Trading

Buying because you think something will be worth more in ten years, and buying because you think it will be worth more on Thursday, are two different activities with different opponents.

The price is not a number the exchange decides. It is the last point where two people disagreed enough to trade.

Six instructions cover almost everything anyone does. The differences between them are where beginners lose money without ever being wrong about direction.

A candle is four numbers drawn as a shape. Knowing which four, and which information was thrown away to draw it, is most of chart literacy.

Going long is buying. Going short is selling something you do not have, which raises an obvious question — and the answer is where the risk lives.

Leverage does not only multiply the outcome. It converts a temporary move into a permanent loss, and that second effect is the one that empties accounts.

A contract with no expiry date needs something to keep it tethered to reality. That something is a payment between the two sides, and it is the running cost of holding a position.

Entry price is the thing everybody argues about. Position size is the thing that decides whether being wrong matters, and it is entirely within your control.

A map of what people actually do, what each approach assumes, and where the evidence is solid, contested or absent.

Every cost here is charged whether you were right or wrong. Together they set the hurdle you must clear before any skill shows up in the result.

Every term used across this section, defined once and in plain words. Most of the jargon is ordinary ideas wearing a costume.