Case: decide whether and how to start

The course ends with a question only you can answer: should you trade real money, and if so, how? Nobody honest can answer it for you, and there is no single right answer.

There are three sound outcomes: start small with real money, stay on the practice account for longer, or not trade at all. "Not now" and "never" are as valid as "yes". The goal is a decision made with numbers and a plan, not a decision to trade.

What separates a decision from drifting is that it is written down, with numbers, before any money moves. Waiting with a date ("I'll ask again after 30 more practice trades, in March") is a decision. "Maybe later, we'll see" is drifting, and drifting tends to end in a trade made on a whim.

So the test is not whether you trade. It is whether your answer, whatever it is, is on paper and has numbers in it.

A personal trading memo is short, about one page, and has five parts. The decision: start small, practice longer or not trade, and why. The money: how much you can afford to lose, and why. Sizing: risk per trade as a share of the account, in dollars, and what costs mean at that size. Limits: a daily or weekly loss limit and a pause after losses. The day you stop: conditions written in advance, plus when you review.

It builds on the one-page plan from A one-page trading plan, which says how you trade. The memo adds the two questions a plan can't answer: whose money is this, and when does everything stop. The limits come from Rules that protect you from yourself.

Every line follows the same test as the plan: a number or a yes-or-no condition that someone else could check. Marc's memo passes: 500 dollars, 1% risk (5 dollars), two losses and done, stop at 350.

Money you can afford to lose is money whose total loss would not change your rent, your bills, your savings or your sleep. "Total" matters: the test is losing all of it, not a bad week.

Four kinds of money fail the test, however tempting they are. The emergency fund: it exists for a lost job or a broken boiler, not for risk. Money due soon: next month's rent, a course fee in spring, a planned repair. Borrowed money: a credit card or a loan, because the debt stays when the trade is gone. And savings for a goal, such as a deposit on a flat.

What's left after all of that, if anything, is the only candidate, and it is usually small. That is fine: a small account is the honest size for a first real-money stage.

Nora's plan to move 5,000 from her savings into a real account fails at once: that money is her safety cushion, which is exactly why it feels big enough to matter. The emergency fund itself is built in our Personal Finance course.

Leverage means trading with money borrowed from the broker (the warning from module 2). Its danger only shows when you measure the loss on your account, not on the price.

Nora's memo: 5,000 at 10x controls a 50,000 position. A 3% move against her loses 50,000 × 0.03 = 1,500, which is 30% of her 5,000. A 5% move takes half the account; a 10% move takes all of it, before costs. Moves of a few percent in a day are ordinary for a volatile share or a coin; a currency pair moves less, but the leverage offered on it is usually higher.

The rule of thumb: the account moves by the price move times the leverage. That is why a sensible first real-money memo has no leverage at all, or shows the leverage as a possible loss on the account in plain numbers.

Nora adds a second problem on top: the 5,000 is her safety cushion, so a bad day would take money she can't afford to lose.

Risk per trade stays a small share of the account to the stop, as in Risk per trade: a small share of the account in module 3. On a small real account the percentage doesn't change; the dollars do.

Marc starts with 500 and risks 1%: 500 × 0.01 = 5 dollars per trade. A losing run of 8 trades, which is ordinary for any plan, costs about 40 dollars, 8% of the account, plus costs. The account survives the run and the plan can still be judged after 30 trades.

The temptation is to raise the percentage so that each trade "matters": 10% of 500 is 50 dollars, and the same run of 8 losses would take most of the account. The small dollar amount is not a flaw of the plan. It is what keeps the first real-money stage cheap enough to learn from.

Costs (spread, fees and slippage, from Where the money goes in module 1) are often a fixed amount per trade, so their weight depends on the size of the trade.

Marc risks 5.00 per trade. If a round trip, in and out, costs 2.00, the costs take 2.00 ÷ 5.00 = 40% of what he risks. On a 10,000 account with 100 at risk, the same 2.00 is only 2%. A plan that earns a little per trade before costs can lose after them on a small account.

Raising the risk to shrink the costs' share is the wrong fix. The honest options are: fewer trades, taken only when the expected move is several times the costs; accepting that this stage pays for learning the routine, not for income; or staying on the practice account longer.

Whatever the choice, the memo writes the costs down in dollars and as a share of the risk.

The most important part of any memo is the day you would stop. It applies the stop-the-plan line from A one-page trading plan to real money, and it is written now, while you are calm.

It has three kinds of line. An amount: the account falls to a set level, such as 350 out of 500. A behavior: two rule breaks in one month, such as moving a stop or doubling the size after a loss. A date or a count: a review after 30 trades, not before. Whichever comes first ends the stage.

Why in advance? After a loss, every line gets renegotiated: "just one more week", "the market was unusual". A line written beforehand is a promise from the calm you to the upset you. Marc goes one step further and gives a copy to his sister, so someone else can hold him to it.

"I stop when I've doubled it" doesn't count: it is a finish line for winning, with no line for losing.

The whole course trains one habit: decide a trade, or decide not to trade, with numbers and a plan, not with a mood.

Each module added one check to that decision. Costs come first, because spread, fees and slippage are paid on every trade (module 1). Orders decide the price you actually get (module 2). Risk is a small share of the account to a stop, and the size follows from it (module 3). Win rate, payoff, expectancy and drawdown show whether a plan can work at all (module 4). Charts and tools describe the past; none of them is a forecast (modules 5–6). A plan has to be checkable, tested honestly and kept in a journal (module 7). And the weak link is often you, so the rules are written before the money moves (module 8).

How it fits together: each module added one check to the same decision. The memo you write next is where they all meet. Whatever you decide, including not to trade, decide it on paper, with numbers, before any money moves.