Necessities

You now know what trading is and that emotions play a big role. But what do you actually need to really get started? The good news: with a few solid tools, you can already begin and develop yourself step by step.

Broker

To trade, you need a broker. This is the platform you use to send your orders to the market: buy or sell, long or short. Think of it as the link between you and the exchange.

These are the most commonly used types of broker accounts:

Margin account

• What is it?
  • You deposit your own money and trade with that capital.
  • You can often (to a limited extent) use borrowed money, allowing you to open positions larger than your balance. This is called leverage.
• Pros
  • More freedom and fewer restrictions than many funded accounts.
  • Often lower commissions and fees.
  • Suitable for experienced traders with sufficient capital and risk awareness.
• Cons / risks
  • Leverage increases not only your profit potential, but also your losses.
  • Brokers will usually close your positions automatically when you lose too much, but in extreme market moves you can still end up below zero and in debt (unless there is explicit negative balance protection).
  • Less suitable for beginners, because a single big mistake can cause serious financial damage.

Funded account

• What is it?
  • Instead of using a lot of your own money, you trade largely or fully with capital from an external party.
  • With some providers you buy an account and receive extra leverage to trade with.
  • With others you go through an evaluation period (paid subscription) where you must show that you can trade consistently and with discipline.
• Pros
  • Your personal financial risk is much smaller, because you use little or no of your own money.
  • You can trade a larger account than you would be able to finance yourself.
  • If you are successful, you often receive the majority of the profits.
• Cons / risks
  • You can’t end up in debt, but if you break the rules (maximum loss, daily limits, etc.) the account is paused or closed. In practice this means you’ve blown your account: you lose the account and the money you invested in it.
  • The rules are stricter and you have less freedom than with a margin account.
  • You often pay a significant commission (for example 10–30%) when you withdraw your profits.

If you want to start trading for the first time, it’s usually smartest to start with a funded account. That way you can learn to trade with relatively little of your own capital at stake.

Analytical software

Besides a broker, you also need good charting and analysis software. This is the application where you:

• View charts on different timeframes
• Add indicators (such as volume, moving averages, etc.)
• Draw and test price levels, zones, and strategies

A good analytical application helps you quickly recognise patterns, trends, and key levels. You don't want to trade based on a vague price line in a broker app, but on clear, well-organised charts. Many of these platforms also let you create watchlists, set alerts, and follow markets in real time.

A popular choice that many traders use is TradingView. It has a user-friendly interface, powerful charts, and tons of handy tools and indicators. Plus, you can also paper trade on it, which means you trade in a simulator, with fake money. It's completely free and risk-free, but of course also doesn't generate real profit. It's very useful as a beginner to learn how placing trades, stop losses, and take profits work in practice.

You can sign up for a free trial and decide for yourself what works best. In our opinion, the Premium package offers the best data and there are sometimes interesting discount campaigns, like Black Friday. You can also use TV permanently for free with 1 chart at a time, but you'll see ads and the functionality is too limited to work with seriously.

Financial news

Markets don’t move for no reason. Important financial news can cause massive price swings in seconds. Examples include:

• Earnings: quarterly results of major companies
• Interest rate decisions by central banks (especially the FED in the US)
• Inflation and unemployment data
• Company news: product launches, acquisitions, scandals

Many analytical platforms already show an economic calendar and key news events directly on the chart. Around these moments, the market is often extra volatile and unpredictable. As a beginner, it’s wise not to trade during major news releases, or to significantly reduce your risk.

There are also websites that are fully specialised in financial news and provide live updates on markets, sectors, and individual stocks. You don’t need to read every article, but you do need to know when important news is coming and what it might mean for your positions.

Logging tool

Many (losing) traders underestimate this part: the trading log. Without a logbook, trading is basically gambling. Logging is the least fun part of trading, so many traders skip it — with predictable consequences. If you don’t log your trades, you’re trading purely on emotion, and that will almost always end badly sooner or later.

The simplest way to log is with a basic Excel sheet. It’s free and gives you a basic view of your performance, such as win rate. If you’re very skilled with Excel you can get more out of it, but it’s far from ideal. It’s a lot of (manual) work and therefore time-consuming and error-prone. There is a much faster and easier way: TradeLogger.

TradeLogger takes a large part of this work off your hands and gives you far more detailed and targeted insights than Excel ever could. For example:

• Fast input of trades through a convenient form
• Upload screenshots for each trade
• Detailed statistics per ticker, strategy, day, time of day, etc.
• Filters and search tools to find specific mistakes or patterns
• Register your emotions and money management per trade
• Let your mentor or coach look over your shoulder

This not only helps you record your trades, but more importantly to learn from them. You quickly expose your strengths and weaknesses and can deliberately work on improving your performance. By logging consistently, you turn trading into a measurable process instead of a guessing game. That's the foundation for your long-term success. Sign up for the TradeLogger waitlist now and receive an exclusive discount when you become a member.