Before the first trade
What is traded, why there are two prices, and what an order actually buys.
Say what is actually being traded when a chart reads XAUUSD, and why one move on it can have more than one story behind it. Read the two prices on any order ticket — bid and ask — count the spread as the cost it is, and know which of the two a chart is drawn from. Tell a market order from a limit order by what each one guarantees and what each one gives up, and stop mistaking a wick that touched a price for an order that was filled there.
5 chapters · 6 quiz questions · 13 terms · free on a free account
Otus, on this module
Before anyone draws a level, they should know what a price is. There are two of them on every ticket, the chart usually shows one, and every order meets the other side. None of it is difficult. Almost nobody is taught it, and it costs a little on every single trade until they are.
The chapters
Each module ends with you doing what it taught — a written answer Otus reads, and a quiz.
- 01 · Read
One market, several stories
What a market is, what is bought and sold in one, and why a single move has more than one cause.
- 02 · Read
Two prices, not one
Bid, ask and the spread — which side each order meets, and which side the chart shows.
- 03 · Watch
Watch: Bid, Ask and the Spread
One minute, then the step ticks itself.
- 04 · Read
What an order actually buys
Market orders, limit orders and fills — two guarantees, and neither is both.
- 05 · Write
In your own words
Three sentences. Otus reads them.
- 06 · Quiz
Six questions on prices and orders
A wrong answer still pays. It costs the combo, not the XP.
13 terms this module defines
The same definitions Otus uses in the lessons. All of them are in the trading glossary.
- Market
- A place where orders to buy and orders to sell are matched. The price on the screen is the level of the most recent match — an agreement, not a valuation.
- Instrument
- One specific tradable thing with its own price and symbol — XAUUSD, EURUSD, a stock index. Every chart, level and analysis in the product is about exactly one.
- Asset class
- A family of instruments that behave and are priced in similar ways: currencies, metals, stock indices, commodities, crypto. Useful for grouping; it says nothing about direction.
- Underlying
- The thing whose price a contract follows — the gold, the index, the currency. Many retail accounts trade a contract on the underlying without ever owning it.
- CFD
- Contract for difference: a contract that pays the change in an underlying's price between opening and closing, with nothing physically changing hands. Not offered to retail clients in every country.
- Pair
- One thing priced in terms of another — EURUSD is euros in dollars, XAUUSD is gold in dollars. A move in the pair can come from either side of it, and the candle does not say which.
- Mid price
- The point halfway between the bid and the ask. A reference, not a price anyone can trade at on the spot: buys meet the ask and sells meet the bid.
- Crossing the spread
- Buying at the ask and selling at the bid. Every order that trades immediately does it, so a position opened and closed with no movement at all still loses the spread.
- Bid chart
- A chart whose candles are built from bid prices — the usual retail default. The ask sits a spread above every bar and is not drawn, so a buy order can be a spread away from what the chart shows.
- Market order
- An instruction to trade now at the best available price. The fill is guaranteed while the market is open; the exact price is not.
- Limit order
- An instruction to trade only at a set price or better. The price is guaranteed if it fills; the fill itself is not.
- Fill
- The record of an order being matched: the actual price, size and time. The only proof a position exists — a chart touching the order's price is not one.
- Partial fill
- Part of an order's size matched and the rest still waiting, because there was not enough on the other side at that price. Most common with limit orders and in thin markets.
Finishing it pays 150 XP and 3 keys on the game board, on top of what each chapter earns. XP measures what you learned — never what you earned. How levels work.
Education only. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell anything; the school teaches reading charts, never predictions.
Start with lesson one.
The first modules, Otus as your tutor and the game board are free. No card needed.