From zero to trader

The first thing to settle is what you want to trade and through what. On the foreign exchange market (Forex) you trade currency pairs, for example euro against dollar. There are also stock indices, commodities like gold or oil, and company stocks.

Most often, access to these markets is through contracts for difference (CFDs) — an instrument that tracks the price of an asset without you actually owning it. A CFD lets you take a position on a rising or falling price, but it uses leverage, which increases both the potential gain and the potential loss.

Here you're just getting your bearings. The mechanics of each instrument are explained on its own page — start with "What is trading" and "What is a CFD".

The broker is the firm through which you reach the market. When choosing one, the first rule isn't the price — it's regulation. A broker supervised by a financial authority follows rules on client money segregation, reporting, and protection for retail investors — a framework that an unregulated broker doesn't have.

Cost comes second: the spread (the difference between the buy and sell price) and any commission. Then the platforms offered and support matter. For the criteria and how to compare them, there's a separate page.

We don't name any names here. See the list of partners and the selection rules on the dedicated pages.

The demo account is a copy of the real market with virtual money. Here you learn the platform, test a method, and make mistakes without losing anything. It's the step that haste skips — and exactly the step that decides whether you move on prepared or not.

The demo also shows the good side: if you come out ahead, the profit is virtual and you can't withdraw it, but you see that the process is starting to pay off and that you're getting closer to the moment when you move to a live account. It's a sign of progress, not a win.

About scalping, a special case: as speed training on demo it can be useful, but it's not suitable as a first approach on a live account. I'll come back to it in the questions section.

The platform is the software where you see the charts and place orders — the most widespread one is MetaTrader. You don't need to know them all; you need one that you know well. This is where you learn the order types, stop-loss (the order that automatically closes your position at a set loss) and take-profit (its equivalent for a set gain).

On demo, practice all of them until they become reflex. On a live account, you don't want to be looking for where the button is.

A method tells you how to read the market — technical, fundamental, or chart analysis. A strategy tells you the rules for when you enter, when you exit, and how much you risk. In the beginning you want just one, simple, applied consistently — not a collage of indicators picked up from random groups.

Focus beats collecting. Someone who learns one method well gets further than someone who jumps from one to another. The strategies-for-beginners page frames exactly this: what to start with and why.

This is where those who stay part ways from those who disappear. The basic rule: you decide in advance how much you're willing to lose on a trade and you don't exceed that amount. Position size and the stop-loss aren't optional — they're what keeps you in the game long enough to actually learn.

A trader who loses a series of trades in a controlled way can keep going. One who risks too much on a single trade can wipe out their account on one bad day. The difference isn't in how often you're right, but in how much you lose when you're wrong.

The dedicated page on risk management is coming soon. Until then, the rule above is enough as a starting point.

No signals and no "what to buy right now" — just the mechanics of an order, which you repeat until it becomes reflex:

• You look at the chart following your method's rule and choose the instrument.
• You set the position size based on how much you're risking, not how much you want to win.
• You place the stop-loss where you'd recognize that you were wrong, and the take-profit where you close in profit.
• You place the order, write down why you entered, and let it play out according to plan.

The trading journal is where you write down every decision and its reason: what you saw, why you entered, how you felt, how it ended. Without it, you repeat the same mistakes without seeing them. With it, after a few dozen trades patterns emerge — and only then do you have evidence that your process works, not just an impression.

Moving from demo to a live account has no universal "correct" amount — it depends on your financial capacity and how much risk you can carry without it affecting your decisions. What matters is that you only move on once you have a process that repeats, with money you can afford to lose entirely, and that you start small. Your first live account is still a learning stage — just with real stakes this time.

These aren't chart mistakes, but path mistakes. You see them often because they come from haste, not from a lack of information.