The practical mechanics. Education explains what things are; these guides walk you through actually doing them, in order, with the details that usually get skipped.
Before any real money moves, you want to know that the platform behaves the way you expect and that you can get your funds back out. This is the sequence that surfaces problems while they are still cheap.
Work through the broker checklist before you fill in a single form. Confirm the entity and licence on the regulator’s own register, not the broker’s marketing page.
Not for a day — for several weeks, and at a position size that matches what you would actually trade. A demo funded with $100,000 when your real account will hold $2,000 teaches you nothing transferable.
Demo execution is frequently better than live. The only way to see real spreads, real slippage and real fills is with real money — so use an amount whose total loss would be genuinely irrelevant to you.
Take money out early, once, and note how long it takes and what is demanded. Withdrawal friction is the most common serious complaint against problem brokers, and far cheaper to discover at this stage.
A trade is four decisions, and three of them are made before you click anything. Getting into the habit of defining all four every time is most of what separates a process from an impulse.
| Decision | What to settle before entering |
|---|---|
| Direction and reason | Long or short, and a one-sentence reason. If you cannot write the sentence, you do not have a trade. |
| Stop-loss level | Placed where your reason would be proven wrong — at a structural level, not at a round number of pips that happens to feel affordable. |
| Position size | Calculated from the stop distance and your risk percentage. Never chosen first. Use the position size calculator. |
| Exit plan | Target level, trailing rule, or time-based exit — decided now, while you are calm, rather than mid-trade while you are not. |
Notice that position size comes after the stop, never before. Choosing lots first and then placing a stop wherever it “fits” is the most common structural mistake in retail trading, and it is what turns an ordinary losing streak into a closed account.
Most trading plans fail because they are aspirational documents rather than operational ones. A usable plan is short, specific, and answerable with a yes or no in the moment. If a rule needs interpretation while a position is open, it is not a rule.
Three simultaneous long positions in EUR/USD, GBP/USD and AUD/USD are not three separate 1% risks. They are largely one directional bet against the US dollar, sized at closer to 3%. Correlated exposure is how traders who follow their risk rules still take losses they did not plan for.
Your statement is the only fully honest account of your trading. Memory is not — it systematically over-remembers wins and reframes losses as bad luck.
Win rate. Means nothing without the reward-to-risk ratio beside it. 80% wins at 1:4 reward-to-risk loses money steadily.
Total profit. Frequently one oversized lucky trade concealing a pattern of small consistent losses.
Maximum drawdown. The deepest fall from a peak. This is the number that tells you whether the approach is survivable.
Average win vs average loss. If your average loss exceeds your average win, you are cutting winners early and letting losers run — the most common destructive pattern there is.
Now that the mechanics are in place, compare the main approaches and where each one breaks.
Compare approachesBuild your own market view from technical structure and economic fundamentals.
Learn analysisThe calculators that make everything on this page concrete.
Open the toolkitTrading foreign exchange carries a high level of risk and can result in the loss of all invested capital. These guides are general educational information only and do not constitute financial, investment or trading advice. See our full Risk Disclaimer.
