Start from absolute zero. Learn what stocks are, how markets work, and place your first practice trade. The perfect first trading course.
About 8 minutes · One knowledge check
Ask about the video, the chart, or how this concept affects a trading decision.
Complete one planned decision at a time. The objective is to follow a defined process, not to pursue a particular outcome.
Record the setup, the decision taken and one action you would repeat or change.
Open decision journal →Use this full reference alongside the interactive lessons, knowledge checks and guided paper-practice exercise.
Trading is the process of buying and selling financial assets — such as stocks, cryptocurrencies, forex pairs, or commodities — with the goal of profiting from price changes. Unlike long-term investing, which involves holding assets for years, trading involves shorter time horizons ranging from minutes to months.
Understanding how markets work is the foundation of every successful trader's education. A market is simply a place where buyers and sellers agree on a price for an asset. When more people want to buy than sell, prices rise. When more people want to sell than buy, prices fall. This basic principle of supply and demand drives every price movement you see on a chart.
Stock Markets: Stock exchanges like the NYSE and NASDAQ allow traders to buy and sell shares of public companies. Stock markets operate during fixed hours, typically 9:30am to 4pm Eastern Time on weekdays.
Cryptocurrency Markets: Crypto markets run 24/7, 365 days a year. They are highly volatile, which means prices can move dramatically in short periods — creating both opportunity and risk.
Forex Markets: The foreign exchange market is the largest financial market in the world by volume. It involves trading currency pairs like EUR/USD or GBP/JPY. The forex market runs 24 hours a day on weekdays.
Commodities: Commodities like gold, oil, and silver are traded on futures exchanges. They are often used by traders as a hedge against inflation or market uncertainty.
When you place a trade, you are either going long (buying, expecting the price to rise) or short (selling first, expecting the price to fall so you can buy it back cheaper). Every trade has an entry point, a stop loss (your maximum acceptable loss), and a target (your profit goal).
Understanding the risk-to-reward ratio is critical. A 1:2 risk-to-reward means you risk £100 to potentially gain £200. Professional traders only take setups where the potential reward outweighs the risk.
The best way to start trading is to learn first and risk money later. Study the fundamentals — charts, indicators, market structure — before opening a live account. Practice with a paper trading simulator so you can experience real market conditions without financial risk.
TradeProview's paper trading account gives you $100,000 in virtual capital to practice with. You can buy and sell at real market prices, track your portfolio, and build confidence in your strategy — all with zero risk to real money.
This content is for educational purposes only. Nothing here constitutes financial advice.
