Lesson 14 Writing Your Demo Trading Plan

Produce a plan that someone else can follow and define actions for ordinary and disrupted conditions.

A plan is a decision procedure

“Be disciplined” cannot tell you whether to enter an order. A useful plan says which conditions permit an entry, which calculations determine size, what ends the trade, and what makes you stop for the session. Complete the workbook’s plan template using the course setup or another fully specified hypothesis. For the capstone, preserve the course setup as the assessed version; any variation should be logged separately. This keeps assessment comparable without implying that the setup is profitable.

Required plan decisions

Scope: Demo or paper account, account currency, eligible instrument, data source, chart timeframe, and time zone.
Schedule: Observation windows, news restrictions, daily trade limit, and mandatory time exit.
Setup: Exact conditions, when information becomes available, entry handling, stop, target, and invalidation.
Risk: Current equity, per trade loss budget, combined exposure, costs, slippage assumption, minimum size, and margin check.
Stop rules: Session and weekly equity loss thresholds, response to a rule breach, and conditions to resume.
Operations: How to verify fills and stops, cancel stale orders, resolve connection problems, and contact verified provider support.
Review: Journal fields, review frequency, strategy version control, and evidence required before any change.

Use 0.5% planned loss per trade, 1% total open planned loss, 1% session loss, and 3% weekly loss as the course’s illustrative limits. The training setup is stricter on simultaneous positions: one at a time. Its used margin limit is 50% of equity. When two rules overlap, apply the more restrictive one.

Plan for disruption

Before a session, identify a verified way to view positions and reach support if the main platform fails. A server held stop may continue to operate when a device disconnects, but you must verify the provider’s actual order handling. Do not assume every protective order lives on the provider’s server. If connectivity fails, stop submitting repeated orders. Reconcile current positions, fills, and pending orders through an available verified channel before acting again. If you cannot verify the status, record the uncertainty and follow the provider’s documented process. Duplicate clicks can create duplicate exposure.

Set process goals

A useful goal is “complete the pretrade checklist for every candidate during ten sessions.” “Make 100 USD every day” can push you to trade when no setup exists and is not a course requirement. Measure checklist completion, calculation accuracy, and honest record keeping.

Practice

Complete the one page plan, then rehearse three cases: no valid signal; a valid signal that is too large at minimum size; and a lost connection after order submission. Write the resulting action for each. Revise any instruction that leaves you guessing.

Check your understanding

After the four lessons in this module, complete Module 4 knowledge check from the course overview. It contains the three questions from each lesson with feedback after submission. Keep written calculations in your workbook.

Glossary

Equity: Account value including open profit or loss and applicable adjustments
Margin: Collateral required to support a position
Slippage: Difference between a reference price and the actual execution fill