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Who this course is for

This course is for complete beginners in the UK. You don’t need any experience, maths beyond GCSE level, or expensive software. By the end you’ll understand how markets work, how to read a chart, how to control risk, and how prop firm challenges really work – including why most people who take them fail.

What this course won’t do

• It won’t promise you’ll make money. Most people who trade lose money, and we’ll show you the evidence. UK spread bet and CFD providers’ own published figures, checked in October 2026, ranged from 61% to 73.6% of retail accounts losing money (sources in Lesson 1.1).
• It won’t sell you signals, “secret” indicators or a paid upgrade.
• It won’t rush you to a live account or a prop firm challenge. We put process before profits: rules, risk management and practice on a demo account come first.

How the course works

• 22 modules (16 core modules plus 6 add-on modules numbered 1F, 6A–6D and 1A), 148 short lessons, grouped into six stages:
• Stage 1 – Foundations: Modules 1, 1F (Futures Foundations) and 2
• Stage 2 – Charts and Analysis: Modules 3–6 and 6A–6D
• Stage 3 – Execution and Risk: Modules 7–9
• Stage 4 – Plan and Test: Modules 10–14
• Stage 5 – Getting Ready for a Prop Challenge: Module 15
• Stage 6 – Trading Funded: Module 16
• Advanced add-on – Forex, spread bets and CFDs: Module 1A. These are harder products for beginners, so leave them until you’ve finished Stages 1–4.
• Work through them in order – each one builds on the last.
• Each lesson takes 10–20 minutes to read, with a short quiz, key terms linked to the glossary, a progress tick-box, and a “try it on demo” task where relevant.
• All chart examples are simulated or historical and are for illustration only.
• Free tools you’ll use along the way: a free charting account (e.g. TradingView’s free plan), a demo account from an FCA-authorised provider, and a spreadsheet for your journal.

Your trading journey: four levels

The six stages group into four levels, so you always know where you are and what comes next. Each level ends with a short “ready to move on?” checklist.

1. Beginner (Stages 1–2): what trading is, futures first, markets, brokers and UK protections, and reading a chart. You’re ready to move on when you can explain how a trade makes or loses money, check a firm on the FCA register, and place, check and close a demo trade with no platform mistakes.
2. Intermediate (Stages 3–4): orders, risk management, psychology, a written plan, backtesting, demo practice and journaling. You’re ready to move on when you have one tested setup, 100+ backtested trades, two or more months of rule-based demo trading and a weekly review habit.
3. Getting ready for a prop challenge (Stage 5): how challenges work, the honest odds and costs, risk per trade under challenge rules, and a written challenge plan – see the prop challenge prep stage. You’re ready to consider a challenge only when you’ve passed practice challenges on demo under the same rules and set a total budget you can afford to lose.
4. Trading funded (Stage 6): what changes once you’re funded – payouts, tax, scaling, protecting the account and knowing when to stop.

You don’t have to go all the way. Plenty of people stop at Level 2 and trade a small personal account, or decide trading isn’t for them – both are good outcomes if they’re informed ones.

Start here: the 8-lesson path for complete beginners

New to trading? Read these first, in order. Together they take about two hours, and you’ll finish having placed a practice trade on a demo account with nothing real at stake.

1. What is trading? An honest introduction
2. What are futures? A plain-English introduction
3. The markets you can trade
4. How a trade makes or loses money
5. Why most traders lose money
6. How much time and money do you really need?
7. Trading jargon in plain English (plus the full A–Z glossary)
8. Your first demo trade, step by step

Then carry on through the stages below. Lessons marked (coming soon) are being written now. Alongside the course, our trading psychology guides and strategy library are ready to read.

Course modules and lessons

The course has six stages, grouped into the four levels above. Each module lists its lessons in order.

Stage 1 – Foundations

Module 1: Start Here – What Trading Really Is

1. What is trading? An honest introduction – What trading is, how it differs from investing and gambling, who you’re trading against, and the real odds for beginners.
2. The markets you can trade: forex, indices, commodities, shares and crypto – What each market is, when it’s open in UK time, and what moves it.
3. How a trade makes or loses money – Going long and short, points and pips, spreads, leverage, margin and overnight costs, with worked examples.
4. Why most traders lose money (and what the few who last do differently) – The published loss figures, the common causes, and the habits that give you a fighting chance.
5. How much time and money do you really need? – Realistic expectations for learning time, starting capital, demo practice and prop firm fees.
6. Trading jargon in plain English – The 40 terms you’ll meet in every lesson, explained simply. Links to the full glossary.
7. Your first trade on a demo account, step by step – Opening a demo, finding a market, setting size, stop and target, placing the order and closing it, with nothing real at stake.

