Learn how markets work, from the first trade up.
Short lessons to start, then explainers that work through real releases, rules and data. Every figure carries its source and date.
Start with the basics. Eight short lessons.
- 01Start here
What a market is and who trades
How exchanges, brokers and market makers fit together, how a price forms, and what the bid, the ask and the spread mean.
- 02
Stocks, ETFs and indexes
What a share is, how ETFs work, what the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 measure, and what an index "point" actually means.
- 03
Bonds and interest rates
What a bond is, what yield means, why bond prices fall when yields rise, and why interest rates move stocks and currencies.
- 04
Currencies: pairs, pips and why EUR/USD moves
How currency pairs are quoted, what a pip is worth, when the currency market is open, and what tends to move EUR/USD.
- 05
Futures: contracts, margin and tick values
What a futures contract is, how margin and leverage work, the point and tick values of common CME contracts, and how prop-firm evaluations work.
- 06
Options basics
Calls and puts, premium, strike and expiry, what implied volatility measures, and why short-dated options are hard for beginners.
- 07
Crypto markets
Spot versus perpetual futures, how funding rates work, what 24/7 trading changes, and the custody risks unique to crypto.
- 08
Risk first: sizing, stops and R multiples
How to size a position from your stop, why stops are not guarantees, what R multiples measure, why leverage cuts both ways, and how PYE Markets scores setups.
Then go deeper. Explainers by topic.
How to read an earnings release and its 8-K under Item 2.02
What Form 8-K Item 2.02 is, why an earnings release is "furnished" rather than "filed", and how to read GAAP and adjusted figures, using Johnson & Johnson's third-quarter 2026 filing as the worked example.
Photo: Jakub Hałun / CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Rate gaps and FX forwards: the parity maths with official rates
Photo: Milad Mosapoor / Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
What the CFTC’s weekly report shows about CME bitcoin futures
Photo: Steve Jurvetson / CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Every explainer, newest first.
- 21 OctStocks & earnings
How to read an earnings release and its 8-K under Item 2.02
What Form 8-K Item 2.02 is, why an earnings release is "furnished" rather than "filed", and how to read GAAP and adjusted figures, using Johnson & Johnson's third-quarter 2026 filing as the worked example.
7 min read - 21 OctOptions
Realized volatility and expected-move maths, from daily closes
How realized volatility is computed from daily closes, how it turns into a one-day or one-month range, and how often the S&P 500 stayed inside that range from 22 July to 20 October 2026.
5 min read - 21 OctFX
Rate gaps and FX forwards: the parity maths with official rates
How the gap between two central banks’ rates turns into a forward exchange rate and a daily carry, worked through with the banks’ own published rates and the ECB’s 20 October 2026 reference rates.
6 min read - 21 OctCrypto
What the CFTC’s weekly report shows about CME bitcoin futures
How to read the Traders in Financial Futures report for CME Bitcoin futures: who the four trader groups are, what “reportable” means, and how to turn contracts into bitcoin. Worked with the report for Tuesday 13 October 2026.
6 min read - 21 OctFutures
Futures contract months and roll dates, from CME Group’s rules
How CME names contract months, when E-mini S&P 500 and WTI crude contracts stop trading, and what the roll does to volume and charts, with a worked example from 19 October 2026 closes.
7 min read - 21 OctTrading process
A written trading plan, and the weekly review that checks it
What a written trading plan usually contains, how a fixed risk cap turns into E-mini and Micro E-mini S&P 500 contract counts, and what a weekly review against the plan measures.
6 min read - 21 OctStocks & earnings
Beat and fall: why good results can still send a stock lower
What a "beat" is measured against, and why a raised forecast does not settle the price reaction, using the 8-Ks that GE Aerospace, General Motors and 3M furnished before the open on 20 October 2026 and that day's Yahoo Finance closes.
6 min read - 21 OctStocks & earnings
How to track earnings season in SEC EDGAR, filing by filing
Earnings season leaves a trail on SEC EDGAR: Form 8-K filings that list Item 2.02. We show how to count them, using the first three weeks of October 2026 as the worked example.
7 min read - 21 OctOptions
Why volatility falls after earnings, worked with Amazon’s July report
How one earnings-day move can dominate a stock’s variance, and why volatility measures drop once the event has passed. Worked with Amazon, Apple, Alphabet and Goldman Sachs daily closes around their 2026 releases.
6 min read - 21 OctFX
How the ECB sets its daily euro reference rates, and their limits
What the ECB’s euro foreign exchange reference rates are, how the daily fixing is set, and how to invert them and build dollar crosses, worked through with the rates for 20 October 2026.
6 min read - 21 OctMarkets & macro
How to read the US CPI report, using the September 2026 figures
What the monthly Consumer Price Index release contains, why its two headline rates use different index series, and how to redo them from BLS index levels, worked through with the September 2026 report.
6 min read - 21 OctMarkets & macro
Reading the US jobs report, from payrolls to the unemployment rate
What the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes in the monthly Employment Situation report, how its two surveys differ, and how revisions and sampling error change the reading. Worked with the September 2026 report, released on 2 October 2026.
6 min read - 21 OctMarkets & macro
How to read the Fed’s dot plot and Summary of Economic Projections
What the Fed’s quarterly projections and its dot plot show, and what they do not, worked through with the September 2026 projections, the June set before it and the target range on FRED.
5 min read - 21 OctFutures
How to read the CFTC Commitments of Traders report, with gold and oil
What the Legacy, Disaggregated and Traders in Financial Futures reports each cover, how the trader groups map onto each other, and a worked example with COMEX gold and NYMEX WTI crude for 13 October 2026.
