Before the method: a complete beginner's grounding in forex & CFDs — what you're actually trading, how a trade works, and the plumbing beneath every position. If you've never traded forex, read this top to bottom and you'll understand the basics; if you're coming from another market, it's the quick translation. (The futures equivalent is Phantom Futures · Module 01.)
Understand the forex market end-to-end: what forex & CFDs are, going long or short, how pairs, pips and lots work, what a pip is worth, how leverage, margin & margin calls behave, the real costs (spread & swap), the sessions and what moves price, the order types, and the one habit that governs sizing — dollar-risk-first: risk → stop → size.
You're speculating on the price of a market — a currency pair, gold, an index — without ever owning or delivering the underlying. You're in and out; the position is a bet on direction, closed before it settles.
Forex (FX) is the market for exchanging one currency for another. It's the largest, most liquid market in the world — around $7–8 trillion changes hands a day — and it's decentralized: there's no single exchange, just a global network of banks and brokers, trading 24 hours a day, 5 days a week (from Sunday evening to Friday evening, ET). You always trade one currency against another, which is why everything is quoted as a pair (§3).
Most retail traders access these markets through a CFD — a "contract for difference." You and your broker simply agree to exchange the difference in an asset's price between when you open and close; you never own the euro, the ounce of gold, or the index. That's what makes it flexible: you can go long or short (§2), use leverage (§6), and trade tiny sizes. The catch — the price you see is your broker's, not one shared exchange price (§8).
| Family | Examples | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Spot forex | EUR/USD, GBP/USD, USD/JPY | The relative price of one currency against another. The core of Foundations. |
| Metals | Gold (XAU/USD), Silver | Traded on the same order-flow framework as the pairs — structural targets, never session levels. |
| Index & commodity CFDs | US500 (S&P), US100 (Nasdaq), US30 (Dow), oil | A contract that tracks an index's or commodity's price. Sized in points, not pips. |
Specialize. Pick one or two instruments (GU / EU, and gold) and learn to read them like a native language before adding more.
The thing that trips up every beginner from stocks: in forex you can profit whether price goes up or down. You don't have to own anything first.
You buy the pair expecting the base currency to strengthen against the quote. You profit if price rises. Buying EUR/USD = betting the euro gains on the dollar.
You sell the pair first, expecting the base to weaken. You profit if price falls, and buy it back lower to close. No borrowing hoops — with a CFD, selling to open is just clicking "sell."
Because a pair is always one currency against another, a "short" isn't exotic — selling EUR/USD is simply buying dollars with euros. Every setup in this method works identically long or short; the direction just follows your read.
A pair is a ratio: how much of the quote currency it takes to buy one unit of the base.
At EUR/USD 1.0850, one euro costs 1.0850 US dollars. Buy the pair if you think the base will strengthen against the quote; sell if you think it'll weaken. The price is always measured in the quote currency — which is the currency your pips are worth (§5).
Pairs that include the US dollar — EUR/USD, GBP/USD, USD/JPY, USD/CHF, USD/CAD, AUD/USD, NZD/USD. Deepest liquidity, tightest spreads. Where you'll spend most of your time.
Crosses/minors have no USD — EUR/GBP, GBP/JPY, EUR/AUD — wider spreads, rangier. Exotics (USD/TRY, USD/ZAR) pair a major with an emerging-market currency: very wide spreads, avoid as a beginner.
A pip is the standard increment a pair moves in. It's how you measure a stop, a target, and a day's range.
A lot is how much of the pair you're trading. It's what sets how much money each pip is worth.
Three sizes, each a tenth of the one above. On a non-JPY pair, one pip is worth about 10 of the quote currency on a standard lot, 1 on a mini, and 0.10 on a micro. Most brokers let you size in 0.01-lot (micro) steps, so you can dial risk precisely.
