Lesson One · Fee Stack
is small per-trade and devastating per-decade.
On every single trade you pay some combination of commission, spread, FX markup, platform fee, and sometimes an . Each feels like pennies. Over 10 years of active trading, the stack can eat 30% of your nominal return. This lesson makes the stack visible: gross return at the top, each fee subtracting a slice, net return at the bottom. Once you see it, you never unsee it.
“Every fee feels trivial in isolation. Every fee compounds for decades together.”