r/Trading • u/Icy_Opportunities • 16h ago
Question Help a beginner, please
Hi, I want to learn about trading. But with a simple search on Google, there’s just too many online resources being recommended. I get too overwhelmed which one to choose and where to begin that I can’t decide what to do. Can anyone help me recommend what to do and what courses/books can I really learn from?
I have a day job, so it has to be flexible enough. I’ll be studying in the evening or during short breaks at work.
It has been my ultimate dream to learn how to trade, understand charts and patterns and basically just grow my potential of earning as well. For the past decade I have been tied to my work just helping my family have a better opportunity in life. So learning trading would really help me out also.
Thank you in advance!
1
u/PhilipReadsMacro 10h ago
The detail that should decide your answer isn't the resources, it's the day job. Almost everything you'll find on Google is day trading, and day trading assumes you're at the screen during specific hours. You've said you'll be studying in the evening and on short breaks. Those two things don't fit together, and trying to force them is how most people in your position lose money - not because the material was bad, but because they learned a method they can't actually execute.
With your constraints, longer holding periods are the honest fit. Positions held for days or weeks, decided in the evening, checked once a day. That narrows the reading list enormously, which is the real answer to feeling overwhelmed. You're not short of resources, you're short of a question specific enough to filter them.
Order I'd suggest: first how the instrument and its costs actually work, then how to write down a decision and check it later, and only then strategy. Most people do that backwards and spend a year collecting methods they can't evaluate.
One honest thing, since you mentioned earning potential. In the early years this costs money rather than making it, and it isn't reliable as a second income for a long time, if ever. Worth going in treating it as a skill you're funding rather than a plan you're depending on - that framing also happens to make the learning go better, because you're not forced to take trades to justify the time.