6 modules and 42 lessons, from your very first pip to building a professional trading plan. Click any lesson to open it.
Forex (foreign exchange) is the global market where currencies are bought and sold. It is the largest financial market in the world, open 24 hours a day from Monday to Friday, with no central exchange — trading happens electronically between banks, institutions, brokers and individual traders.
People trade forex for business (a company paying overseas suppliers), for travel, for investment, and to speculate on price changes.
Every forex price compares two currencies. In EUR/USD = 1.0850, EUR is the base currency and USD is the quote currency: one euro costs 1.0850 US dollars.
A pip is the standard unit of price change. For most pairs it is the fourth decimal (0.0001); for JPY pairs it is the second decimal (0.01). Many platforms show a fifth decimal called a pipette (one-tenth of a pip).
A lot is a standard trade size.
Your lot size decides how much each pip is worth to you, so it is the main lever for controlling risk.
Leverage lets you control a large position with a smaller deposit, called margin. With 1:100 leverage, $1,000 of margin controls a $100,000 position.
Leverage does not change how far price moves — it changes how much that move affects your account. Use it carefully: the same leverage that doubles a gain can double a loss.
Line charts connect closing prices — simple but limited. Bar charts and candlesticks show four prices for each period: open, high, low and close (OHLC). Most traders use candlesticks because they are the easiest to read at a glance.
The body shows the open and close; the wicks (shadows) show the high and low. A bullish candle closes above its open; a bearish candle closes below it.
Each candle can represent 1 minute, 1 hour, 1 day and so on. Use multi-timeframe analysis: identify the trend on a higher timeframe (Daily/4H), then look for entries on a lower one (1H/15m). Trading in the direction of the higher timeframe improves your odds.
Support is a price area where buying has stopped declines before; resistance is where selling has stopped rallies. The more times a level is tested, the more important it is — and when it finally breaks, old resistance often becomes new support (and vice versa).
A break of structure (e.g. an uptrend making a lower low) is an early sign the trend may be changing.
Draw a trendline by connecting at least two swing lows in an uptrend (or swing highs in a downtrend). A parallel line on the other side creates a channel. Price often bounces between the two lines until a breakout happens.
Hammer, inverted hammer, shooting star, hanging man, doji and marubozu. On their own they are weak signals — they become meaningful at key levels and in the right context.
For chart patterns, the common target method is to measure the pattern's height and project it from the breakout point.
A moving average smooths price to show the trend. The SMA weighs all candles equally; the EMA reacts faster to recent price. Popular settings are 20, 50 and 200. Price above a rising 200 MA is generally considered a long-term uptrend.
RSI measures momentum on a scale of 0–100. Above 70 is often called overbought, below 30 oversold. In strong trends RSI can stay extreme for a long time, so look for divergence (price makes a new high but RSI doesn't) as a more useful warning.
MACD compares two EMAs (usually 12 and 26) with a 9-period signal line. Crossovers show changes in momentum, and the histogram shows its strength. Like RSI, divergence between MACD and price is a common reversal clue.
After a strong move, price often pulls back before continuing. Fibonacci levels (38.2%, 50%, 61.8%) help estimate where that pullback might end. They work best when they line up with support/resistance.
Bollinger Bands place lines two standard deviations above and below a 20-period average. When bands squeeze tight, volatility is low and a breakout may follow. ATR (Average True Range) is another tool to measure how much a pair normally moves — useful for placing stops.
Price action means trading from the chart itself — levels, structure and candles — with few or no indicators. A typical setup: higher-timeframe trend + pullback to a key level + a confirmation candle.
Confluence is when several independent reasons agree. Example: uptrend on the daily, pullback to support, 61.8% Fibonacci, and a bullish engulfing candle. More confluence = higher-quality setup, but fewer trades.
Over the long term, currencies are driven by interest rates, economic growth, inflation and capital flows. Money tends to flow toward countries with higher (or rising) interest rates and strong economies.
The Federal Reserve (USD), ECB (EUR), Bank of England (GBP) and Bank of Japan (JPY) set interest rates. Rate decisions and even small changes in their tone (hawkish = leaning to higher rates, dovish = leaning to lower) can move markets sharply.
Check the calendar every morning. Note high-impact events for the currencies you trade. Many traders avoid opening new positions shortly before major releases because spreads widen and price can gap.
When markets feel confident (risk-on), money flows into higher-yielding currencies like AUD and NZD and into stocks. When fear rises (risk-off), money moves to safe havens: USD, JPY, CHF and gold.
Gold (XAU/USD) often moves opposite to the US dollar and real interest rates. CAD is linked to oil prices; AUD to metals and China's economy. Understanding these links helps explain moves that charts alone can't.
Risking about 1% of your account per trade means a losing streak of ten trades costs roughly 10% — painful but recoverable. Risking 10% per trade would cost about 65% of the account in the same streak.
Place stops where your trade idea is proven wrong — beyond a swing high/low or a key level — not at a random number of pips. Add a small buffer (e.g. a fraction of ATR) to avoid being stopped by normal noise.
These two numbers work together. Breakeven win rate = 1 ÷ (1 + R).
Drawdown is the drop from your account's peak. Recovering is harder than losing: a 20% loss needs a 25% gain to recover; a 50% loss needs 100%. Many professional and evaluation accounts use daily and maximum drawdown limits — learning to trade within such limits builds discipline.
Options include moving the stop to breakeven after a set profit, taking partial profit at the first target, or trailing the stop behind structure. Choose rules in advance and apply them consistently.
Pairs like EUR/USD and GBP/USD often move together; USD/CHF often moves opposite to EUR/USD. Opening several correlated trades multiplies your real risk. Count total exposure, not just individual trades.
Your plan should cover: markets and sessions you trade, setup rules, entry and exit criteria, risk per trade, daily/weekly loss limits, and your review routine. If it's not written down, it's not a plan.
Record for every trade: date, pair, direction, entry, stop, target, result in R, screenshot, reason for entry and how you felt. After 50+ trades, patterns appear — your best setups, worst times of day and recurring mistakes.
Backtesting applies your rules to past charts to see how they would have performed. Forward testing on a demo account checks them in real time. Only move to real money after both show a positive result.
Every strategy has them. Reduce size during a drawdown, review whether you followed your rules, and take a break if emotions are taking over. Focus on execution quality, not the last result.
Waiting for an A+ setup is a skill. Many professional traders take only a few trades a week. Boredom is not a reason to trade.
Track these statistics monthly: win rate, average win vs average loss (in R), expectancy, maximum drawdown and rule-following percentage. Improvement in the process comes before improvement in profit.