The loop that makes you profitable
Day 26 of 26 · 8 min read · By DT Terminal
Practise in the backtester, trade small with every trade synced from your broker, review, and check with a verified record whether you got better. This final lesson ties the course into one loop and a plan for your next 30 days. It makes improvement measurable; it does not promise profit.
Unlock the full lesson in the app
Worked examples, the quiz and the interactive tools are in the app. Free account.
The loop, in one picture
Every lesson in this course has been one piece of a single loop. You practise a plan where mistakes are free. You trade it for real, small, with every trade recorded by your broker. You review what happened and find the one thing to change. Then you check whether you got better, with numbers rather than a feeling, and go round again.
| Step | The lessons that feed it |
|---|---|
| Practise | How to read candlesticks (Day 2), Market structure (Day 10), Identifying supply and demand (Day 11), Identifying fair value gaps (Day 12), Liquidity (Day 13), Multi-timeframe analysis (Day 14) |
| Trade small | What you need to start, and the costs (Day 1), Types of orders (Day 3), How to choose your risk (Day 4), Market sessions (Day 5), Key news events (Day 6), Placing your first trade (Day 7), Prop firms and brokers, and the costs (Day 25) |
| Review | The math behind trading (Day 9), and the Week 4 lessons on discipline, emotions and reviewing your trades |
| Get better | The math behind trading (Day 9) for what a sample can and cannot tell you |
Practise: many reps, no risk
Practice shows whether a plan has an edge, and whether you can follow it, before either costs money. Run one setup, written as rules, over history until you have 50 to 100 trades, the sample Day 9 suggested.
Go live when the sample shows a positive expectancy after costs, and you followed the rules on nearly every trade.
Run one setup for 50 trades
Go deeper
Replay history bar by bar, from a random start date rather than one you remember, so you cannot cherry-pick a period with hindsight. Write down what you are testing and how you will know it worked before the first bar moves.
Come back to practice every time the review hands you a new rule: the next turn of the loop practises that rule first. In the backtester, use one instrument, write the setup in one sentence, and note the win rate, the average R and the longest losing run.
Trade it for real: small, and synced
The first live trades answer one question the backtester cannot: do you follow the plan when the money is real? Keep the risk at your plan's smallest size, on demo first if you are unsure (Day 7).
Have the broker record every trade, not you. A synced trade's prices, size, times, fees and P&L stay as your broker reported them, so nobody can edit them afterwards. Your notes and tags stay yours.
Connect the account you trade
Go deeper
A demo account syncs too, labelled Demo · Synced, so it never counts toward a verified record. A live account, or a funded prop firm account, is what makes the record proof.
Once connected, take your next ten trades at your smallest risk and check, on each one, that the Rulebook is ticked.
Review: find the one thing
Review turns a pile of trades into one decision. Ten minutes in the Daily Journal after each session keeps the record honest. Once a week, read the numbers: net R, win rate, expectancy, and how many trades followed the plan. Then find the group of trades that leaks.
The review ends with exactly one change: one rule a yes or no answers on every trade. It goes back into the backtester, and the loop turns again.
Go deeper
The weekly numbers also include average win and loss. Group the trades by setup, session, day and emotion to find the group that leaks. The lesson on reviewing your trades, in Week 4, walks through each of these in detail.
Do the Analytics read at the end of this week: net R, win rate, expectancy and trades by the plan for the last seven days. Those four numbers are the baseline the next month is measured against.
Get measurably better
Better is not one good month. It is the same numbers compared over samples of a similar size: more trades by the plan, a higher expectancy in R, smaller drawdowns. Real progress is steps up, with long flat stretches and drawdowns between.
DT Terminal ChartsSample account · D1IllustrationWorked example
Example 01: Two months around the loop
The worked example, with every number walked through, is in the app.
Go deeper
In the illustration the balance starts at $10,000, falls to $9,827 during the first losing run, and spends most of its 120 days going sideways or down. The climbs are short, often after a rule is added. A trader who judged it by any one week would have quit more than once.
In the worked example, the rule was practised in the backtester before month 2. Trades by the plan went from 65% to 91%, and expectancy from −0.03R to +0.14R a trade. Month 2 still had a run of 3 losses in a row. Because every trade was synced, the trader can trust the comparison, and so can anyone they show it to.
Prove it: how strong is your record
The last step is improvement you can prove, to yourself first, then to a prop firm or anyone else. A record proves as much as the trades behind it.
| Level | What it means |
|---|---|
| Unverified | Trades you typed yourself. Your word, on your own record. |
| Demo · Synced | A demo account syncing from the broker. Fills the broker recorded, but on simulated money, so it never counts as verified. |
| Broker-Verified or Firm-Verified | Trades synced from a live account, or from an account at a recognised prop firm, challenge or funded. One synced trade earns the seal. |
| Payout-Verified | A confirmed payout from a prop firm, checked by a person on the team against the firm. |
Your next 30 days
The loop only works if it turns. Here is one turn as the next 30 days. Tick each step off as you go.
Interactive tool
Your next 30 days
This interactive tool runs in the app, with your own numbers.
The habit underneath it is turning up: log a trade, a journal entry or a backtest every trading day, and protect the streak, not the money, this month.
Check yourself
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