A Roadmap to Trading — From Beginner to Expert (Part 1 — The Basics)
Introduction
Have you always wanted to learn trading, but didn’t know where to start, or what to learn? Have you looked at those expensive trading courses offered to you by your favorite crypto Twitter influencers, but didn’t want to spend the funds? This article will go over a roadmap that will teach you the basics of trading, and even more advanced topics. With each topic there is a list of links with articles and videos to teach you about the topic. I first made this roadmap when I started to learn trading, and I’m sharing it in the hopes it’ll help others too.
I’ll aim to release a part to this roadmap every several days, so if you’re interested in learning more, keep an eye out on my Twitter and Medium. Don’t worry if you didn’t complete the previous part when a new part is released, learn at your own pace! I will include a link at the bottom at each release when a new part is available so you can navigate to the next part easily.
How to Use
Use this roadmap as a guide through your trading journey. If you’re completely new, start at the beginning. If you’re more advanced, skip the topics you already know. The roadmap consists of 9 units. We will discuss one unit per article. At the bottom of the page, there will be a link to the next unit.
Some of these articles and videos will talk about stocks and not crypto. However, everything discussed in this roadmap applies to both stock markets and crypto markets. If it doesn’t, it will be explicitly mentioned that this topic only applies to a certain market.
If you don’t understand a certain term used in an article or video, it will probably be explained later on in one of the later topics. However, you’re more than encouraged to Google it and learn about yourself. The more effort you put in, the more you will learn!
You can try to watch a video or read an article every day, or set a certain time period of learning for every day, par example: 30 minutes daily. If you don’t have a lot of free time, it might take longer for you to complete the roadmap.
After you’ve learnt the Basics in this roadmap, you can start trading on a paper account. You can do this with TradingView, or another 3rd party application that you’re more familiar with. This way you can start applying what you’ve learnt and see how it would work out in the real world, without risking your funds.
Prerequisites: What is your Vision?
Before we start learning, it might be helpful for you to write down your vision at the start of your journey. You can later evaluate how this changed throughout your journey. So open a new text editing document and write down your answers to the following questions:
- Why do I want to trade?
- What are my expectations?
- Are my expectations realistic?
Now, we will begin your learning journey. We will start at the absolute basics.
The Roadmap — Unit 1: The Basics
Before moving on to more advanced topics, you will need to learn the basics. This part isn’t very hard but it can be time consuming. Some videos in this section are quite long, but very informative. So I would recommend for you to bite the bullet and do your best to complete everything in this section. I’ve listed articles and videos for absolute beginners and for more advanced traders. You’re more than welcome to complete both sections if you feel like it.
Understanding the Market
Beginner
Binance: The Psychology of Market Cycles
Binance: What is a Bull Market?
Binance: What is a Bear Market?
Binance: What is Crypto Market Sentiment?
Advanced
Youtube: What is FUD and what is FOMO?
Youtube: What is Fear and Greed?
Order Types
Beginner
Binance: What Is a Market Order?
Binance: What Is a Limit Order?
Binance: What is a Stop Limit Order?
Advanced
Binance: Understanding Different Order Types
Binance: What Is an OCO Order?
Order Book
Youtube: What is an order book?
Basic Technical Analysis
Beginner
Binance: What is Technical Analysis?
Binance: 12 Terms any Crypto Trader Should Know
Binance: A Complete Guide To Cryptocurrency Trading for Beginners
Binance: 7 Common Mistakes in Technical Analysis
Youtube: Technical Analysis for Beginners
Advanced
Youtube: Ultimate Technical Analysis Beginner Guide
Basic Fundamental Analysis
Beginner
Binance: A Guide to Cryptocurrency Fundamental Analysis
3Commas: Fundamental Analysis in Crypto 101
Advanced
Investopedia: What is Fundamental Analysis?
Investopedia: When to use Fundamental Analysis?
Basic TradingView
Beginners
Binance: A Beginners Guide To Tradingview
Advanced
Homework
After completing this section, here’s some homework you can do to improve your trading skills:
- Set up an exchange account (if you don’t have one already). I would recommend Binance for anyone outside the US. Once that’s done, start looking at the order book and order types (without making actual orders).
- Set up a Tradingview account and looking at charts. It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand much, try to get more familiar with the Tradingview interface. Change your time frame, change your pairs (for example, BTC/USD, ETH/USD), and so on. Add a few indicators to see how they work.
- Start finding some crypto news websites that you trust and bookmark them. Check them once or twice a day and keep up to speed with developments in the crypto world.
- Below is a list of YouTube channels with good information. Follow these channels and watch some video’s if you’re up for it!
Up Next
Congratulations on completing this section! The next section will be about “Patterns” and includes topics like Classic patterns, Candlestick patterns, and Harmonic patterns.
Feedback
If you have any feedback on this article, let me know. You can reply to this article with your feedback, or send me a message on Twitter.
