The course, module by module

Stage 1: Start here

Trading basics

• What is trading?Tell trading apart from investing, and read a price quote.
• Market, limit and stop orders, in plain EnglishKnow what the three basic orders do, when each one fills, and the mistake beginners make with each.
• What you can trade, and howCompare the main things you can trade, and match a trading style to how long you hold.
• Long and shortSee how you can make money when a price rises or when it falls, and why the two carry different risk.
• Profit and loss (P&L)Work out profit and loss in dollars and percent, and see where fees quietly eat into it.
• Stop losses and take profitsPlace a stop based on how much you are willing to lose, understand slippage, and compare risk with reward.
• Reading candlesName the parts of a candle and read a few common shapes without trusting them too much.
• Using TradingView, a full walkthroughSet up a free TradingView account, open the same chart Tickfloor reads, mark a trade plan on it, and practise with fake money before any real money.
• Reading a price screenRead last price, change, volume, day range, 52-week range and market cap on a quote screen without guessing what each one means.
• Your first $500 share order, start to finishFollow one small ASX buy from tapping buy to the shares being registered, and see what each step costs.
• Percentages, basis points, and why +10% then −10% is not zeroConvert between dollars, percent and basis points, and see why a run of returns multiplies rather than adds.
• Indexes, bull markets and bear marketsExplain what an index like the S&P/ASX 200 measures, and why one big company can move it.
• Liquidity: why some things cost more to tradeMeasure liquidity as the spread in percent and the depth on the book before trading anything small, new or after hours.

Stage 2: How markets work

Why prices move, and why beating the market is hard

• Why prices jump aroundTell apart something you noticed, a guess about why it happened, and a proper test.
• How emotions move pricesUse ideas from psychology as possible explanations, without claiming every trader behaves the same way.
• Styles like value and size, explainedBuild a factor return, and tell the difference between taking on a known risk and real skill (alpha).
• News, expectations and ‘priced in’Explain why public news gets priced in fast, and why a good result can still push a price down.
• Luck or skill: coin flips, fund managers and convincing chartsSee how many lucky long records pure chance produces, and why a chart made of coin flips still shows trends.
• Interest rates and inflation: why a rate change moves pricesLink the RBA cash rate to share, bond and currency prices in plain cause-and-effect terms.

Trends, order fills and a famous day-trading setup

• Candles and trendsDefine candles, swing points and breaks without assuming a chart shape causes anything.
• How your order actually gets filledExplain bid, ask, spread, depth and imbalance, and why a fill is never promised.
• A popular day-trading pattern, testedTurn a pattern a teacher describes into clear rules with times attached, and keep the claim separate from what was measured.
• Fair value gaps and order blocks, defined and testedDefine a fair value gap with numbers, see why order blocks resist testing, and read Tickfloor’s results honestly.
• Opening ranges, sessions and ‘killzones’Write session and killzone setups as testable time-window breakout rules.
• Who is on the other side of your trade?Describe market makers, index funds and other traders, why each trades, and what a time-and-sales print can and cannot tell you.

Market hours, sessions and auctions

• The ASX day, from pre-open to the closing auctionName each phase of the ASX trading day and what your order does in each.
• Auctions: one price for everyoneExplain how an auction sets a single price and why the indicative price moves during pre-open.
• What time is it in New York? US hours in Australian timeConvert US market hours and US announcements into Australian time across both daylight-saving changes.
• 24-hour markets: where does the day end in forex and crypto?See why daily candles in a 24-hour market depend on the chosen close time and venue, and when those markets are busiest.
• Halts, suspensions and circuit breakersKnow what happens to your position, and your stop, when trading stops.
• The shape of a trading day, plus rebalance and expiry daysExpect volume and spreads to change through the day and on scheduled event days, and time orders around that.

The economic calendar

• Reading an economic calendarRead forecast, actual, previous and surprise on an economic calendar, and know that first releases get revised.
• RBA dayKnow how and when the RBA decides, and why the Aussie dollar reacts to the surprise rather than the decision.
• US nights: CPI, jobs and the Fed in Australian timeKnow the main US releases, when they land in Australia, and why many assets move together on those nights.
• Trading around scheduled news, and what the veto test foundPrice the extra cost of trading through releases, and see why skipping news days was not an edge.

Market mood, the day’s average price, and fair tests

• How many stocks are rising?Count rising and falling stocks, and see what the count can hide.
• The day’s average price (VWAP)Work out the volume-weighted average price and tell a yardstick apart from a prediction.
• Why old test results can flatter a strategyAvoid using information from the future when testing with earnings, company data and index lists.
• Fear gauges: the VIX, funding and sentimentRead sentiment measures as descriptions of recent moves, not forecasts.
• Momentum and mean reversion: two opposite storiesKnow the evidence behind both ideas, and why having both on tap lets any chart be explained after the fact.
• Seasonality: calendar effects that shrink once people knowDescribe calendar effects, count how few independent observations they rest on, and see why many fade after publication.