7 min read - 21 OctTrading process
Reviewing a trading week against what the market actually did
The market half of a weekly review, worked with the S&P 500 and E-mini futures for 12 to 16 October 2026 and the official calendars for that week, and why a week or two of trades says little about an edge.
7 min read - 21 OctCrypto
Bitcoin’s daily and weekly close, and how CME books the weekend
Bitcoin never stops trading, so a “close” is a choice of clock and venue. We explain the UTC day used for spot BTC-USD, CME’s afternoon settlement in Chicago and its weekend trade dates, with weeks and weekends from September and October 2026.
7 min read - 21 OctCrypto
How to compute the bitcoin futures basis from CME and spot closes
What the gap between CME bitcoin futures and the spot price is, why it closes at expiry, and how to annualise it and set it against Treasury bill and SOFR rates. Worked with Yahoo Finance daily closes for 19 October 2026 and three earlier dates.
7 min read - 21 OctFutures
Futures margin explained: initial, maintenance and daily settlement
How CME Clearing sets initial and maintenance margin, how daily settlement moves cash between accounts, and how that differs from broker and prop-firm limits, with one E-mini and one Micro E-mini S&P 500 contract marked to market from 12 to 19 October 2026.
7 min read - 21 OctMarkets & macro
How to read the advance GDP estimate, using the Q2 2026 revisions
What the BEA’s first GDP estimate for a quarter measures, how its annualized rate is built, and how it was revised, worked through with second-quarter 2026 data from BEA and FRED.
7 min read - 21 OctMarkets & macro
How US Treasury auctions work, and how to read an auction result
How Treasury sells notes in single-price auctions, and how to read the results release line by line, worked through with the 2-year note sold on 22 September 2026 and the 10-year reopening on 7 October 2026.
6 min read - 21 OctStocks & earnings
Dividends, ex-dates and splits: a close versus an adjusted close
How a cash dividend and a stock split show up in a stock’s daily closes, how the adjusted close is built from them, and why total return differs from price return, worked through with JPMorgan Chase and Netflix.
7 min read - 21 OctOptions
How options expire: third Fridays, exercise style and settlement
How the clearing house’s rules set a listed option’s expiration date, who can exercise and when, how exercises settle, and how the $0.01 exercise-by-exception rule worked on the 16 October 2026 expiration.
7 min read - 21 OctFutures
CME Globex hours, trade dates and what a futures daily bar is
How CME Globex splits a nearly 24-hour market into trade dates, why the settlement price is not the last trade, and how holidays and the US clock change move the times, worked with E-mini S&P 500 data for 19 October 2026.
7 min read - 19 OctOptions
Reading Option Prices: Expected Move, IV Rank and Spreads
An option’s price tells you how big a move the market is pricing in. Here is how to turn implied volatility into an expected move, what IV rank measures, and how vertical spreads change the trade-off between cost, time decay and volatility.
7 min read - 19 OctTrading process
Failed Breakouts: What Raschke’s ‘Turtle Soup’ Actually Tests
Turtle Soup is a rule-based way to trade a breakout that fails: price makes a new 20-day extreme, then reverses back through the old one. Here are the published rules, what they are designed to test, and where they tend to break down.
6 min read - 19 OctStocks & earnings
Post-Earnings Drift: What 50 Years of Research Does and Doesn’t Show
Stocks that report earnings well above or below expectations have historically tended to keep drifting in the same direction for weeks. Here is where that finding comes from, what the studies actually measured, and how some traders try to use it.
6 min read - 19 OctTrading process
Rule-Based Trading: Testing RSI(2) and Trend Pullbacks Honestly
Two published rule sets—Connors’s RSI(2) pullback and Raschke’s ADX “Holy Grail”—show the difference between buying dips inside a trend and buying the resumption of a trend. Here are the rules as published and the checks that keep a backtest honest.
7 min read - 18 OctStocks & earnings
How Eight Stocks Move the S&P 500: Weights on 19 October
On 19 October 2026 the eight largest companies in SPY made up 37.1% of the fund. A 1% move in Nvidia alone was worth about 6 S&P 500 points. Here is how to turn a weight into index points and into dollars on an E-mini contract.
5 min read - 18 OctTrading process
Sizing Positions by Volatility: The Turtle ‘N’ Method Explained
Trading the same number of shares or contracts in calm and volatile markets means taking very different dollar risk. The Turtle traders’ “N” method sizes each position so that a typical day’s move costs the same share of the account. Here is how it works.
7 min read - 18 OctMarkets & macro
Real Yields vs. Breakevens: How to Read a Move in the 10-Year
The 10-year Treasury yield rose from 4.05% to 5.10% between 15 October 2025 and 15 October 2026. Almost all of that rise came from the real yield, not from inflation expectations. Here is how to split a yield move in two, using public FRED data.
4 min read - 18 OctFX
Rate Differentials and FX: How Yields Move EUR/USD and USD/JPY
Short-term interest rate gaps between countries are one of the main forces behind major currency pairs. Here is how US Treasury yields relate to EUR/USD, USD/JPY and gold, when FX liquidity is deepest, and how to work out position size from a stop in pips.
7 min read - 18 OctStocks & earnings
Stage-2 Trends and Volatility Contraction: A Swing Trader’s Guide
Some swing traders only buy stocks already in established uptrends, and only after a quiet, tightening consolidation. Here is how Minervini’s trend template and Volatility Contraction Pattern describe that process, and how position size follows from the stop.
7 min read - 18 OctCrypto
Funding Rates and Open Interest: Reading Crypto Leverage
Perpetual futures keep their price close to spot through regular funding payments between longs and shorts. Funding and open interest together give a rough picture of how much leverage is in the market. Here is how they work and how 24/7 trading changes volatility math.
6 min read
General education and market information, not investment advice. Editorial standards · Corrections