Trading Guides
I built direct-access brokerages, ran an offshore active-trader firm, and traded through two decades of market structure changes. These guides are the mechanics — rules, capital, taxes, execution, and who is actually on the other side of your order.
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Each guide stands alone. Together they cover the operational side of active trading that most education skips.
Options Basics for Stock Traders
What calls and puts actually obligate, how time decay and implied volatility price the premium, expiration and assignment mechanics, and the specific ways leverage bites first-year options traders.
The Wash-Sale Rule for Active Traders
Why a losing year can produce a taxable gain: the 61-day window, losses deferred into cost basis, the options and IRA traps, and what a Section 475 election changes.
Margin Requirements Explained
Reg T initial margin, FINRA maintenance floors versus broker house requirements, how margin calls escalate to forced liquidation, and what the loan actually costs.
Pattern Day Trader Rules vs. Cash Accounts
The $25,000 margin threshold against T+1 settlement: good faith violations, free riding, cash liquidation violations, and the legal routes to trade below the PDT line.
What Is VWAP? How Traders Actually Use It
The volume-weighted average price explained: the calculation, what price above or below the line really tells you, anchored VWAP, and where the line fails on thin tape.
Low Float Stocks: Why They Move and What They Cost
Float versus shares outstanding, why an empty order book dislocates instead of trending, and the slippage, borrow, and offering risks behind every runner.
Level 2 and Order Flow: How to Read the Book
Depth of market versus time and sales, the absorption and exhaustion reads that repeat, why displayed size lies, and using the book for sizing rather than signals.
The Gap and Go Strategy
Qualifying the catalyst and premarket volume before the bell, opening range entries and stops, scaling into strength, and the three reasons the setup fails.
Position Sizing and Risk Per Trade
Sizing from the stop instead of from conviction, choosing a risk percentage, why drawdown recovery is asymmetric, capping correlated heat, and scaling up on evidence.
Prop Trading Firms: How the Models Work and What to Check
Desks, evaluation challenges, and deposit models: how drawdown and consistency rules decide who passes, the questions that filter, and the honest math on challenge fees.
Trading Halts and Circuit Breakers
LULD volatility pauses, T1 news halts, regulatory suspensions, index circuit breaker levels, and what actually happens to your stop when there is no market.
Stock Dilution and Offerings
Shelf registrations, ATM programs, convertibles, and warrants — which filings telegraph a raise and how issuance shows up on the tape before the 8-K hits.
How to Short a Stock: Borrows, Rates, and Squeeze Risk
Locates and borrow rates, what hard-to-borrow really costs, forced buy-ins, how squeezes work mechanically, and when puts are the better way to express the same view.
Stop-Loss Orders: What They Do, Where They Fail
Stop vs. stop-limit vs. trailing, why stops slip on gaps and halt reopens, and how to place a level defined by structure instead of by the loss you can stomach.
Premarket Trading: Hours, Liquidity, and How to Use It
Extended-hours mechanics, why limit orders are mandatory, how to read relative premarket volume, and why the opening auction resets the move you just chased.
Best Time of Day to Trade Stocks
The intraday volume curve: what the opening hour, the midday lull, and the closing auction each offer, and how to find the hours your own P&L comes from.
Day Trading Taxes: Wash Sales, Trader Status, and Section 475
Why your broker's 1099-B can show a gain on a losing year, how the wash-sale rule actually works for active traders, and what trader tax status and a mark-to-market election change.
How Much Money Do You Need to Day Trade?
The real numbers: the $25,000 PDT floor, what buying power does and does not give you, per-trade risk math, and the minimum account size where the math stops working against you.
How to Read a Stock Chart (Trader's Version)
Price, volume, level 2, and time and sales — how an intraday trader actually reads a chart, which patterns are structure and which are noise, and the mistakes that cost the most money.
What Is a Market Maker? Who Is on the Other Side of Your Order
Market makers, payment for order flow, internalizers, and dark pools — where your order actually goes, who profits from the spread, and what that means for how you route trades.
The Pattern Day Trader Rule and How to Trade Around It
FINRA Rule 4210, the $25,000 equity floor, and the six legal routes active traders use when they are below the threshold.
Direct-Access Trading: A Due-Diligence Guide
What direct access actually means, how routing and clearing work, and the framework for vetting any active-trading broker before you fund it.
The Fastest Direct-Access Broker: How to Measure It
Latency, routing, and fill quality — how to compare execution instead of trusting marketing claims.
DAS Trader vs Sterling Trader Pro
A hands-on comparison of the two institutional-grade active-trading platforms from someone who helped build one of the businesses around them.