Forty-six guides, written to be used
Practical writing on the parts of trading that decide outcomes: sizing, costs, market structure, indicators and discipline. Every guide links to a calculator that does the work.
Looking for a quick answer?
Every question we answer across all 46 guides, searchable in one place.
Browse 172 questionsMost asked
The questions people search for most, answered directly.
LeverageWhat is leverage in crypto trading
Borrowed exposure priced in the distance to a forced exit — with the level most traders should actually use.
Every crypto fee, explained with numbers
Six separate costs, only two of which appear in a fee schedule, with annual figures for each.
What is a good risk reward ratio
The ratio decides how often you need to be right. Most traders pick one demanding accuracy they lack.
Why most traders lose money
Five measurable habits, none of which is picking the wrong coin.
The best time to trade crypto
Markets never close, but liquidity is not spread evenly across the day.
How to read a liquidation map
What the clusters mean, how they are modelled, and the limits every heatmap shares.
Stablecoins, and how safe they actually are
How pegs hold, what depegging costs you, and how to judge the risk.
Crypto trading glossary
Sixty terms defined in one sentence each, grouped by what they describe.
Start here
New to this? These three, in order.
Your first ninety days, done properly
A realistic plan: what to learn first, what to avoid entirely, and how to measure progress.
How much money you need to start
An honest answer with arithmetic — what fees do to small accounts, and a realistic floor.
How to read candlestick charts
Four numbers per candle. Once you see them, a chart stops being decoration.
Risk and position sizing
The part that decides whether an account survives.
How to calculate position size in crypto
The one formula that decides how long you last, with worked examples.
Stop losses, and where to actually put one
How stops work, stop-market vs stop-limit, and choosing a level that survives noise.
Why liquidation should sit twice as far as your stop
Liquidation triggers on mark price, not last price. How to check the gap first.
What liquidation actually means
How it works, what happens to your margin, and how to avoid it entirely.
Isolated or cross margin
One caps your loss at a number you choose. The other risks the whole balance.
Costs nobody adds up
Fees, funding and slippage — the quiet drain.
Funding rates, and the cost nobody budgets for
A rate that looks like a rounding error is often more than half your capital per year.
Maker and taker fees
What makes an order each, and what the difference costs over a year.
Slippage: the cost nobody quotes you
Why the price you get differs from the price you saw, and how to reduce it.
Working out what you actually made
Formulas for spot and leverage with fees included, and return on margin.
Market structure
Why price does what it does.
Why your stop gets taken and price reverses
Stops cluster at obvious levels and price is drawn toward liquidity.
When the wick only happened on your exchange
Venues are unregulated and prices genuinely differ. The five-second check.
Support and resistance, without the mysticism
Why levels work, how to draw them, and why the zone beats the line.
Reading an order book
Bids, asks, spread and depth — and what imbalance does not tell you.
Volume: the second half of every candle
How to read it with price, and how fake volume is manufactured.
Derivatives
Perpetuals, open interest and positioning.
Open interest, and what it says that price cannot
Fresh money or shorts covering — and how squeezes are built.
Spot or futures
In one you own the coin. In the other you own an agreement about its price.
Limit orders and market orders
One guarantees the price. The other guarantees the fill.
Indicators
What they measure, and what they cannot.
Moving averages, and what they are for
SMA against EMA, which periods matter, and why crossovers are weak alone.
RSI, and the mistake everyone makes with it
Overbought means strong, not expensive. Why that distinction costs money.
Discipline and review
The habits that separate consistent traders.
A pre-trade checklist you will actually use
Six questions, twenty seconds, and how to measure whether yours works.
The four states that lose money
Revenge, boredom, fear of missing out and overconfidence.
How to keep a trade journal without paying for one
What to record, what to ignore, and the three numbers to review weekly.
Strategy and simulation
Testing an idea before it costs you money.
Backtesting, honestly
What a backtest can and cannot tell you, the four numbers that matter, and why results always flatter.
A thousand versions of your next 200 trades
Why the same edge ruins one account and enriches another — and how to size for the bad runs.
Five positions, one bet
Correlation without maths, and how to count your real number of independent bets.
DeFi
Lending, liquidity and yield — and what each one really costs.
The nine ways DeFi takes your money
Impermanent loss, health factor, depegs, oracles, bridges, emissions and gas economics — measured, not feared.
Airdrops
Free tokens, and the filters that decide who gets them.
Airdrop farming, after the easy era ended
How retroactive drops choose wallets, the six patterns Sybil filters delete, and a routine that survives them.
Operational safety — where the money really goes
Most losses are not scams or crashes. They are defaults nobody revisited.
The wrong network, and why nobody can help you
Why the same address is valid on six chains, the Solana checksum problem, and the five checks that prevent it.
The losses nobody talks about
Withdrawal timing, conversion spreads, sandwich attacks and the tax data problem.
Whether you can actually get out
Market cap is theoretical. How to test the real exit against a live order book.
Safety and practical
Protecting what you have.
Keeping your coins
Seed phrases, two-factor, approvals, and the mistakes that drain wallets.
Spotting a rug pull
Six checks that catch most scam tokens, none requiring you to read code.
Choosing where to trade
Depth, fees, funding and withdrawal reliability before you deposit.
Market cap, and why price alone is meaningless
Circulating supply, fully diluted valuation, and the unlock trap.
Dollar cost averaging, honestly
How averaging in works, the maths, and when it is the wrong tool.
Beyond the guides
The calculators page holds twelve tools that run in your browser, the tools reference explains all fifty-nine panels on the desk, and Only here covers the nine indicators built for this site alone.