Module 1F: Futures Foundations

Futures are where this course starts, because they’re what most prop firm traders use. This module covers what a futures contract is, contract sizes and tick values (ES/MES, NQ/MNQ, CL/MCL, GC/MGC), margin, expiry and rollover, US futures hours in UK time, futures prop firm rules, platforms and UK tax. All of it is on the Futures Foundations hub.

• What are futures? A plain-English introduction – What a futures contract is, who uses futures, how they differ from spread bets and CFDs, and why most prop firms use them.
• Contract specs and tick values: ES, MES, NQ, MNQ, CL, MCL, GC and MGC – Contract sizes, tick sizes and what each tick is worth, with worked examples in pounds.
• Micros vs minis: choosing a contract size – Why beginners and prop traders usually start with micro contracts, and how size changes your risk.
• Futures margin explained – Initial, maintenance and day-trading margin, margin calls, and why a real futures account can lose more than you deposit.
• Expiry and rollover – Contract months, the front month, roll week, continuous charts and how to avoid expiry surprises.
• US futures market hours in UK time – The nearly 24-hour CME Globex session, the daily break, the 14:30 US open and the weeks when the clocks change on different dates.
• Futures volume, the order book and slippage – Why futures volume is real exchange volume, how the order book (DOM) works, and slippage around news.
• Futures position sizing in ticks – Working out how many contracts to trade from your stop in ticks and your risk in pounds.
• Futures prop firms explained – Evaluations, monthly fees, activation fees, simulated funded accounts and payouts – how the model works in general.
• Futures prop rules: trailing drawdown, consistency and contract limits – Intraday vs end-of-day trailing drawdown, consistency rules, contract limits and news rules, with worked examples.
• Futures platforms and data: NinjaTrader, Tradovate and Rithmic – What a platform, a broker and a data feed are, how they fit together, and the market data fees to expect.
• Trading futures from the UK: UK vs US brokers – FCA-authorised vs US brokers, what protections you get, W-8BEN forms, currency conversion and the appropriateness test.
• UK tax on futures (general information) – How futures gains are usually taxed in the UK, why there’s no spread-bet exemption, and how prop payouts differ.

Module 2: Brokers, Accounts and Platforms (UK)

1. What a broker does and how brokers make money – Spreads, commissions, financing and how a broker’s business model affects you.
2. How to check a firm is FCA authorised (and spot clone firms) – A step-by-step walkthrough of the FCA Register and the FCA Warning List.
3. Futures vs spread betting vs CFDs vs share dealing – How each product works, who it suits, and the headline UK tax differences.
4. Client money, FSCS protection and negative balance protection – What protects your money if a UK broker fails, and what doesn’t.
5. UK leverage limits and margin rules for retail traders – The FCA’s retail CFD restrictions, margin close-out and why lower leverage protects beginners.
6. Choosing a trading platform: MT4, MT5, cTrader, TradingView and broker platforms – What each does well and what to look for as a beginner.
7. Opening a demo account (and why to stay on it longer than you think) – Setting up a demo, the appropriateness test on live accounts, and the limits of demo trading.
8. Trading scams to avoid – Fake account managers, “guaranteed returns”, signal groups, recovery scams and social media red flags.
9. MetaTrader 4 (MT4): a beginner’s guide (coming soon) – Layout, charts, placing and modifying orders, and the settings to check first.
10. MetaTrader 5 (MT5): a beginner’s guide (coming soon) – What’s different from MT4, order types, and depth of market.
11. cTrader: a beginner’s guide (coming soon) – Layout, order entry, and risk tools built into the platform.

Stage 2 – Charts and Analysis

Module 3: Reading Charts

1. What a price chart actually shows (coming soon) – Price, time, bid and ask, and why your chart may differ from someone else’s.
2. Line, bar and candlestick charts (coming soon) – The three main chart types and why most traders use candles.
3. Timeframes: from 1-minute to monthly (coming soon) – How to pick timeframes and use more than one without confusing yourself.
4. Trading sessions in UK time (coming soon) – Asian, London and New York sessions, overlaps, and how clocks changing affects your schedule.
5. Volume and volatility basics (coming soon) – What volume tells you (and where it’s unreliable), and measuring volatility with ATR.
6. Setting up a clean chart in TradingView (coming soon) – A free, step-by-step layout with no clutter.
7. Economic news and the economic calendar (coming soon) – Which releases move markets and why beginners should usually stand aside.

