TradeWize · Blog

Investing, explained in plain English.

Everything you need to understand investing and keep up with the markets.

Funds & ETFs11 min read

BND vs AGG vs BNDX vs SGOV vs TLT: The Best Bond ETFs, Compared

These five are all called bond ETFs. One of them barely moves; another swings like a stock. The label tells you almost nothing.

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Funds & ETFs12 min read

SCHD vs VYM vs DGRO vs VIG vs JEPI: The Best Dividend ETFs, Compared

Four of these screen for dividends. One of them isn't really a dividend fund at all — and it's the one with the 8% yield.

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Getting started11 min read

Fidelity vs Vanguard vs Schwab vs Robinhood: Which Broker Fits You?

Every big US broker now charges $0 to buy a stock. That makes the fee comparison everyone writes almost useless — so here's what genuinely separates them.

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Derivatives11 min read

What Is a Strike Price? How It Works and How to Read One

It is the one number in the contract you choose yourself. Pick a different rung and you have bought a different trade — cheaper, and further from home.

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Technical analysis12 min read

What Is RSI? The Gauge Everyone Reads Backwards

It is the most-quoted number in technical analysis, and the way most people read it is precisely upside down. RSI does not measure how high a price is. It measures how one-sided the last fortnight was — which is a different question with a very similar-looking answer.

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Technical analysis12 min read

What Is a Moving Average? Why Being Late Is the Whole Point

It is the average of the last N closing prices, it is always a step behind the market, and that second part is not the flaw everyone treats it as. The lag is the mechanism.

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Technical analysis12 min read

What Are Chart Patterns? Why the Shapes Are Just Structure With a Name

There are about a dozen named shapes, and traders talk about them as if each were its own species. They aren't. Every one is the same three parts wearing a different hat.

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Technical analysis10 min read

Swing Highs and Swing Lows: Why Price Keeps Stopping in the Same Places

Every chart has a handful of prices it keeps bumping into and refusing to cross. They aren't magic, they aren't lines, and there is a genuinely good reason they exist.

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Derivatives13 min read

What Is an Options Contract? How Calls and Puts Actually Work

You can be right about the direction and still lose most of your money, because you didn't only buy a view on the price. You bought a deadline.

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Derivatives10 min read

What Is a CFD? The Trade Where You Never Own Anything

There's no exchange, no share certificate, no seat at the AGM — just a contract with a broker who books the other side of your bet. Here's what you're actually holding.

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Derivatives9 min read

What Is Leverage in Trading? The Multiplier That Cuts Both Ways

Every blown-up account has the same autopsy: the idea was survivable, the size wasn't. Leverage is the multiplier that decides which one you're running — here's exactly how it works.

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Derivatives9 min read

What Is a Futures Contract? How Futures Trading Works

Every time the news says "oil futures jumped," it's talking about a 300-year-old farmer's trick that now moves trillions of dollars — and can double your money or vaporise it before lunch.

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