How to Use This Book¶
The Participant Guide is about taking part in the market: understanding the order book and the trading day, placing and managing every kind of order, quoting as a market maker, running trading bots, reading your positions and profit, and using the trading screens. It is written from the trader's seat.
| Who it is for | Students and traders, and instructors playing a participant in a class |
| What it assumes | You have finished the Quick Start Guide: you can start the exchange and connect a trader console |
| What it leaves to other books | Configuring symbols, risk limits and schedules (Operator's Guide); wire formats (Protocols and Clients); every command-line option (Reference Manual) |
How the book is organized¶
| Part | What you learn |
|---|---|
| I. Trading basics | How an order book works, what each phase of the trading day does to your orders, and how you connect |
| II. Orders | The trader console, every order type and time in force, combo orders, and the idea of implied orders |
| III. Market making | What a market maker does, quote obligations and lifecycle, and the market-maker bot |
| IV. Automated trading | The AI trader bots, and how they decide what to trade |
| V. Positions and results | Position tracking, average cost, realized and unrealized P&L |
| VI. Front-ends | TapeDeck, the Trading GUI and the Order Book Viewer |
Where to start¶
- New to trading: read Part I in order — especially The Order Book. Everything else builds on it.
- Comfortable with markets: start at The Trader Console and Order Types, and dip into the rest as questions come up.
- Prefer exercises: the Training Guide covers the same ground as hands-on lessons and links back here for the explanations.
Who configures what
Many rules you meet as a trader — price collars, order-size limits, circuit breakers, the trading timetable, market-maker obligations — are set by the operator in the exchange's configuration. This book explains how they affect you; the Operator's Guide explains how they are set.