Your first position
Long or short, on borrowed exposure, with the exit written down first.
Describe any position by its direction — long gains as price rises, short gains as it falls — and by what it controls, not what it costs to open. Tell margin from risk, and a broker's stop-out from a stop of your own. Work out the win rate a risk:reward ratio needs just to break even, turn "a fraction of the account" into money, and explain why the exit and that fraction are both settled before the entry, never during the trade.
5 chapters · 6 quiz questions · 12 terms · included with a plan
Otus, on this module
A position is a promise about what happens if you are wrong. Most first positions are opened with that promise unwritten, and it gets written later, by the market or by the broker, at a price nobody chose. This is the half hour where it gets written first.
The chapters
Each module ends with you doing what it taught — a written answer Otus reads, and a quiz.
- 01 · Read
Long and short
Two directions, one set of mechanics — and why selling first is not exotic.
- 02 · Read
Leverage is a deposit rule
Exposure, margin and stop-out — what leverage changes, and the one thing it does not.
- 03 · Read
The exit comes first
The stop, risk:reward and how much to risk — three decisions, all made before the entry.
- 04 · Watch
Watch: The Map
One minute, then the step ticks itself.
- 05 · Write
In your own words
Three sentences. Otus reads them.
- 06 · Quiz
Six questions on a first position
A wrong answer still pays. It costs the combo, not the XP.
12 terms this module defines
The same definitions Otus uses in the lessons. All of them are in the trading glossary.
- Position
- An open exposure to price, from the fill that opens it to the fill that closes it. It has a direction, a size and — if it was planned — a stop.
- Long
- Bought first, to be sold later. A long position gains when price rises and loses when it falls; its stop sits below the entry.
- Short
- Sold first, to be bought back later. A short gains when price falls and loses when it rises; its stop sits above the entry and is triggered on the ask.
- Flat
- Holding no position. The only state in which price movement costs nothing — and a perfectly good answer when no reading is clear.
- Exposure
- The full value a position controls: size × price. Ten ounces of gold at 2,400 is 24,000 of exposure, whatever the margin held against it.
- Margin level
- Equity divided by the margin in use, as a percentage. The number a broker watches to decide when to warn and when to close positions.
- Margin call
- A warning that the margin level has fallen to a threshold the broker sets: the deposit behind the open positions is running thin.
- Stop-out
- The broker closing positions automatically, at the market, once the margin level falls to a set threshold. An exit that protects the broker's loan — not a stop anyone planned.
- Overnight financing
- The charge, or occasionally credit, applied to a leveraged position held past the daily rollover. Also called swap. Small per night, paid every night.
- Exit before entry
- The rule that the stop — the price at which the idea is refuted — is written down before the position is opened, while nothing is at stake and the answer can still be honest.
- Moving the stop away
- Widening a stop after entry while the position is losing. The size was fitted to the old distance, so the trade now risks more than one R without anyone deciding to.
- Break-even win rate
- The share of trades that must reach the target just to break even at a given risk:reward: 1 ÷ (1 + reward/risk). At 1:2 it is one in three, before costs.
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.