A pip only means something in dollars once you know your lot size. On a pair quoted in USD, one standard lot (100,000 units) is worth ~$10 per pip, a mini ~$1, a micro ~$0.10. So a 20-pip stop on 0.10 lots (1 mini) of EUR/USD ≈ $20 of risk. If the quote currency isn't your account currency, that value is converted at the current rate — which is exactly what the lot size calculator handles (§10).
Size in the smallest step your broker allows. Precision on entry is what lets you protect the account on exit.
Leverage lets you control a large position with a small deposit. It is a convenience, not a strategy — and it's the most misunderstood number in retail trading.
Margin is the slice of your balance the broker sets aside as collateral while a position is open — the "used margin." What's left is your "free margin," available for new positions. Leverage just sets how small that slice is: at 30:1, one standard lot of EUR/USD ties up ~1/30th of its value; the rest is borrowed buying power.
| Where | Typical max leverage (majors) |
|---|---|
| EU / UK (regulated) | 30:1 |
| US (spot FX) | 50:1 |
| Offshore brokers | up to 500:1 (just because you can doesn't mean you should) |
If open losses eat into your margin, the broker issues a margin call (a warning) and, if it gets worse, a stop-out — it force-closes your positions to protect itself. You never want to be near this: it means you were sized far too big. Dollar-risk-first (§10) keeps you so far from a stop-out that it's irrelevant.
Your risk is set by size × stop, never by leverage. If sizing correctly means you barely touch your available margin, that's exactly right.
Two costs are baked into every trade. Neither is large, but a beginner who ignores them bleeds out slowly.
Every pair has two prices: the bid (where you can sell) and the ask (where you can buy). The gap between them is the spread — the broker's fee, baked into price. You always buy at the ask and sell at the bid, so you start every trade slightly offside: price has to move the spread in your favour just to break even. Majors run tight (often under a pip); crosses and quiet hours run wider. It's why you don't overtrade and don't trade illiquid hours.
Hold a position past the daily rollover (~5:00 PM ET) and you pay or receive a swap — an interest adjustment based on the rate difference between the two currencies. It can be a small credit or (more often) a small debit, and it's charged triple on Wednesdays to cover the weekend. For intraday trading it's usually irrelevant — you're flat by the close — but it's why holding a losing position "just overnight" quietly adds cost.
Spread isn't just a fee — it changes where your orders fill, and most beginners get clipped by not accounting for it. You always buy at the ask, sell at the bid, but the chart usually plots the bid:
Forex runs 24 hours, but the hours are not equal. Volume and clean moves cluster in specific windows — and big moves are driven by a short list of catalysts.
The London/New York overlap (~8 AM–noon ET) carries the most volume and the cleanest moves. Foundations is a New York session method — the week's losing setups often cluster in the sessions you don't trade. More in Lesson 7 — The Trading Day.
Five order types cover everything you'll do. Know them before you click.
| Order | What it does |
|---|---|
| Market | Fills immediately at the current price. What you use when the setup triggers and you want in now. |
| Limit | Fills only at a better price than now — buy below / sell above. Used to wait for price to come to a level. |
| Stop (entry) | Fills at a worse price than now — buy above / sell below. Used to enter on a breakout once price confirms. |
| Stop-loss (SL) | Your safety exit — auto-closes the trade at your invalidation. Non-negotiable on every trade. |
| Take-profit (TP) | Auto-closes at your target. Lets the plan execute without you babysitting the screen. |
A trade without a stop-loss isn't a trade — it's a hope. Set the SL as you enter, every single time.
This is the habit that ties every mechanic above together, and it never changes order.
You never widen or tighten a stop to reach a lot size you want. If the honest stop is too big for your risk, size down or skip the trade.
"If you don't like the stop, don't take the trade."
Set the risk you'll accept and your stop in pips; it returns the lot size that makes that stop equal your risk, with the pip value converted to your account currency. This is step 3, done for you.
Uses live ECB conversion rates; your inputs are remembered on this device. It's also a standalone page — open the Lot Size Calculator →
Risk → stop → size. Never bend the stop to fit a size.