Every cohort has at least one student who wants to go live with real capital in their first week. We understand the instinct — and we still ask them to hold off. Here's the sequence we recommend instead.
Days 1–30: Vocabulary and market mechanics
Before touching a live chart, get comfortable with how the exchange actually works — order types, lot sizes, margin, and how settlement happens. This sounds basic, but skipping it is the single biggest reason beginners freeze up the first time a trade moves against them unexpectedly.
Days 31–60: Paper trading with a written plan
This is the phase most students want to skip, and the phase that matters most. Trade on paper or in a demo account, but treat every entry as if real money were on the line — same position sizing rules, same stop-loss discipline, same journal. The goal isn't to make paper profits, it's to prove you can follow your own rules under pressure.
Days 61–90: Small, real size
Only after 30 days of consistent, rule-following paper trades do we recommend going live — and even then, at the smallest position size your broker allows. The objective in this phase isn't returns. It's confirming that your discipline survives contact with real money, which is a genuinely different experience from paper trading.
The habit that carries through every phase
One trade journal, kept from day one. Students who journal honestly through all three phases can usually point to the exact week their discipline started slipping — and fix it before it costs them. That single habit outperforms almost every other piece of advice on this list.
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