The 90-day roadmap

“I’ll go live when I feel ready.” It is a common plan, and it tends to mean going live after your best demo week, with too much size. This course replaces that feeling with a plan you can tick off.

Why “when I feel ready” goes wrong

Risk per trade:

After 10 losses in a row

Gain needed to get back to the start

For comparison: at 1% you keep 90%, at 5% you keep 60%, at 10% you keep 35%.

Long losing streaks happen to every method. At 3% risk a normal streak takes a large bite; slide down to 0.5% and the same streak barely shows.

Feeling ready is not a measurement. Confidence peaks after a run of wins, which is exactly when traders raise their size (the fear and greed lesson shows why). So “ready” usually means going live at the worst moment, with the most risk.

A losing streak then arrives, because it always does. With a 40% win rate, a run of six losses somewhere in 100 trades is more likely than not. What decides the damage is your risk per trade: the share of the account you lose when a stop is hit. A fixed plan keeps that number small until your own record says otherwise.

Three phases, unlocked by milestones

The plan runs for about 90 days at roughly 45 minutes a day, five days a week: around 48 hours in total.

Days 1–30: learn and set up. Finish the core courses, open a demo account, set up a clean chart and write a one-page strategy. Move on when all five milestones are ticked.
Days 31–60: demo with real rules. Check every trade, journal every trade, complete 30 rule-following trades and review the month. Move on when all four are ticked.
Days 61–90: live, small. Pass the readiness check first. Then take 20 live trades at 0.25–0.5% risk, keep a daily loss limit and do your first monthly review.

Phase 1 builds on courses you may already have taken: Forex Foundations, Risk & Money Management and Trading Strategies. If you have, tick those milestones and move on.

Milestones decide, not the calendar

The day numbers are a guide. A phase ends when its milestones are met, not when day 30 or day 60 arrives. If you reach day 60 with 18 of your 30 rule-following trades done, you keep demoing. If you finish phase 1 in two weeks, you start phase 2 early.

The 30 demo trades are the key gate. They must be in a row, with every rule followed: a broken rule restarts the count. That sounds strict. It is meant to be, because the habit you are proving is following your trading plan when it is inconvenient.

What 90 days will and will not do

The plan builds a process: a routine, a pre-trade check, a journal and a small live account run by written rules. It gives you an honest record of how you behave.

It will not prove you have an edge, a repeatable advantage, because 50 trades are far too few to judge a method. And it does not promise profit: trading with leverage can lose money quickly, and many people who try it do. The plan is there to keep your mistakes small and visible while you learn.

Example: the cost of skipping the plan

Two traders each have $3,000. Both hit the same six-loss streak in their first live month, each with a 25-pip stop on EUR/USD.

Trader A goes live in week 2 at 3% risk. The first loss is 3% of $3,000 = $90 (0.36 lots). Each later loss is 3% of a smaller balance.
After six losses: $3,000 × 0.97⁶ = $2,498.92. That is −$501.08, or −16.7%. Getting back to $3,000 now needs a gain of +20.1%.
Trader B finishes the plan and starts live at 0.25% risk. The first loss is 0.25% of $3,000 = $7.50 (0.03 lots).
After six losses: $3,000 × (1 − 0.9975⁶) = $44.72 lost. The balance is $2,955.28, down 1.5%, and needs about +1.5% to recover.

Same market, same streak. A has lost more than 11 times as much as B, and is now trading under pressure to win it back. B has a journal entry and a calm next week.

The drawdowns lesson explains why losses get harder to recover the deeper they go.

Try it

Set your start date, then tick every milestone you have already met. Use the “How” links to jump to the lesson for each step.

Your first 90 days

0 of 13 milestones

Start date

The dates are a guide: move on when the milestone is met, not when the calendar says.

Days 1–30 Learn and set upNow

· 0 of 5

Finish Forex FoundationsHow →
Finish Risk & Money ManagementHow →
Open a demo accountHow →
Set up a clean chartHow →
Write a one-page strategyHow →

Days 31–60 Demo with real rulesNow

· 0 of 4

Use the pre-trade checklist on every tradeHow →
Journal every tradeHow →
30 demo trades in a row with every rule followedHow →
Review the month's resultsHow →

Days 61–90 Live, smallNow

· 0 of 4

Pass the readiness checkHow →
First 20 live trades at 0.25–0.5% riskHow →
Keep the daily loss limit every day
First monthly reviewHow →

Your 90-day plan. Ticks and the start date are saved in this browser, so you can come back after each lesson.

Notice how the timeline moves with your start date, but each phase’s ring only fills when you tick its milestones: the dates guide you, the ticks move you on.

Quick check

Question 1 of 4
What decides when you move from demo to live trading?
Question 2 of 4
It is day 60. You have 18 of your 30 rule-following demo trades. What do you do?
Question 3 of 4
You start live with $4,000 at 0.25% risk per trade. How much do you lose if your first stop is hit?
Question 4 of 4
Which of these can the 90-day plan honestly give you?

Go deeper: Forex trading for beginners: a 30-day learning plan · Forex demo accounts: how to use one properly · How much money do you need to start trading forex?