How to Trade — Guides

Step-by-step asset guides

Each guide covers one instrument: what actually moves it, a concrete first practice trade with sizing, when during the day or week it is worth trading, the mistakes beginners repeatedly make with that specific instrument, and how to review the trade afterwards.

Available guides

• Bitcoin (crypto) — Bitcoin trades 24/7, has the deepest crypto liquidity, and reacts strongly to macro liquidity shifts — perfect for learning volatility on a practice account.
• Ethereum (crypto) — Ethereum captures DeFi, L2 and staking narratives. It's the second-deepest crypto market and a cleaner trade for tech-driven setups than alt-coins.
• Tesla (stock) — TSLA is one of the most-traded retail stocks on the planet, with huge options volume and earnings volatility — ideal for practising event-driven setups.
• Nvidia (stock) — NVDA is the cleanest pure-play on AI compute demand. It trends hard in cycles and rewards patient trend-followers more than fast scalpers.
• S&P 500 ETF (etf) — SPY is the global benchmark. Learning to read its trend teaches you risk-on/off conditions for every other asset you'll ever trade.
• Solana (crypto) — SOL has tighter spreads than most alts, hot consumer narratives (memecoins, payments) and trends harder than ETH in risk-on regimes.

What every one of these guides has in common

The structure is deliberate. Beginners usually start with the question 'how do I buy this?', which is the least important part — placing the order takes seconds and any broker will show you how. The parts that decide whether the trade was sensible come before and after it: understanding what actually moves the instrument, choosing a size that survives being wrong, picking a time of day when liquidity is not working against you, and reviewing the result honestly afterwards.

So each guide spends most of its length on those parts. None of them tell you whether to buy, none contain price targets, and none imply that following the steps produces a profit. They aim to make your first practice trade in an instrument an informed one rather than a random one.

Using a guide properly

• Read the drivers section before looking at a chart, so the chart does not supply your opinion.
• Copy the suggested first practice trade exactly, including the sizing, before improvising.
• Note the timing guidance — trading an instrument outside its liquid window is a common and avoidable handicap.
• Come back to the review section a day after the trade closes, not while it is open.