A forex learning path that costs least in tuition to the market

Most forex learning paths begin with candlestick patterns and indicators. It is also why so many
people blow up an account before they ever get to use them — they learn to guess direction
before they learn not to lose money.

The order below reverses that. The first three steps do not teach you to make money; they keep you
solvent long enough to learn the rest.

Step 1 — Know what you are paying

Before anything else. If you do not know what a trade costs, you cannot tell whether a strategy is
profitable.

• What the spread is and where to read it on the
  platform.
• Commission — how it is charged and how it differs
  from spread.
• Overnight financing, and why Wednesday night is
  charged three times.
• Adding all three together for one specific
  trade.

You are done with this step when: you can say what one lot of gold costs you, in
dollars, without looking it up.

Step 2 — Be able to size a position

This is the skill that separates the people who survive from the people who do not. Most accounts are
lost by entering too large, not by reading direction wrong.

• Lots, pips and pip value — three calculations you
  cannot get wrong.
• Sizing from risk, not from feel.
• Leverage and margin — and why leverage is not what
  creates risk.
• Margin call and stop out — the two levels that
  decide whether the account survives.

You are done with this step when: given a balance, a risk percentage and a stop
distance, you can work out the size in your head.

Step 3 — Rules before strategy

• The 1% rule and how to apply it properly.
• Placing a stop loss by market structure, not by the
  amount you can bear to lose.
• A trading journal — what to record so that it is still useful
  a month later.

You are done with this step when: you have one page stating when you enter, when you
exit and what size — and you have followed it for twenty consecutive trades.

Step 4 — Now learn analysis

Only now do you learn to read a chart, and not much of it:
support and resistance,
identifying a trend,
basic candlestick patterns. Add one indicator if you genuinely use
it.

Learning five indicators at once does not make you better — it gives you five reasons to enter, and at
least one of them is always telling you to.

Step 5 — A demo account, used properly

Demo is useful for mechanics, useless for psychology —
because losing imaginary money does not hurt. Use it to learn the platform and test the rules, then move
to a live account at very small size as soon as you can.

Realistic timescales

Steps 1 to 3 take about a month if you are serious. Steps 4 and 5 have no end point.

One last note: you will find plenty of courses promising to shorten this process. What they can
shorten is step 4. Nobody can do steps 1, 2 and 3 for you — and those are the three that decide the
outcome.

This article is for information only and is not investment advice. Conditions and fee levels are published by the brokers and can change at any time — check with the broker you actually use. Leveraged forex and CFD trading carries a high level of risk and can cost you your entire deposit.