Choose Your Next Book¶

Learning objectives

After this chapter you will know which book to open next for what you want to do, and in what order to read it.

You have run an exchange, traded on it, operated a trading day and deployed a configuration of your own. From here there is no single order: pick the path that matches what you want to do. A rule of thumb for the whole library: read a chapter when you have a question it answers, not before. Only the Training Guide is meant to be worked through from start to finish.

The library at a glance¶

flowchart TD
    QS(["You are here:\nQuick Start Guide"]) --> Q{"What do you\nwant to do next?"}
    Q -->|"learn by doing,\nstep by step"| TG["Training Guide"]
    Q -->|"trade, make markets,\nrun bots"| PG["Participant Guide"]
    Q -->|"run an exchange\nfor a class"| OG["Operator's Guide"]
    Q -->|"connect my own\nprogram"| PC["Protocols and Clients"]
    Q -->|"understand or change\nthe code"| AD["Architecture and\nDeveloper Guide"]
    Q -->|"leave a market\nrunning on its own"| AI["AI Traders and\nMarket Simulation"]
    PG & OG & PC & AD -.->|"look up details"| RM["Reference Manual"]
    TG -.->|"background reading"| PG & OG

Book	Open it when you want to…
Training Guide	learn every feature through exercises with checkpoints
Participant Guide	trade: order types, auctions, combo orders, market making, bots, P&L, the trading screens
Operator's Guide	install, configure, run, supervise and recover an exchange
Protocols and Clients	write a program that trades on, or listens to, the exchange
Architecture and Developer Guide	understand how EduMatcher is built, or change it
Reference Manual	look up one command, option, configuration field or term
AI Traders and Market Simulation	run a market that trades on its own — AI traders, hidden values, news — for days or weeks
How an Exchange Works	understand exchanges in general, without any software

Reading paths by role¶

Student learning to trade¶

How an Exchange Works, if markets are new to you.
Training Guide, chapters 00–08: placing, amending and cancelling orders, order types, time in force and auctions.
Participant Guide, as background whenever an exercise raises a question — start with The Order Book and Order Types.

Instructor running a class¶

Operator's Guide, Parts I–III: installation, configuration and Running the Exchange.
Operator's Guide, Session Scheduling and Auctions and Risk Controls.
Training Guide, chapters 00–19, to know exactly what your students will do.
AI Traders and Market Simulation, to make a classroom market look alive — or leave one running all term.

Market maker¶

Participant Guide, Part III: Market-Maker Quotes, Market Making and The Market-Maker Bot.
Training Guide, chapter 09 (Market Making) and chapter 21 (bot tuning).

Operator or supervisor¶

Operator's Guide, Running the Exchange and The Admin Console and Exchange Commands.
Risk Controls, then Part VI: persistence, the audit trail and the log server.

Analyst or auditor¶

Participant Guide, Positions and P&L.
Operator's Guide, Statistics and Reporting, Audit Trail and Audit Replay.

Developer of a client, feed handler or dashboard¶

Protocols and Clients, Protocols Overview, which tells you which protocol fits your purpose. For a dashboard the REST and WebSocket API is usually the right answer.
The specification of that protocol in Part II, and the session behavior chapter in Part III.
Training Guide, chapters 22–27, for exercises against a live gateway.

Contributor to EduMatcher itself¶

Architecture and Developer Guide, Architecture and the Guided Tour.
Development Practice and The Development Loop.

Depth by interest¶

Automated traders. Bots are the easiest way to get a book that looks alive without typing orders: see the Participant Guide's AI Traders and The Market-Maker Bot.

The internals. The Architecture and Developer Guide's Order Book Deep Dive and Order Flow Through the Engine follow one order through the code.

Everything at once. The Training Guide covers every feature, in order, 29 chapters.