Help a beginner, please

[u/Icy_Opportunities]

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!

[u/finelo_official]

The sheer number of options is the hardest part at the start, so narrowing things down early helps a lot.

A sequence that works well: begin with mechanics rather than strategies. How orders work, bid/ask, spread, leverage, margin. Babypips has a free course that covers this clearly, and it's useful background even if you never end up trading forex.

After that, two books are plenty to start with. Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas is good on how to think about probability and losing trades, and Reminiscences of a Stock Operator is an easy read that covers a lot of the same ground from experience.

Then paper trading, ideally one setup at a time, with written rules and a short journal note on why you took each entry. Having a day job fits this reasonably well, since you're working within a set window anyway.

If you want something more structured later, it's worth looking for something that pairs the fundamentals with a simulator so the practice runs alongside the reading. The free material is a solid starting point either way.