Where to start.

There are now around fifty free pages in this section: nine calculators, six long-form guides, a ninety-two term glossary, simulation experiments, market history and psychology essays. That is useful if you know what you are looking for and overwhelming if you do not.

So this page is the shortest honest answer to “where do I start?” Pick the description below that sounds most like your situation and follow the order. Each route is five to seven pages, everything is free, and nothing here asks for an email.

If you only have ten minutes

Three pages, in this order, and you will have done more for your results than a month of chart study:

1. Find your leak 2 min
   Eight honest questions. It tells you which of the four classic account leaks is draining yours, and what to read about it.
2. Position size calculator 3 min
   Put in a real trade you are considering. If the answer is smaller than what you were going to do, that gap is the most expensive thing in your trading.
3. How long will your losing streak be? 5 min
   At a 40% win rate, expect eleven losses in a row somewhere in your next 500 trades — with the edge working perfectly. Most traders quit inside a normal streak.

Route 1 — New to futures

The goal here is not to learn to trade. It is to understand what you are holding, so that the size question can be answered honestly before any of the analysis matters.

1. Futures vs CFDs vs spot FX 11 min
   What actually differs: counterparty, data, costs, regulation. Read this first because it determines whether the rest of the toolkit is even available to you.
2. Contract value, tick and leverage 5 min
   One E-mini at 5,000 points controls $250,000. On a $10,000 account that is 25× leverage, arrived at without deciding anything. See the number for the contract you are considering.
3. How futures margin actually works 12 min
   It is a performance bond, not a payment — and the call fires earlier than almost everyone expects. This is where most avoidable damage in retail futures starts.
4. Where the stop belongs 12 min
   The stop is where the idea is wrong, not where the loss becomes uncomfortable. Everything about size follows from this one distinction.
5. Position size calculator 3 min
   Now do the arithmetic on a real trade. Stop distance in, contract count out.
6. The glossary reference
   Ninety-two terms in plain language. Keep it open in a tab rather than reading it through.

Route 2 — Losing money with a live account

The instinct is to look for a better setup. The evidence says the problem is usually somewhere else, so this route starts by finding out where rather than assuming.

1. Find your leak 2 min
   Start here. It costs two minutes and it points at the right chapter instead of a random one.
2. Trade journal analyzer 5 min
   Paste your results. Expectancy, profit factor, the distribution of your trades — and the gap between the reward-to-risk you planned and the one you actually got. That gap is where most losing years are made.
3. Why you cut winners short 8 min
   If the analyzer showed a realised R well below your plan, this is the mechanism. It is a named, measured bias, not a discipline failure.
4. Risk of ruin calculator 4 min
   Enter your real numbers. It shows the odds you hit the drawdown that makes you stop, before the edge has had time to pay.
5. Myth: leverage is how small accounts grow fast 9 min
   The same edge at nine risk levels. Past about 3% per trade the median outcome gets worse, not just riskier.
6. The same 200 trades, shuffled 8 min
   Read this before concluding your method is broken. Identical trades in a different order produce drawdowns from 10% to 51%.

Route 3 — A method, but no consistency

You can find the setups. The results swing anyway. Every page on this route is about what happens after entry.

1. Trade journal analyzer 5 min
   Establish the baseline. Everything below is guesswork until you know your realised R and your worst drawdown in R.
2. Does moving your stop to breakeven help? 8 min
   It cut losing trades from 70% to 47% and cut expectancy by 44%, for barely a point of drawdown improvement. Most consistency rules have a price nobody prices.
3. Revenge trading, corrected 7 min
   The field evidence says risk-taking rises after losses you have not taken yet. Most escalation happens inside one open position, not between two trades.
4. Portfolio heat and correlation 4 min
   Three positions at 1% each is not three 1% trades. At the correlations index futures actually run, it is closer to one 3% trade.
5. The need to be right 6 min
   Being right and making money are separate skills, and wanting the first is what makes a stop negotiable.
6. Stop distance calculator 4 min
   If your stops keep getting hit, check whether they sit inside the instrument\u2019s normal movement. Under one ATR, they are hit by noise.

Route 4 — How the chart gets read

The three reads the method is built on. Each guide includes the section most explanations leave out: where that tool stops working.

1. Volume profile explained 14 min
   Where business was actually done. POC, value area, high and low volume nodes, and what the tool genuinely cannot tell you.
2. Order flow explained 13 min
   Inside a single bar: footprint charts, delta, imbalance, absorption. Whether the level in front of you is being defended right now.
3. Options positioning 13 min
   The genuinely independent read — a different market, different participants, a longer horizon. Open interest, dealer hedging, margin converted into price.
4. Why Smart Money Concepts stopped working for you 7 min
   The argument for reading a chart more than once, made against the most popular single-read method.
5. The three free preview lessons 15 min
   One full lesson from each block, in the real teaching style. No email required.

The rest of the section, by type

Once you have a route behind you, the remaining material divides cleanly:

• Nine calculators — the arithmetic that decides whether an account survives. Position size, contract leverage, expectancy, drawdown, risk of ruin, portfolio heat, stop distance, an evaluation-account planner and an analyzer for your own log.
• Six guides — long-form explainers on volume profile, order flow, options positioning, margin, stop placement and the instrument comparison.
• The Trading Lab — arguments settled by simulation rather than opinion, with the assumptions stated and the workings shown.
• Mythbusters — the industry’s favourite beliefs tested with arithmetic. Verdicts included, one of them “half true”.
• Psychology — short essays on the part that actually decides outcomes, sourced from the research rather than from coaching.
• Trading stories — nine of the market’s great disasters, fact-checked against primary sources and retold for what they teach at any account size.
• Weekly reviews — the zones published before the week, dated and left up either way.

Two honest notes

None of this is a shortcut. Reading fifty pages does not produce an edge, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. What it does is stop you losing money for reasons that are arithmetic rather than skill — wrong size, stops inside the noise, quitting inside a normal drawdown. That is a large share of what actually goes wrong, and it is the part that can genuinely be fixed by reading.

Nothing here is behind an email. Every page, every calculator, every glossary entry is free and always will be. The only thing we ask for an address in exchange for is the written handbook, and that is a genuine trade rather than a toll gate.