Module 4: Candlesticks

1. Anatomy of a candlestick (coming soon) – Open, high, low, close, bodies and wicks.
2. What candles tell you about buyers and sellers (coming soon) – Reading momentum and rejection from candle shape.
3. Single-candle patterns: doji, hammer, shooting star, marubozu (coming soon) – What they are and why context matters more than the pattern.
4. Two- and three-candle patterns: engulfing, inside bars, morning and evening stars (coming soon) – Definitions and honest limitations.
5. Why candlestick patterns fail on their own (coming soon) – Location, trend and confirmation; avoiding pattern-spotting bias.

Module 5: Support and Resistance

1. What support and resistance are (coming soon) – Why prices react at certain levels.
2. How to draw levels without cluttering your chart (coming soon) – Zones not lines, higher-timeframe levels first.
3. Role reversal: when support becomes resistance (coming soon) – The “break and retest” idea explained.
4. Round numbers, previous highs/lows and session levels (coming soon) – Simple, objective levels a beginner can use.
5. Supply and demand zones (introduction) (coming soon) – How they relate to support and resistance, without the hype.
6. Breakouts vs fakeouts (coming soon) – Why many breakouts fail, and simple ways traders try to filter them.

Module 6: Trends and Market Structure

1. What a trend is: higher highs and higher lows (coming soon) – Defining uptrends, downtrends and ranges objectively.
2. Market structure and breaks of structure (coming soon) – Spotting when a trend may be changing.
3. Trendlines and channels (coming soon) – How to draw them consistently and why they’re subjective.
4. Moving averages for trend direction (coming soon) – Simple vs exponential, and using them as a filter rather than a signal.
5. Ranging markets (coming soon) – Recognising sideways markets and why trend strategies struggle in them.
6. Multi-timeframe analysis (coming soon) – Aligning a higher-timeframe bias with a lower-timeframe entry.

Module 6A: Chart Patterns

1. Chart patterns: why they sometimes work (and often don’t) – Patterns as crowd behaviour, and the hindsight trap.
2. Reversal patterns: head and shoulders, double tops and bottoms – Definitions, measured moves, and honest failure rates.
3. Continuation patterns: flags, pennants and triangles – How they form inside trends and where they break down.
4. Fibonacci retracements and extensions – How the tool is drawn, why it’s popular, and why it’s subjective.

Module 6B: Indicators

Every indicator lesson uses the same layout: what it is, how it’s calculated in plain English, how traders use it, common mistakes, an illustrative example, the prop firm angle, and a short quiz. 1. Trading indicators explained: trend, momentum, volatility and volume – What indicators are, the four families, and why they all lag price. 2. RSI (Relative Strength Index) – Measuring the speed of recent moves, and why “overbought” doesn’t mean “about to fall”. 3. MACD – Two moving averages, a signal line and a histogram, explained simply. 4. Bollinger Bands – Volatility bands around a moving average, squeezes and band walks. 5. ATR (Average True Range) in depth – Measuring volatility to set stops and position size. 6. VWAP (Volume-Weighted Average Price) – The intraday average price weighted by volume, and its limits in forex. 7. Stochastic and CCI – Two momentum oscillators: how they differ from RSI and from each other. 8. Keltner Channels – ATR-based bands, and how they compare with Bollinger Bands. 9. Divergence: when price and momentum disagree – Regular and hidden divergence, and why it’s a warning, not a signal. 10. Why fewer indicators is better – Indicator overload, redundancy, and building a clean, rule-based chart.

Module 6C: Fundamentals for Technical Traders

1. Economic data that moves markets: CPI, jobs, GDP and PMIs – What each release measures and why surprises matter more than numbers.
2. Central banks and interest rates: the Bank of England, Fed and ECB – How rate decisions and guidance move currencies and indices.
3. Risk-on vs risk-off – How market mood shifts money between assets.
4. Intermarket links: bonds, the dollar, gold, oil and indices – Common relationships, and why they break down.

Module 6D: Market Sentiment

1. Market sentiment and the COT report – What the US Commitments of Traders report shows and how traders read it.
2. Retail positioning data and its limits – Broker “client sentiment” figures, contrarian readings and their pitfalls.

Stage 3 – Execution and Risk

Module 7: Order Types and Trade Management

1. Market orders, bid/ask and slippage (coming soon) – What happens when you click “buy”.
2. Limit and stop entry orders (coming soon) – Entering at your price, not the market’s.
3. Stop-losses: normal, trailing and guaranteed (coming soon) – How each works, gaps, and guaranteed stop premiums.
4. Take-profit orders and partial closes (coming soon) – Planning exits before entry.
5. Managing an open trade (coming soon) – Moving stops, break-even, and why fiddling usually hurts.
6. Weekend gaps, news spikes and overnight financing (coming soon) – Risks that exist outside your entry and exit.

