# Trading Basics: How It Works, How Not to Lose Everything > Learn how trading really works, in plain words and with small numbers. See what it costs, how markets and orders work, how to decide the loss before the trade, how a plan can lose often and still profit, how to read a simple chart, and how to keep a journal and your own habits from wrecking the account, all on a practice account with made-up prices. Educational, not advice: most people who trade lose money. - Source: https://productovi.com/courses/trading - Free, no sign-up needed to read. ## Modules ### Module 1. What is trading, and should I even try? See what trading really is, what it costs and why most beginners lose, before you risk a cent. - [Trading vs investing: two different games](https://productovi.com/courses/trading/trading-vs-investing.md): Holding for years and trading for days are different games with different risks, and someone is always on the other side. - [Where the money goes: spread, fees and slippage](https://productovi.com/courses/trading/where-the-money-goes.md): Every trade starts a little in the red. See the costs that eat small gains and why many tiny trades lose. - [Why most beginners lose](https://productovi.com/courses/trading/why-most-beginners-lose.md): Losing accounts are mostly explained by three ordinary habits, not bad luck: paying costs on too many trades, bets too big for the account and dropping the plan mid-trade. The numbers are in the journal. - [Case: three promises that sound too good](https://productovi.com/courses/trading/too-good-to-be-true.md): Judge three ads that promise easy money by what you can check, not by what they promise; find the hidden losses, the guarantee, the pressure and the request for access. ### Module 2. How does a market work under the hood? Learn who the exchange, the broker and the market maker are, and how an order really becomes a trade. - [Exchange, broker, instruments: a map](https://productovi.com/courses/trading/exchange-broker-instruments.md): A plain map of where trades happen and what you can trade: shares, funds, currencies, futures and coins, plus what going short and leverage mean, with the warnings. - [Order types: market, limit, stop](https://productovi.com/courses/trading/order-types.md): Choose how you enter and leave: right now at any price, only at your price, or when a level breaks. See what each order does in a fast drop, with real fill prices. - [Bid, ask, spread and liquidity](https://productovi.com/courses/trading/bid-ask-liquidity.md): Read the two prices on every screen, see why thin markets and odd hours cost more, and what a big market order does to a thin order book. - [Case: place the right order](https://productovi.com/courses/trading/choose-the-right-order.md): Three situations on a practice account: pick the order type, the price and the size, and say why, using the quotes, the spread and what a gap can do to a stop. ### Module 3. How much can I lose on one trade? Decide the loss before the trade, not after: risk as a small share of the account, a stop and a position size. - [Risk per trade: a small share of the account](https://productovi.com/courses/trading/risk-per-trade.md): Fix how much of the account one trade may cost if it goes wrong, and see why a small share, such as 1%, keeps you alive through a long losing run. - [The stop: where it goes and why](https://productovi.com/courses/trading/where-the-stop-goes.md): Place a stop where the trade idea is proved wrong, not where the loss feels comfortable, and know what a gap does to it: the real loss can be bigger than planned. - [Position size from risk and stop](https://productovi.com/courses/trading/position-size.md): Turn the risk you allow and the distance to your stop, costs included, into a number of units to buy, then cap it by what the account can actually pay for. - [Case: size three trades](https://productovi.com/courses/trading/size-three-trades.md): Nora has three trade ideas and one 10,000-dollar practice account: work out the size, the risk and the real cost of each, the cap that binds and what a gap could do. ### Module 4. Can I lose often and still come out ahead? Win rate alone says little: put win rate and payoff together and see which plans survive. - [Win rate and reward-to-risk](https://productovi.com/courses/trading/win-rate-and-payoff.md): A plan that wins three trades in ten can make money, and one that wins eight in ten can lose: see how the size of wins and losses decides, and find the break-even win rate. - [Expectancy: the average trade](https://productovi.com/courses/trading/expectancy.md): Compute what an average trade earns after costs from a real trade list, and see why ten trades can tell the opposite story from forty. - [Drawdown: why losses