Reading a company’s numbers

• Where company numbers come from, and whenKnow which document holds which number, and exactly when each becomes public.
• Revenue, margins, profit and cashRead an income statement from top to bottom and tell accounting profit apart from cash.
• EPS, P/E and why cheap can stay cheapCalculate EPS and P/E, and link ‘cheap’ to the value factor rather than to a bargain.
• Debt, gearing and who gets paid firstRead net debt and gearing as the same maths as a margin loan, and know where shareholders stand in a collapse.
• Capital raisings and dilutionWork out what a placement, share purchase plan or rights issue does to your share of the company.
• Dividends, ex-dates and the price dropKnow when you are entitled to a dividend, what yield means, and why buying just before the ex-date is not free money.

Currencies, interest, and things that move together

• Reading a currency priceFlip a currency quote the right way and treat interest-rate parity as a link between prices, not a forecast.
• Earning interest on currencies, and the crash riskTell the expected interest gap apart from what you actually make, and plan for the trade unwinding.
• When your holdings all move togetherUnderstand correlation and why spreading your money around can stop working in a crisis.
• The Australian dollar and your overseas holdingsSee how AUD/USD changes the Australian-dollar value of anything priced in US dollars, and what tends to move the AUD.
• Pips, lots and sizing a forex tradeSize a forex trade from a dollar risk and a stop measured in pips.
• Hedged or unhedged: the currency bet inside an overseas fundExplain what a currency-hedged fund does, roughly what hedging costs or earns, and when each version wins.

Crypto: buying coins versus betting on them

• Owning a coin versus a perpetual contractCompare owning a coin with holding a perpetual contract: margin, liquidation and price gaps.
• Funding fees and blockchain dataRead funding, MVRV and SOPR as measurements that have definitions and delays.
• Why a crypto signal is not proofBuild a careful evidence check that is allowed to say “we don’t know.”
• How a crypto transaction actually worksDescribe addresses, keys, network fees and confirmations, and why a sent transaction cannot be pulled back.
• Working out your liquidation price before you openEstimate how far price can move against a leveraged crypto position before it is liquidated.
• The full cost of a leveraged crypto trade, and the ‘free yield’ trapAdd up fees and funding on one trade, and see why funding carry is harder than the headline rate suggests.

Crypto safety

• Seed phrases, hardware wallets and the one ruleProtect the words that control a wallet, and know the one rule that stops most thefts.
• How crypto investment scams workRecognise romance-investment scams, fake platforms and recovery scams before sending money.
• Phishing, fake apps, address poisoning and token approvalsCheck links, apps, addresses and approval requests before signing anything.
• Choosing a crypto exchange, and what happens when one failsKnow what AUSTRAC registration covers, what proof of reserves does not show, and how to limit exchange risk.
• Locking down your accounts: 2FA, SIM swaps and withdrawal listsSecure an exchange account and its email against takeover.
• New tokens, unlocks, rug pulls and exits you cannot useRun a five-minute check on a new token, and see why a thin book can trap sellers.

Options: how they pay and what moves them

• Option payoffsWork out what calls and puts pay, and tell payoff apart from profit.
• What moves an option priceRead delta, gamma, theta and vega as “how much does it change right now” numbers.
• When option maths breaks downSpot the assumptions that make an option pricing model fragile.
• Implied volatility as an expected move, and the VIXTurn an implied volatility number into a rough daily and monthly move, and read the VIX.
• Time decay and IV crushSee theta as daily rent that speeds up near expiry, and why an option can lose value even when the stock moves your way.
• Put-call parity: why calls and puts are tied togetherUse put-call parity to see why call and put prices cannot drift apart freely.

Options for beginners, in practice

• What an ASX option contract isName the parts of an option contract: underlying, call or put, strike, expiry, premium, contract size and exercise style.
• Covered calls: income with a capWork out the payoff of owning shares and selling a call against them.
• Protective puts: insurance a gap cannot skipCompare a stop loss and a bought put through an overnight gap.
• Spreads: capping both risk and rewardBuild a bull call spread and work out its maximum loss, maximum gain and breakeven.
• Selling options: a high win rate that hides big lossesShow why frequent small wins can come with rare large losses.
• Expiry, assignment and the short-dated trapKnow what happens at and before expiry, and why short-dated options drain beginners.

