Learning to trade from zero means learning three things in order: how markets and orders work, how to protect money, and how to notice your own mistakes. Most people start with the third one, by losing money. This plan starts with the first, on fake money, and reaches real money only when keeping the rules has become boring.
Thirty days is enough to build the habits. It is not enough to make you consistently profitable, and nothing honest will promise that.
Week 1: the words and the orders
- Learn what a candle shows, what a trend is, and what support and resistance mean. Climb From Zero’s Foundations track is eight short lessons with quizzes and is free.
- Learn the four orders: market, limit, stop-loss and take-profit. Place each one on fake money until you can predict what will happen before it fills.
- Learn what you are trading. In crypto that means knowing that the exchange, the coin and the scam that looks like a coin are three different things; the scam-safety lessons are free too.
- Goal for the week: explain to someone else what a stop-loss is. If you cannot, stay in week 1.
Week 2: risk before reward
- Pick a risk per trade, 1% or 2% of the account, and write it down. In Climb From Zero this is a rule the game holds you to in strict mode.
- Size every trade from the stop. If the stop is 5% away and you risk 1%, the position is a fifth of the account. Do this by hand twenty times before letting an app do it.
- Start with a balance you could actually afford to lose. The game starts you at $100 for exactly this reason; $100,000 of play money teaches nothing about sizing.
- Goal for the week: ten trades, every one with a stop placed before you buy, and not one stop moved further away.
Week 3: history you cannot remember
- Replay real charts candle by candle with the coin, the dates and the price hidden, so you cannot “predict” from memory. Three blind replay rounds a day is enough.
- Keep a plan for every replay trade: stop, target, one line on why. Then compare what happened with what you wrote.
- Try one history challenge with a process goal, such as finishing the March 2020 crash down less than 5%. The goal is survival, not profit.
- Goal for the week: forty replay trades in your journal. Count how many kept the rules. That percentage is your real score.
Week 4: live prices, same rules
- Trade live Bitcoin and Ethereum prices with the same $100 of fake money and the same rules. Live prices are slow; you will get a few real decisions, which is the point.
- Let your stops and targets run on the server even when the app is closed. Do not watch the chart all day; watching is how rules get broken.
- Read a review of each closed trade that is based on what you did, not on what the market did. Robin’s reviews in the game are written from measured numbers: where the stop sat, how big the position was against your rule, whether you moved it.
- Goal for the week: a month in the journal with no rule broken. Not a month in profit.
When are you ready for real money?
When keeping the rules is boring. When a planned loss does not change your next trade. When you can explain every trade in the journal in one line. Then start with less real money than feels sensible, and keep the same stop, the same size rule and the same journal. Never trade money you cannot afford to lose.
Everything above, in one free app
Climb From Zero is a crypto trading simulator with a story built around this plan: you start at 21, broke, with $100 found in your grandmother’s coat, and a mentor who never gives tips teaches you in 37 short lessons while you practise on blind history and trade real prices with fake money. The start is free, with no sign-up, on Android (iPhone soon). A simulation, not financial advice.
A simulation. No real money. Not financial advice. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell anything.