hit harder than gains](https://productovi.com/courses/trading/drawdown-and-ruin.md): A 50% loss needs a 100% gain to recover: see drawdown, the recovery maths and how the same trades at a bigger size can sink an account that should have grown. - [Case: compare two trade lists](https://productovi.com/courses/trading/compare-two-trade-lists.md): Two journals, two styles: compare expectancy after costs, drawdown, sample size and discipline, then say which plan is worth continuing and what would change your mind. ### Module 5. What is a price chart telling me? Read candles, trend, ranges and levels on a plain chart, and learn what a chart can never tell you. - [Candles and timeframes](https://productovi.com/courses/trading/candles-and-timeframes.md): Read one candle in a few seconds, and see how a calm week can hide one frightening day. - [Trend and range](https://productovi.com/courses/trading/trend-and-range.md): Tell an uptrend, a downtrend and a sideways range apart by their highs and lows, and see why the same rule wins in one and loses in another. - [Support, resistance and breakouts](https://productovi.com/courses/trading/levels-and-breakouts.md): Mark the prices where the market turned before, and see why a breakout can be real or a trap, and what a level can and cannot tell you. - [Case: mark up a chart and write the plan](https://productovi.com/courses/trading/mark-up-a-chart.md): Mark the trend and the levels on a Pebble chart, then write when you would enter, where the stop goes and when you stay out, without forecasting. ### Module 6. Which tools are worth my time? Try a few simple tools, see what each can and cannot say, and learn why more indicators rarely help. - [Moving averages](https://productovi.com/courses/trading/moving-averages.md): Smooth the noise with an average of the last few closes, and see why every average arrives late in a trend and whips back and forth in a range. - [A momentum gauge and the overbought myth](https://productovi.com/courses/trading/momentum-gauge.md): See what a 0–100 momentum gauge actually measures, compute one by hand, and watch a "too high" reading stay high for weeks while the price keeps rising. - [Volume and volatility](https://productovi.com/courses/trading/volume-and-volatility.md): Use the usual daily range to place a stop outside everyday noise and size the position from it, and see what volume can and cannot confirm. - [Case: choose at most three tools](https://productovi.com/courses/trading/choose-your-tools.md): Strip a crowded chart down to at most three tools, give each one a job, say what it cannot do, and defend the choice with the numbers. ### Module 7. How do I turn an idea into a plan I can test? Write the plan on one page, test it honestly, practise small and keep a journal that tells the truth. - [A one-page trading plan](https://productovi.com/courses/trading/one-page-plan.md): Write five things on one page before you trade: what you trade, when you enter, where you exit, how big you go and when you do not trade at all. - [Backtest basics and traps](https://productovi.com/courses/trading/backtest-traps.md): Test a rule on past prices and see the traps: one lucky period, hindsight, too many tweaks and missing failures. - [Practice account, starting small and the journal](https://productovi.com/courses/trading/practice-account-and-journal.md): Use a practice account to build the routine, start small with real money only if you choose to, and log every trade in a journal that memory cannot edit. - [Case: audit a journal and find the leak](https://productovi.com/courses/trading/audit-a-journal.md): Read a month of trades, find where the money leaks and write the one rule that would have fixed most of it. ### Module 8. What if I am the weak link? Meet the habits that wreck accounts, build rules that protect you from yourself and decide whether to start. - [Fear, greed, hope and revenge trading](https://productovi.com/courses/trading/fear-greed-revenge.md): Name the four feelings that move a hand to the button and see how loss aversion turns a 60% win rate into a loss. - [A losing streak is normal](https://productovi.com/courses/trading/losing-streaks-are-normal.md): See how long a losing run can last in a sound plan, and why one trade or ten trades prove nothing either way. - [Rules that protect you from yourself](https://productovi.com/courses/trading/rules-that-protect-you.md): Set a pre-trade checklist, a daily loss limit and breaks after losses, and make them hard to break on a bad day. - [Case: decide whether and how to start](https://productovi.com/courses/trading/should-i-start.md): Write your own memo: money you can afford to lose, your plan, your limits and the day you would stop, or your reasons not to start at all.