First Steps in Trading
Learn how financial markets move, how to place trades safely, and how to protect your money using proven risk management. Build the analytical and psychological habits essential for every beginner.
Like Duolingo, but for First Steps in Trading. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
24 levels across 4 sections, about 48 minutes end to end, roughly 10 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Making Your First Trade, Defending Your Capital, Navigating Market Moves, and The Trader's Mindset and Routine. It starts from scratch.
Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android
Key ideas in First Steps in Trading
- Trading focuses on capturing short-term price movements over days, hours, or minutes
- Investing relies on long-term compound growth of companies over years or decades
- Buying to open a position (going long) requires prices to climb to make money
- Selling borrowed shares first (short selling) makes money when you buy them back cheaper
- Market orders fill immediately at whatever price is currently available
- Limit orders set a maximum purchase price or minimum sale price, but might never execute if the market doesn't reach it
- Paper trading uses simulated money on real market feeds to practice clicking buttons and entering orders
- Simulator practice prevents costly software navigation mistakes without risking real savings
- Slippage is the difference between the expected price and the actual executed price during fast moves
- Broker commissions or fees reduce net profits every time you enter or exit a trade
- Even small per-trade costs add up quickly when trading frequently
- A candlestick maps four specific prices across its chosen window: open, high, low, and close
- The wick extremes mark the absolute highest and lowest prices reached during that time
- A green candle opens at the bottom of its thick body and closes at the top
- A long lower wick shows sellers pushed the price down, but buyers stepped in aggressively to drive it back up before the period closed
- The body represents the net change from start to finish, while the wick shows a rejected price level
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives First Steps in Trading the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
What is an investor trying to do when they buy into a company?
Get it right to open this lesson and 23 more in the app.
Where First Steps in Trading takes you
- 1
Making Your First Trade
- Placing an Order with Confidence
- Reading Candlestick Charts
- 2
Defending Your Capital
- Managing Risk with Hard Stops
- Position Sizing and Asymmetry
- 3
Navigating Market Moves
- Spotting Trends and Key Levels
- Choosing Your Market and Style
- 4
The Trader's Mindset and Routine
- Mastering Psychological Traps
- Building a Repeatable Process
4 sections · 8 units · 24 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
Tomo is in ChatGPT
Tomo is also a ChatGPT plugin: the same playable courses, built and played inside your chat.
Add Tomo to ChatGPT- What to ask
- “Make me a Tomo course on black holes.” “Turn this chat into a Tomo course.”
- What you get
- Quick questions with instant feedback, hearts and stars, ready to play in about a minute.
- Where it goes
- No sign-up to start. Connect your Tomo account and your streak carries on in the app.
You pick the voice
First Steps in Trading is taught in the Explain Like I'm 5 style: no big words. promise.. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
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Start First Steps in Trading today.
Download Tomo, search First Steps in Trading, and play your first lesson in under a minute.