How markets work
The exchange from the inside: order book, order types, leverage, liquidation, funding and what a trade really costs.
7 lessons · 40 min
Who this course is for
For those who have opened a terminal but are not sure what happens when they press the button. After this course you can read the order book, pick an order type on purpose, work out your liquidation price before entering, and see where money goes besides the price moving against you.
- 1The order book: where price is actually born6 minA chart shows where trades already happened. The order book shows where people are willing to trade — and that is the only place price comes from.
- 2Order types: what you pay for speed6 minA market order fills for sure but at an unknown price. A limit order fills at your price or not at all. Every choice comes down to that trade.
- 3Leverage and liquidation: where your trade ends7 minLeverage does not multiply profit — it shortens the distance to zero. Until you can work out that distance in your head, every position is opened blind.
- 4Spot, futures and perpetuals: what you are actually buying5 minOn spot you buy the coin. On a perpetual you buy a promise tied to its price. That difference decides what can happen to you.
- 5Funding: who pays whom, and what it says about the crowd5 minFunding exists to keep a perpetual from drifting away from spot. Along the way it became the most honest sentiment gauge: it shows money, not opinions.
- 6The real cost of a trade: why the account shrinks on correct entries5 minFees are only the first of four costs. Until you add all four, you do not know how far price must move for you to break even.
- 7Candles and timeframes: what the chart hides6 minA candle compresses hundreds of trades into four numbers. You see three of them, and the order in which everything happened is lost forever.