Module 8: Risk Management and Position Sizing

1. Why risk management matters more than your strategy – Survival first: the maths of losing streaks.
2. The 1% rule: risking a small, fixed percentage – Choosing a risk per trade you can live with.
3. Position sizing step by step – Working out stake per point or lot size from your stop distance.
4. Pip, point and tick values – Calculating what each move is worth for futures, indices, forex and gold.
5. Risk-to-reward and R-multiples – Measuring trades in R, and why win rate alone means nothing.
6. Expectancy: does your method have an edge? – The formula and how to estimate it from your journal.
7. Drawdown maths: why losses are harder to recover – A 50% loss needs a 100% gain; daily and overall loss limits.
8. Correlation and over-exposure – Why three “different” trades can be one big bet.
9. Setting daily and weekly loss limits – Personal circuit breakers that protect you (and match prop firm rules).

Module 9: Trading Psychology

The full psychology guides already live in our Trading Psychology section, including discipline, revenge trading, losing streaks and when trading stops being healthy. 1. Why your brain is bad at trading (at first) – Loss aversion, recency bias and the urge to act. 2. Fear, greed and FOMO (coming soon) – Recognising emotional trades before you place them. 3. Revenge trading and tilt – Spotting tilt and building a stop rule. 4. Handling a losing streak and drawdown – What’s normal, and when to step back. 5. Overtrading and boredom (coming soon) – Why fewer, better trades usually beat more trades. 6. Routines, checklists and knowing when to stop (coming soon) – Pre-market routine, session end, and protecting your wellbeing (including where to get help if trading stops being fun).

Stage 4 – Plan and Test

Module 10: Building a Trading Plan

1. What goes into a trading plan (coming soon) – Markets, times, setups, risk, rules and review.
2. Defining your setup in writing (coming soon) – Turning a vague idea into rules someone else could follow.
3. Risk rules and personal limits (coming soon) – Per-trade, daily and weekly limits written down.
4. Fitting trading around a job and family (coming soon) – Choosing a style and session that suits UK working hours.
5. Free trading plan template (download) (coming soon) – A fill-in-the-blanks template.
6. From idea to testable trade idea (coming soon) – Turning an observation into a rule you can test.
7. What makes a strategy robust (coming soon) – Simple rules, sensible sample sizes, and testing across markets and conditions.

Module 11: Beginner Strategies (with honest limitations)

Each strategy lesson covers: the idea, exact entry/stop/target rules, an annotated historical chart, where it fails, how it fits prop firm rules, and a backtesting task. 1. Trend pullback with a moving average – Trading in the direction of the trend after a pullback to a moving average. 2. Support and resistance bounce – Fading clear higher-timeframe levels with a defined stop. 3. Break and retest (coming soon) – Waiting for a level to break and be retested before entering. 4. Range trading (coming soon) – Buying near range lows, selling near range highs, and exiting when the range breaks. 5. London session breakout – Using the Asian-session range as a reference for the London open. 6. Opening range breakout (ORB) on US index futures – Trading a break of the first 15–30 minutes on the FTSE 100, DAX or US indices. 7. Swing trading on the daily chart (coming soon) – Fewer trades, wider stops, less screen time. 8. Comparing strategies: which suits you? (coming soon) – Time needed, win rates you should expect to see in testing, and personality fit.

Module 12: Backtesting

1. What backtesting is and what it can’t tell you (coming soon) – Testing rules on past data, and the limits of past performance.
2. Manual backtesting with TradingView bar replay (coming soon) – A step-by-step method for beginners.
3. Recording results in a spreadsheet (coming soon) – The columns you need and how to calculate win rate, average R and expectancy.
4. Sample size: how many trades is enough? (coming soon) – Why 20 trades proves nothing.
5. Avoiding curve-fitting and hindsight bias (coming soon) – Keeping tests honest.

Module 13: Demo Practice (Forward Testing)

1. Moving from backtest to demo (coming soon) – Why forward testing matters and how to run it.
2. Making demo trading realistic (coming soon) – Realistic account size, the same risk rules, and treating it seriously.
3. A 60-day demo plan (coming soon) – A structured, week-by-week practice schedule.
4. When (and whether) to move to a live account (coming soon) – Objective criteria, starting small, and the psychological shift.

Module 14: Journaling and Review

1. Why keep a trading journal (coming soon) – The single habit that most separates improving traders from the rest.
2. What to record for every trade (coming soon) – Screenshots, reasons, emotions, rule-breaks and R result.
3. Weekly and monthly reviews (coming soon) – Turning journal data into one or two changes at a time.
4. Free trading journal template (download) (coming soon) – Spreadsheet template with built-in stats.

