Academy

No signals. No secrets.
Just the mechanics.

Twenty-nine lessons across four tracks, written by the dealing desk. They cover what the instruments actually are, what a position costs to hold, and how to size one so a bad week does not become a terminal one.

Browse the tracks Open the glossary

No signal service

We do not tell you what to buy. Nobody credible does it for free.

No performance claims

There is no strategy here with a published win rate attached.

Arithmetic, in full

Every worked example shows its numbers so you can check them.

Free, and ungated

No account required, no email wall, no upsell at lesson four.

Tracks

Four tracks, in the order that works

Start at Foundation even if you have traded before. Most of the expensive mistakes this desk sees come from skipping the arithmetic, not from bad analysis.

Track 01 · Foundation 6 lessons · 48 min

What you are actually trading

A contract for difference is not a share and it is not a currency. This track establishes what a position is, what it costs to hold, and what happens at rollover.

01 · What a CFD is, and is not7 min
02 · Contract sizes and tick values9 min
03 · Reading a quote: bid, ask, spread6 min
04 · Margin, leverage and free equity11 min
05 · Overnight financing and the swap8 min
06 · What one pip costs you7 min

Track 02 · Risk 8 lessons · 71 min

Position sizing before entries

The single highest-leverage hour on this site. Sizing determines survival; entries only determine how interesting the ride is.

01 · Risk per trade as a fixed fraction10 min
02 · From stop distance to lot size12 min
03 · The arithmetic of drawdown recovery8 min
04 · Correlation: when six trades are one trade9 min
05 · Gap risk and why stops are not guarantees8 min
06 · Guaranteed stops and what they cost7 min
07 · Margin calls, step by step9 min
08 · Sizing gold like gold, not like FX8 min

Track 03 · Execution 5 lessons · 62 min

Order types and market microstructure

What happens between pressing the button and seeing a fill, and which of the things people blame on the broker are actually the market.

01 · Market, limit, stop and stop-limit12 min
02 · How your order meets the book14 min
03 · Slippage: what it measures11 min
04 · Liquidity, depth and thin hours13 min
05 · Reading an execution report12 min

Track 04 · Markets 10 lessons · 96 min

What moves each asset class

Interest rate differentials, index dividend adjustments, contango in energy — the structural forces that act on a position regardless of the chart.

01 · Rate differentials and the carry trade11 min
02 · Central bank calendars that matter9 min
03 · Gold as a rate instrument10 min
04 · Index dividends and ex-dates8 min
05 · Contango, backwardation and rolls12 min
06 · Weekend gap risk in digital assets9 min
07 · Reading economic releases10 min
08 · Correlation regimes and when they break9 min
09 · Liquidity through the trading day9 min
10 · Building a personal market calendar9 min

Worked example

Sizing a trade, all arithmetic shown

This is lesson 02 of the risk track, compressed. If the numbers below are unfamiliar, that is exactly the gap the track closes.

The question is never "how many lots feels right". It is: given the amount I am willing to lose and the distance to my stop, what size makes those two numbers agree?

The formula Lot size = (account equity × risk fraction) ÷ (stop distance in pips × pip value per lot). Everything else is decoration.

EUR/USD · long · 1% risk

Illustrative

Account equity€25,000.00

Risk per trade1.00%

Amount at risk€250.00

Entry1.08724

Stop loss1.08424

Stop distance30.0 pips

Pip value per lot€10.00

Cost of one lot at stop€300.00

Correct position size 0.83 lots

€250 ÷ (30.0 × €10.00) = 0.8333, rounded down to 0.83. Rounding down, never up, is deliberate.

What 1:30 leverage would allow The same €25,000 would post margin for roughly 6.9 lots. Taking it would put €2,070 at risk on a 30-pip stop — over eight percent of the account on one trade. The ceiling is not a recommendation.

Market insights

Desk commentary

Written by the people taking the calls, published when there is something worth saying rather than on a content schedule. Invented for this concept.

18 Jul

Why your stop filled 4 pips away at 15:30

A short walk through the depth of book either side of a scheduled release, and why a resting stop is a market order in disguise.

Execution

11 Jul

Gold is trading like a rates instrument again

The correlation between real yields and the gold price has reasserted itself. What that changes about holding gold overnight.

Metals

03 Jul

The index dividend adjustment nobody budgets for

Short index positions are debited on the ex-date. Over a quarter it is a meaningful drag on a strategy that never accounts for it.

Indices

24 Jun

Weekend crypto gaps: three years of data

How often the Monday open sits outside the Friday range, and what that implies for sizing a position you cannot manage.

Digital

17 Jun

Six correlated trades are one trade with extra fees

On why an FX book long the dollar against six currencies is not diversified, and how to measure the exposure you actually hold.

Risk

Glossary

The vocabulary, without the mystique

Terms as this desk uses them. Where an industry definition is vaguer than it should be, we say so.

Working glossary

Filter glossary terms

Glossary of trading terms
Term	Definition
Ask	The price at which you buy. Always the higher of the two quoted prices, and always shown on the right.
Bid	The price at which you sell. The lower of the two, always shown on the left. The industry convention is never reversed.
Contango	A futures curve where later contracts cost more than nearer ones, so rolling a long position forward loses money by construction.
Drawdown	The fall from an equity peak to the subsequent trough. A 50% drawdown needs a 100% gain to recover, which is the whole argument for position sizing.
Equity	Balance plus or minus the running profit on open positions. Margin is measured against equity, not balance.
Guaranteed stop	A stop that fills at your level regardless of gapping, in exchange for a premium. The only stop that is genuinely a guarantee.
Leverage	A margin ratio describing how little capital you must post. It is routinely mistaken for a measure of risk, which it is not.
Lot	The standard contract unit. 100,000 units of base currency in FX, 100 ounces in gold, one coin in Bitcoin.
Margin call	The point at which free equity no longer supports open positions. New orders are blocked first; forced liquidation follows.
Pip	The smallest conventional price increment — the fourth decimal in most FX pairs, the second in yen crosses.
Rollover	22:00 UTC. Positions held through it are charged or credited the swap rate; Wednesday is charged three times for weekend value dates.
Slippage	The difference between the price you asked for and the price you received. It is symmetric — positive slippage exists and should be passed through.
Spread	The distance between bid and ask, and the cost of entering a position before any commission.
Swap	The overnight financing charge or credit, derived from the interest rate differential between the two sides of the instrument.
Tick value	What one minimum price increment is worth on your position size. The number that turns a chart move into money.

15 terms

Practise it

Then go and be wrong for free

The demo terminal runs the same simulated feed with the full order ticket. Work through the sizing arithmetic on a live position where nothing is at stake.

Open the demo terminal See the instruments

Lesson content is outside the scope of this design concept; the track outlines above are the deliverable.

No signals. No secrets.Just the mechanics.