Risk, psychology and process — the fundamentals that apply no matter what you trade. Start here if you're new.
The from-zero guide to reading a price chart: how a candlestick, an OHLC bar and a line chart draw the same four numbers, what a long wick or a small body means, why one candle can't tell you what happened inside it, and five named patterns described as what they are.
Every chart replaces the x-axis with something: the clock, the number of trades, the contracts traded or the distance price moved. That choice decides what you see and what disappears. The four bar types from zero, the same hour on all of them, and how to choose.
An order is a promise about either price or execution, never both. The four types from zero, when each one fails you (slippage, no fill, a stop that never triggers), what CME does with a market order behind the scenes, and how a bracket ties two of them together.
Click buy at market and you are down one tick before anything happens. Not a loss on price, a payment for certainty. Where the bid and ask come from, what depth means, why a market order sometimes fills three ticks away, and the three ways traders handle the bill.
Support and resistance are prices where limit orders, stop orders and a lot of people's memory sit on top of each other. Where levels come from, why price reacts, why breakouts fail, and three ways traders use a level.
Every intraday method assumes a regime: reversals need a range, breakouts need a trend, and the same entry is right on one kind of day and wrong on the other. What higher highs, lower lows and rotations actually mean, how to read the day's structure early, and what to do when it changes.
The most common sizing question bundles two decisions that have nothing to do with each other. Where the stop goes is a fact about the trade; how many contracts is a fact about the account. One division connects them — and running it backwards is how evaluations end.
One print of 50 contracts is 50 volume and one tick. Why that distinction matters in futures, why NQ volume is cleaner than any stock's, what open interest adds, and four situations (roll week, time of day, news, data feeds) where the histogram lies.
Expectancy says whether a method makes money per trade. Risk of ruin says whether you survive long enough to collect. Both formulas, one grid of win rate against payoff, and the size at which an edge stops mattering.
A broker statement records fills. A journal records decisions, and decisions are the only thing you can change. The eleven fields worth logging on every trade and every no-trade day, the numbers that mislead when they become the headline, and the case for a screenshot at entry over a row of prices.
Every closed trade leaves three numbers behind; the account keeps one. Maximum adverse and favorable excursion, read on a 40-trade sample: which side of each histogram says something about the stop and the target, the cost of moving either, how to collect the numbers, and four ways they mislead.
A plan you can't read in the minutes before the open doesn't get read. A copyable one-page template split into pre-session, live and ending blocks, two other shapes a plan can take and what each costs, and the arithmetic behind counting a no-trade day as a result.
A rule that won 62% of 400 replayed trades wins 51% of the first 40 live ones. Where the difference comes from, which sources hurt and which only add noise, and a way to haircut a backtest before it gets a single contract of real money.
A journal that logs every reversal as "reversal" averages a 65% trade with a 40% one and calls the result a strategy. Five criteria that separate an A from a C at the same level, three ways to turn them into a grade, what to do with the grade at entry, and how many trades it takes to trust it.
A month of trading is usually decided by its worst three days, not its best five. Jared Tendler's A-to-C game analysis writes down what your best, average and worst trading look like, mental and tactical, so the worst can be recognized while it's happening. A worked grid and how to build yours.
The ratio chosen at entry doesn't create an edge: move the target and the win rate moves with it. Two hypothetical setups show why one pays best at 1R and the other at 3R, what costs do to tight stops, and the one job a minimum ratio does well.
Losing and winning back are measured against different bases, so a drawdown always needs a bigger gain than the loss. Where that asymmetry is real and where it isn't, the volatility drag behind it, and how the table reads on a prop account where the cushion, not the balance, is the base.
Most famous candlestick patterns land near a coin flip when counted, and the few with big numbers owe part of them to where the pattern closed. Bulkowski's figures read by shape instead of name, the base rate every hit rate needs, and what tests on intraday futures found.
A moving average summarizes recent closes, and the settings traders argue about change less than they think: an EMA(20) is no younger on average than an SMA(20). The arithmetic of SMA, EMA and WMA, where 20, 50 and 200 came from, and the one condition that turns an average into a level.
What 20, 50, 100 and 300 trades can and can't tell you about a setup, with the ranges computed: how often a real edge shows a losing record, how often no edge looks good, a rule of thumb for the count you need, why trailing exits need more, and what to do while the sample is small.
A rule-breaking trade that wins feels good; a by-the-book trade that loses feels like a mistake. Resulting, a poker term Annie Duke made popular, is judging decisions by their outcomes. What it costs, the four mixes of decision and outcome, and a journal routine that grades the decision first.
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