Stage 3: Risk, testing and funded accounts

How much to risk, and surviving losing streaks

• Sizing a trade by how much you can loseWork out how big a trade can be from how much you are willing to lose.
• Average result per trade, and Kelly sizingWork out expectancy, and see why Kelly sizing is fragile and not a safe default.
• Losing streaks and how accounts blow upMeasure a drawdown, and see why winning back a loss takes a bigger gain.
• Win rate is not the goal: breakeven stops and partial exitsShow that raising the win rate by shrinking the wins does not make money by itself.
• Losing streaks are normal: how long can one get?Estimate the longest losing streak to expect, and size so it cannot end you.
• Fixed-fraction sizing, fixed-dollar sizing and the risk of ruinCompare risking a fixed percent of the current balance with risking a fixed dollar amount, and see which lowers the chance of ruin.

Funded accounts: how prop firm challenges work

• What a funded account is, and how the firm gets paidExplain what you buy when you pay for a prop firm challenge, and where the firm’s money comes from.
• The rules, with numbers: daily loss and maximum lossWork out the loss line for the day and for the whole account, and see how a trailing limit shrinks your room.
• Why most people fail: the target pulls, the limits pushCompare risk per trade with the daily loss budget, and see how many losses in a row each size can take.
• Sizing so a normal losing streak cannot end the challengeSet a risk per trade and a personal daily stop from the challenge rules, before the first trade.

Testing an idea honestly before you use it

• Testing on prices the strategy never sawSplit time into training, checking and test windows without leaking future information.
• Why testing many ideas finds lucky onesSee why trying lots of versions throws up lucky winners, and how the Deflated Sharpe Ratio adjusts for it.
• Going live and checking it still worksPlan a small paper test you can undo, with health checks and honest limits.
• Benchmarks and the dumb controlChoose the right comparison for any strategy claim, including the cheapest rule that shares its mechanism.
• Costs inside a backtestAdd spread, slippage, fees and funding to a test and watch the result change sign.
• Split-half, concentration and regimes: is it a few lucky trades?Run two cheap robustness checks and spot a result that lives in one period or a handful of trades.
• Preregistration: write the test down before you lookWrite a one-page test plan a friend could run without you, before touching the data.
• Data that lies: frozen prices, missing values and unadjusted splitsCatch silent data errors before they reach a signal or a backtest.

Fees, borrowed money, and who holds your crypto

• Order types in more depth: market, limit and stopPick the right order type, and see why one can be rejected when the market is closed.
• The hidden costs: spreads, slippage and feesAdd up the real cost of getting in and out before judging whether a strategy has an edge.
• Borrowed money: leverage, margin and liquidationWork out how much of your deposit a price move eats, and why you can get closed out sooner than you expect.
• Who holds your crypto? Exchanges, wallets and stablecoinsTell apart crypto kept on an exchange, crypto you hold yourself, and a stablecoin.
• ETFs and spreading your riskCompare one stock with a broad index fund, as a baseline and not a promised result.
• CFDs and margin FX in Australia: what ASIC’s rules protectKnow the retail leverage caps and protections, and what they cannot stop.
• Margin loans: borrowing to buy sharesWork out how a margin loan multiplies a fall in your own money, and what triggers a margin call.

ETFs, index funds and super

• How an ETF worksExplain units, NAV, market makers and why an ETF’s price stays close to what it holds.
• Fees that compoundSee how a difference in yearly fees compounds over decades.
• Index funds versus stock pickersUnderstand what active-versus-index scorecards show and why the index is the benchmark.
• ETFs, LICs, managed funds and leveraged ETFsCompare fund structures and see why leveraged and inverse ETFs decay in choppy markets.
• Super for young AustraliansKnow how super works, what your employer pays, and why super is not a trading account.
• Core and satellite: where trading fitsKeep a cheap diversified core, cap the trading slice, and measure the slice against the core.

Stage 4: Your plan

Your mindset, tax, scams and scores

• The mistakes almost every beginner makesSpot the mistakes that show up in nearly every new trader’s history.
• Keeping a trading journalSet up a simple journal that can tell you whether a rule works.
• Tax basics: holding period matters (general information)Understand, in general terms, why how long you hold shares or crypto changes the tax you pay, wherever you trade.
• Spotting scams and dodgy finfluencersRecognise the warning signs regulators keep finding in social media investing posts.
• How to read a Tickfloor score honestlyTreat a score as one piece of evidence with its basis shown, not a promise about what happens next.
• What the research says about active traders, and what overtrading costsQuote what large studies found about frequent retail trading, and link trade count directly to cost drag.
• Trading, gambling and knowing when to stopRecognise when trading has turned into gambling behaviour, set a pause rule in advance, and know where to get free help.

Australian tax walkthroughs (general information)

• A year of share trades, workedWork out a net capital gain from a discounted gain, a short-term gain and a loss.
• Crypto tax, workedTreat swaps, staking rewards, fees and records correctly for crypto.
• Dividends, franking and the 45-day rule, workedGross up a franked dividend, apply the credit, and know when the 45-day rule matters.
• Investor or trader in the ATO’s eyesKnow the factors the ATO uses to decide whether share trading is a business, and what changes if it is.
• Wash sales, records and deadlinesAvoid the wash-sale trap and keep records that stand up.

