Risk warning CFDs are complex instruments. 74–89% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs.
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Academy · Stage 1

Real trading

What changes when you move from a demo account to real money, and the habits that separate traders who last from those who don’t.

Demo to live

A demo account teaches you the platform. It does not teach you trading, because nothing is at stake. The moment real money is on the line, three things change:

You hesitate on entries you would have taken instantly.
You close winners early and let losers run, because a loss on screen feels temporary and a gain feels fragile.
You start trading to recover, which is how small losses become large ones.

The fix is not willpower. It is a written plan with rules you decided when you were calm.

The trading plan

Every trade you take should answer, in advance:

1
Why this market, why now. The setup, in one sentence.
2
Where you enter. A price, not a feeling.
3
Where you are wrong. The stop-loss level, placed where the idea is invalidated, not where the loss feels tolerable.
4
Where you take profit. Or the rule for trailing it.
5
How much you risk. A fixed fraction of the account, commonly 1 percent, never more than 2.

If you cannot answer all five, you do not have a trade.

Position sizing

Position size follows from the stop distance, not the other way round. If you risk 1 percent of a 10,000 account, that is 100. If your stop is 50 pips away on EUR/USD, each pip must be worth 2, which is a 0.2 lot position. A wider stop means a smaller position. This one calculation prevents most account blow-ups.

Costs are real

Spreads, commissions and financing look small per trade. A day trader taking twenty trades a day pays them twenty times. Before adopting any style, calculate what it costs in a month of average activity and compare it with what the strategy realistically earns.

Risk of ruin

A strategy that wins 55 percent of the time with equal wins and losses is profitable in the long run and will still produce losing streaks of eight or ten trades. Sizing at 1 percent means a ten-trade streak costs about 10 percent. Sizing at 10 percent means it ends the account. Survival is the first job.

Keep a journal

Record every trade: setup, entry, exit, result, and how you felt. After 50 trades you will know which setups pay and which you take out of boredom. Most improvement comes from removing trades, not adding them.

Slippage, gaps and news

Prices can jump past your stop during major releases and at the weekend open. Guaranteed stops are available from some brokers at extra cost. Otherwise, reduce size or stand aside around events on the calendar until you have watched how your market behaves through them.

Psychology in one paragraph

You will not remove fear and greed. You can remove the decisions they influence by making them in advance. The plan decides the entry, the stop, the size and the exit. You execute. The less there is to decide in the moment, the less there is to get wrong.

RISK DISCLAIMER
Praevis publishes education and market commentary. Nothing here is investment advice. Trading forex, stocks and CFDs carries a high level of risk and may not be suitable for all investors.