Stage 5 – Getting Ready for a Prop Challenge

Module 15: Getting Ready for a Prop Challenge

This module is also the prop challenge prep stage, with its own hub page. Its lessons live under /prop-challenge-prep/. 1. How prop firm challenges work: fees, phases and the rules that end most attempts – Profit targets, daily loss limits, static and trailing drawdown, minimum days, consistency, news and strategy rules. 2. The true odds and costs of a prop challenge – What firms’ own published figures show, the full cost of getting funded, and setting a budget and attempt limit. 3. Risk per trade for a prop challenge – Sizing around daily and overall loss limits, losing-streak maths and personal daily stops. 4. Building a realistic challenge plan – Rules sheet, one tested setup, if-then rules, practice challenges and a pre-mortem. 5. Simulated vs live funded accounts (coming soon) – Why most “funded” accounts are simulated and what that means for you. 6. Trailing vs static drawdown in depth (coming soon) – Intraday vs end-of-day trailing, with examples. 7. Consistency rules, news rules and other fine print (coming soon) – Rules that can void a pass or a payout. 8. Are prop firms regulated in the UK? (coming soon) – What the FCA does and doesn’t cover, and what that means for your protection. 9. How to compare prop firms (and red flags to avoid) (coming soon) – Payout record, rule clarity, UK access, and warning signs. No firm recommendations. 10. Practice challenges: rehearsing on demo (coming soon) – Running the full challenge rules on demo until it’s boring. 11. The readiness check: should you pay for a challenge at all? (coming soon) – An honest yes/no checklist, including “not yet” and “never”. 12. After the challenge: pass, fail or reset (coming soon) – Reviewing, cooling off and sticking to your attempt limit.

Stage 6 – Trading Funded

Module 16: Trading Funded – and What Comes Next

1. Your first funded account: what changes (coming soon) – Same rules, more pressure; protecting the account.
2. Payouts: how they work and common reasons they’re refused (coming soon) – Payout schedules, KYC, and rule breaches.
3. UK tax on prop firm payouts – The basics and when to speak to an accountant.
4. Scaling plans and multiple accounts (coming soon) – How scaling works and the risks of stacking accounts.
5. Prop firm vs your own live account (coming soon) – Pros and cons of each route.
6. When to stop: protecting your money and wellbeing (coming soon) – Setting a total budget, walking away, and where to get support.
7. Your funded-account routine (coming soon) – Daily and weekly reviews, and sticking to the plan that got you funded.
8. Losing a funded account: what to do next (coming soon) – Reviewing what happened, cooling off, and deciding whether to go again.

Advanced add-on – Forex, spread bets and CFDs

Spread bets, CFDs and spot forex are covered here as an advanced add-on, not as the starting point. They’re harder for beginners: pricing comes from your provider, not a central exchange, overnight financing adds up, and position sizing in lots and pips is easy to get wrong. Finish Stages 1–4 first.

Module 1A: Forex Foundations

1. How the forex market works and who trades it – A decentralised market: banks, dealers, businesses, funds and retail traders, and where your broker fits in.
2. Currency pairs: majors, minors and crosses – Base and quote currencies, why GBP/USD is “cable”, and how pair choice affects spreads.
3. Currency correlations – Why some pairs move together, and how that quietly doubles your risk.
4. Four ways to analyse a market – Technical, fundamental, sentiment and statistical analysis, and how they fit together.

Before you start: three promises to make to yourself

1. I’ll practise on a demo account before risking real money.
2. I’ll decide how much I’m prepared to lose in total before I start – and stop if I reach it.
3. I’ll judge myself on following my rules, not on any single day’s profit or loss.

Useful tools and guides

• Prop firm true cost calculator: see what a challenge really costs once fees, resets and retries are counted.
• UK tax on trading and prop firm payouts: a plain-English guide (not tax advice).
• Trading glossary: every term used in the course.

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Disclaimer: This page is general education, not financial or investment advice or a personal recommendation, and it doesn’t take your circumstances into account. Examples are hypothetical, for illustration only, and not an invitation to buy or sell. Learning a strategy doesn’t guarantee profits. Past performance is not a reliable guide to future results. Futures, spread bets and CFDs are complex and carry a high risk of losing money quickly because of leverage, and most retail traders lose money. With a real futures account, losses can exceed your deposit. Prop firm challenges are paid evaluations: the fee is usually lost, and funded accounts are usually simulated. Only trade with money you can afford to lose, and speak to an independent FCA-authorised adviser if you’re unsure. Read our full risk warning.