US tax walkthroughs (general information)

• A year of stock trades, workedTell short-term and long-term capital gains apart, and see why the holding period changes your tax rate.
• Crypto tax, workedTreat crypto as property: swaps, staking rewards and record keeping.
• The wash sale rule and your recordsAvoid the wash-sale trap on stocks, and keep the records Form 8949 and Schedule D need.
• Investor or trader in the IRS’s eyesKnow the three tests the IRS uses for trader tax status, and what the mark-to-market election changes.
• The pattern day trader rule and the $25,000 minimumKnow when FINRA classifies you as a pattern day trader, and what that means for your account.

Tax basics: it depends where you live

• Tax depends on where you liveLearn the handful of ideas that recur in most tax systems, so you know what to look up for your own country.

Reading a chart

• Support, resistance, trends and rangesDefine support, resistance and trend in a way that doesn’t rely on hindsight.
• Volume, and what makes a breakout believableRead volume alongside price, and see why a breakout on low volume is weaker evidence.
• Moving averages, RSI and MACD: what the lines calculateCalculate a simple and exponential moving average by hand, define RSI and MACD, and read them as descriptions that lag.
• Timeframes: why one chart says up and down at onceMatch the chart timeframe to your holding period, and use more than one timeframe without hunting for the one that agrees.
• Chart patterns and trendlines: a named shape is not a testTurn head-and-shoulders, flags and trendlines into rules written before the fact, or admit they cannot be written.
• ATR, Bollinger Bands and volatility-based stopsCalculate ATR, use it to set a stop distance, and size the position from that stop.
• How a chart can fool you: log scale, splits, dividends and cropped axesRead long-term charts correctly and tell a real price move from a chart setting or a corporate action.

Putting it together: size, gaps, brokers and your plan

• Sizing a trade in Australian dollarsSize a trade for three different account balances using the same risk rule, and compare the results.
• Gaps: what happens while the market sleepsUnderstand what can happen to an open trade while its market is closed.
• How short selling works, and what it costs to holdSee what really happens when you open a short, and why it isn’t free to hold.
• Choosing a broker in Australia (general information)Compare CHESS-sponsored and custodial brokers and what each one trades off. This is general information, not a recommendation of any broker.
• Reading a Tickfloor trade plan from top to bottomGo through every line of a trade plan and link each one back to something this course has taught.
• Buying US shares from AustraliaList what changes when you trade US-listed shares: currency, custody, tax forms, hours, settlement and costs.
• Reading a Tickfloor research archive entryGo through a Tickfloor research archive entry and separate what was tested, and against what, from description.

Your own plan and journal

• Your first paper-trading weekRun a paper-trading week with a written rule: place every trade the rule gives you, with a stop and a journal line each time, whether that is zero trades or several.
• A one-page trading plan, with rules you can checkWrite a plan covering market, timeframe, entry, stop, target, size and exit, in rules two people would apply the same way.
• Risk limits per trade, per day and per drawdownSet limits that stop a bad week turning into an account-ending month, plus a walk-away rule.
• Reviewing your journal with numbersCalculate your own expectancy, rule-adherence rate and cost share, and see why 20 trades say very little.
• When to change, stop or grow a planDecide in advance what evidence would change the plan, and how size is allowed to grow.

When it goes wrong: real blowups

• LTCM and Archegos: leverage you cannot seeSee how leverage turns small losses into near-failure, and how exposure split across lenders hides the total.
• Storm Financial: borrowing on borrowingUnderstand how double gearing turned a market fall into negative equity for Australian households.
• 15 January 2015: the Swiss franc dayUnderstand why a stop cannot protect you when a market jumps, and why negative balance protection exists.
• Oil below zero: 20 April 2020Understand how futures expiry and physical delivery broke the idea that a price cannot go below zero.
• GameStop, January 2021: a short squeeze up closeLink short interest, borrow cost and forced buying.
• Terra and FTX, 2022: when the platform is the riskSeparate price risk from platform and counterparty risk.

Strategy case files: what Tickfloor tested

• Indicators on price bars: 6,428 tests and the ADA trapRead the largest test in the ledger honestly, including the result that looked validated and was not.
• Insider buying clusters: market beta in a costumeSeparate a raw return from the excess return over the market.
• Momentum: +20,310% in discovery, a ruin path in realitySee how a spectacular discovery number fell apart under holdout, robustness and account-path checks.
• Trend following with moving averages: smoother, not betterTell lower drawdown apart from higher return.
• Buy after a drop: the control that became a candidateFollow one idea through every check and see which ones killed it.
• What trading our own signals would have donePut the whole course into dollars with Tickfloor’s own replay.