Intermediate course
Trading Strategies: How the Main Methods Work
Trend following, pullbacks, breakouts, ranges, price action, momentum and news. See how each method works, when it fails, and how to test one before you trust it.
12 lessons · 123 minutes · Free
Free. Enrol to open the lessons; your progress and certificate are saved to your account.
Free certificate
Mark every lesson complete and pass the final quiz with 70% or more to get a certificate of completion. You can download it as a PDF or share it on LinkedIn.
Get your certificateThere is no single best way to trade, and anyone who sells one is selling something. There are a handful of methods, each with conditions that suit it and conditions that break it. This course takes them one at a time.
Every method lesson follows the same pattern: what the idea is, when it tends to work, how it fails, a worked trade with real numbers, and the mistake most people make with it. The simulator in several lessons runs the same rules through different market conditions so you can see the difference for yourself.
Take Reading Price Charts and Risk & Money Management first: this course builds on both.
Lessons
- 1What a strategy actually isA strategy is four decisions made before you trade, plus a position size. Learn what makes one complete, what an edge really is, and why no method suits every market.
- 2Trading styles: scalping to position tradingPick a style that fits your time, patience, account and costs before you pick a strategy.
- 3Trend followingRide an established trend with structure or moving averages, accept many small losses for a few large wins, and know why ranges break the method.
- 4Pullback tradingJoin an established trend at a better price by waiting for a dip into a zone where several reasons agree, then for proof that buyers are back.
- 5Breakout tradingTrade the move out of a range, tell a real break from a fakeout, and choose between entering on the break or on the retest.
- 6Range and mean-reversion tradingWhen price goes sideways, sell near the top of the range and buy near the bottom. Learn how to spot a valid range, where to trade it and why the stop is essential.
- 7Price action at key levelsUse pin bars, engulfing candles and inside bars as trade triggers, but only where the trend, a real level and room to a target agree.
- 8Momentum and indicator strategiesHow RSI, MACD and moving-average rules become strategies, why the same indicator can act as mean reversion or trend following, and how to use it as a filter.
- 9Trading around newsBig releases bring the biggest moves and the worst trading conditions. Learn four ways to handle them and what each one costs.
- 10Testing a strategy: backtest, forward test, demoHow to test a strategy in three stages, why 20 or 30 trades prove almost nothing, and how to avoid tuning your rules to the past.
- 11Choosing and writing your own strategyPick one method that fits your life, write it on one page, trade it unchanged and review it monthly, one change at a time.
- 12Course check: test yourselfFlashcards for every strategy term, and ten mixed questions across the methods, their failure modes and how to test them.