Before you start — two things

1. You're not expected to know this already

If this all feels technical, that's because trading uses a specialized vocabulary. The good news: it's a small vocabulary. Maybe 30 terms total. Once you know them, every market conversation suddenly makes sense.

This guide explains each term the first time it appears. You'll also see links to deeper lessons. Don't try to master everything at once — click a link when a term is fuzzy, get clarity, come back to the guide.

2. The academy + supplemental course together cover everything here

The Wanderer Financial Academy teaches the trading fundamentals — charts, strategies, risk management. The Supplemental course fills the gaps — the specific dashboard concepts the academy doesn't touch (R-multiples, regime, daily bias, etc.).

The mental model

The dashboard is not a trading platform. It has three jobs:

• Launchpad — one click to everywhere (broker, charts, calendar, research).
• Discipline — checklist, bias, regime. Forces the 60 seconds of thinking most traders skip.
• Memory — journal + playbook. The two things that actually compound.

The five tabs

The walkthrough — NVDA long, April 15

The trade we'll walk through

That thesis contains 7 technical terms. Let's define each.

Sunday night — weekly prep

Before the week starts, you do two things:

1. Click through Quick Links to your research tools (Finviz Heatmap, ForexFactory, TradingView).
2. Type your weekly thesis into Scratchpad. Short. Like this:

WEEK OF 4/14
- SPX above 20MA, trend intact
- Semi's leading (SMH +4% last week)
- Wednesday CPI — reduce size Tue close if holding
- NVDA: retest of 135 breakout. Long on confirm.
- AVGO, ORCL: watchlist for relative strength follow

That short note contains 5 more technical terms. Decode:

Monday 7:30 AM — pre-market prep

This is the most important 5 minutes of your trading day. Three things happen, in order:

1. Set your Daily Bias

Click Bullish, Neutral, or Bearish. Type one sentence into the "Why?" box.

For our NVDA day:

• Bias: Bullish
• Why: "SPX holding above 20MA, semis leading, NVDA setting up for breakout retest. Trend day likely."

2. Set your Market Regime

Four options: Trend, Range, High Vol, Risk-Off.

For NVDA day: Trend regime. Breakout Retest is a valid setup here. ✓

3. Run the Pre-Market checklist

Five boxes. Check them off one by one.

Monday 9:35 AM — size the trade

Market is open. NVDA is testing $138. You see the reversal candle you were waiting for. Before you place the order — stop. Size it.

Step 1: Apply a preset

At the top of Risk Tools there are three presets:

• Day Trade — 0.5% risk
• Swing — 1% risk
• A+ Setup — 1.5% risk

This is a swing, not a day trade. Click Swing — 1% risk → Stock. Portfolio ($100,000) and Max Risk (1%) fill automatically.

Step 2: Fill the trade fields

Step 3: Read the output

Optional — same trade as options

Same NVDA view, but using call options instead of shares. You look at the April 18 $140 calls trading at $2.10 with a 0.45 delta.

Four new terms in that sentence. Decode:

📚 Learn more: Gamma · Theta

Monday 9:37 AM — log the trade

Order filled. Before you do anything else, log it. The discipline is critical — if you wait until end of day, you'll forget the thesis and the emotional state at entry.

Click + New, fill in:

Example Notes:

NVDA — Entry $138.50, Stop $135.80, Target $145.25
370 shares, R:R 2.50, Risk $999, Target +$2,497

Clean retest of 135 breakout zone, strong buyers at 137.80.
Felt calm, not chasing. Volume confirming on 5min.

📚 Learn more: Trade Journaling

Monday 11:45 AM — mid-day management

NVDA has moved to $141. You're up $925 on paper. The midday checklist has two items.

The key action: move your stop to breakeven.

You're at +1R profit (stock moved $2.70 = your 1R distance). This is the standard trigger to move stop to breakeven.

11:45 — NVDA moved stop to 138.50 (breakeven). +1R achieved.
Target still 145.25.

Tuesday — trade exits

NVDA opens strong, hits $143 by 10:00 AM, consolidates, then breaks higher midday. At 1:20 PM, your limit at $145.25 fills. Trade closed.

Update the journal

• Exit: 145.25
• Status: closed
• P&L auto-calculates: +$2,497
• Append to Notes: "Hit target cleanly. Didn't trail, didn't exit early. Plan held."

After 20 trades — what the journal is for

Everything up to here was collection. One NVDA trade, logged honestly, taught you nothing on its own — it's one data point with a story attached. The trade felt clean, hit target, and confirmed what you already believed. That's exactly the kind of trade that teaches you the least.

Setup Stats is where collection turns into an answer. It only works if the collection was honest, which is why it comes last.

What it shows

One card per setup in your journal, built from closed trades:

Below the cards, a regime × setup matrix: your Breakout Retest win rate in Trend versus Range versus High Vol. This is the number that tells you whether the regime selector you've been clicking every morning is describing something real or just a ritual.

What it won't show you yet

With one NVDA trade logged, the card reads:

The stats are there. The Kelly ceiling isn't, and won't be until 20 decided trades on that setup. That's deliberate. A win rate of 100% on one trade is not information — it's a coin that landed heads. (Supplemental S21 covers why 20, and why even 20 is thinner than it looks.)

At roughly two or three Breakout Retests a week, that's a couple of months. The timeline isn't a limitation of the tool. It's how long it takes to know anything.

The one habit that makes this work

Type a trade straight into the journal and you save ten seconds. You also get a trade that can't contribute to R stats. The setup card will tell you what fraction of trades had it recorded; if that number is low, the expectancy figure is thinner than it looks.

Same for the regime. It's stamped automatically from your Home tab at entry — which is another reason the morning routine isn't optional. Skip setting regime and the trade lands in an "Unknown" row that teaches you nothing.

What you're actually looking for

Two findings, and neither is comfortable:

Neither of these shows up in three weeks. Both show up by trade 40, and they'll be more specific than any advice anyone can give you, because they're about you.

The loop, closed

The routine produces the data. The data tells you which parts of the routine were worth doing.

• Checklist and bias → you take fewer trades you can't explain
• Calculator → every trade has a planned risk on it
• Journal → every closed trade has an outcome attached to a setup and a regime
• Setup Stats → which setups earn their place, and whether your sizing matches your edge
• Playbook → cull and promote based on the above, not on how the trades felt

That last arrow is the one that was missing. Without it, the playbook is a document you maintain on vibes.

The progression — what to learn next

Week 1–2: Fundamentals

• Academy Module 1 — Getting Started: Small Account
• Academy Module 2 — Reading Charts: Charts, Volume
• Supplemental — Candles, Timeframes

Week 3–4: Strategies

• Academy Module 3 — Moving Averages, Breakout, KISS-50
• Supplemental — Retest Mechanics, Measured Move

Week 5–6: Risk & Management

• Academy Module 4 — Stop Price, Target Price, Risk Management, Journaling
• Supplemental — R-Multiples, R:R Ratio, Breakeven Stop, Trailing Stops
• Supplemental (after ~20 logged trades) — Expectancy, R-Multiples Revisited, Sample Size, Kelly as a Ceiling

Week 7–8: Context

• Supplemental — Market Regime, Daily Bias, Relative Strength, Opening Range
• Supplemental — Economic Calendar, Index Shorthand, Gaps

Week 9+: Options (optional)

Only tackle options after stock trading is profitable for you. Trying to learn both at once is how most traders lose their first account.

• Supplemental — Options Basics, Theta, Gamma
• Academy — Delta and Beta

Glossary A–D

Glossary E–M

Glossary N–R

Glossary S–Z

(A) = Academy · (S) = Supplemental