what your order costs. How to measure it, and why volume is not the same thing.
Indicators, and what the readings mean
Every indicator is arithmetic on past prices. These lessons show you the arithmetic, what each reading actually says, and the things it cannot tell you however confident it looks.
- Moving averagesHow a simple and an exponential moving average are calculated, what the slope and a cross actually say, and the lag that makes a cross a late description.
- RSIWhat RSI measures, the arithmetic behind the 0-100 scale, why an overbought reading is not a reason to sell, and what divergence can and cannot show.
- MACDThe MACD line, the signal line and the histogram, what each crossover means, why the reading is in price units, and the hindsight problem in MACD divergence.
- Bollinger BandsHow a Bollinger band is built from a moving average and a standard deviation, why the bands widen and narrow, and what a touch of one is not.
- ATRWhat true range includes that a bar’s high minus its low does not, how ATR is smoothed, and why ATR is a unit of distance rather than a direction.
- Volume and OBVWhat volume can confirm, why a crypto volume figure belongs to one exchange only, how OBV is built, and the weakness inside its construction.
- StochasticsWhere price closed inside its recent range, what %K and %D are, and why a bounded range indicator must pin near 100 in a trend.
- VWAPHow volume-weighted average price is calculated, why its anchor decides what it means, and why it stops being sensitive as a session goes on.
Price structure
Highs, lows, ranges and trends - how structure is defined, and why a level only becomes obvious after it stops being tradeable.
- Highs and lowsWhat a swing high and a swing low are, why confirming one needs bars on both sides, and the lag that puts all structure slightly in the past.
- TrendHigher highs and higher lows as a testable definition, what exactly breaks a trend, and why the answer changes completely with the timeframe.
- Support and resistanceHow a level is built from swing points, why the tolerance you allow decides how many touches it has, and the honest version of what a level is.
- Ranges and breakoutsWhat a range is, how a breakout is defined, the mechanical reasons so many of them come back inside, and what a retest actually buys you.
- HindsightThe hindsight problem stated plainly: the chart you are studying has resolved and the chart you must trade has not. How to keep structure useful anyway.
Risk and position size
Stops, position size, and the arithmetic of leverage. The decisions that survive being wrong, which is most of what trading is.
- StopsA stop is a price plus a rule. Touching a level versus closing through it, stop-market versus stop-limit, and the way each of them fails.
- Position sizeThe arithmetic that links account, stop distance and position size, worked through three trades, and why a closer stop is not a smaller risk.
- RExpressing a result as a multiple of what you risked, why that makes two unlike trades comparable, and the break-even arithmetic it makes visible.
- DrawdownWhy a 50% loss needs a 100% gain to undo, the full recovery table, and what the asymmetry means for how much of an account can be at stake at once.
- LeverageMargin, notional and liquidation explained with the arithmetic worked out: how a multiplier shortens the distance to zero in both directions.
- Fees and spreadRound-trip cost worked out against the size of the move you are trying to catch, and why a tighter target hands a larger share of it to the venue.
Come and watch the record being built
Crypto news as it breaks, the day's biggest movers, and free signals in the same format paid members get. No card, no account.