BlogGuides and strategy

Learn the Markets:
Beginner's Guide to Trading

Guides on strategy, markets and managing risk, written for people who are learning to trade.

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Learn to trade

New to trading? Start here. Nine guides take you from what trading is to how CFDs, leverage and margin, costs, orders, exits and position size work, with a worked example in each.

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  1. What is trading, and how do you get started?
  2. What is a CFD, and what are you actually trading?
  3. Going long and going short: how you can trade a falling price
  4. Leverage and margin: why a small move can mean a big loss
  5. The costs of a trade: spreads, swaps and slippage
  6. Market, limit and stop orders: which does what?
  7. Stop loss and take profit: how to set an exit before you enter
  8. Position size: how much should one trade risk?
  9. Why prices gap, and what it means for your stop loss

Reading markets

Learn to read a chart and the calendar. Five guides cover candlesticks, support and resistance, trends and moving averages, fundamental and technical analysis, and the economic calendar.

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  1. How to read a candlestick chart
  2. Support and resistance: why prices pause at the same levels
  3. Trends and moving averages, in plain terms
  4. Fundamental or technical analysis: what is the difference?
  5. How to read an economic calendar: forecast, actual, previous

Forex

How the currency market works. Five guides explain what moves a pair, how pips and lots turn into money, why interest rate gaps matter, how majors, minors and exotics differ, and when each session trades.

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  1. What moves a currency pair? The five main drivers
  2. Pips, lots and pip value, with a worked example
  3. Why interest rate gaps between countries move currencies
  4. Major, minor and exotic pairs: why they behave differently
  5. The forex trading day: Asia, London and New York sessions

Stocks and indices

What moves shares and the indices built from them. Four guides cover share prices, earnings season, how indices are weighted and why rising interest rates weigh on stock markets.

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  1. What moves a share price?
  2. Earnings season: what "beat" and "miss" really mean
  3. What is a stock index, and why can a few companies move it?
  4. Why stock indices fall when interest rates rise

Bonds

How the bond market works, and why it matters for every other market. Three guides explain why prices and yields move in opposite directions, how yields ripple into loans, shares, currencies and gold, and how to read the yield curve.

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  1. Bonds explained: why prices and yields move in opposite directions
  2. Why bond yields matter even if you never trade a bond
  3. The yield curve: what it is and why traders watch it

Commodities

Gold, silver and oil, and how they link to the wider economy. Two guides explain what the gold to silver ratio does and does not tell you, and how oil prices feed into inflation and interest rates.

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  1. The gold to silver ratio: what it tells traders, and what it does not
  2. How oil prices feed into inflation, and from there into interest rates

Crypto

What drives crypto prices, and why they swing so hard. Two guides cover what moves Bitcoin, from its fixed supply to interest rates and big holders, and why leverage and round the clock trading make crypto so volatile.

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  1. What moves the price of Bitcoin?
  2. Why crypto swings harder than other markets

Start Trading With Navion Pro

Open a Navion Pro account to trade forex, metals, indices and more. Leveraged products carry a substantial level of risk.

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