From Free Trial to Live: Automate Your First Strategy in 7 Days

Day 1: pipeline before strategy

Resist configuring your strategy first. Day one is plumbing: create the account, connect a demo terminal (install the EA or deploy a cloud terminal), and fire a test from the webhook tester. The goal is one EXECUTED signal in the feed and one position on the demo terminal. Every problem you will ever have is easier to solve today, with a test signal, than on day six with your strategy attached.

Days 2-3: the strategy goes live on demo

Build the alert in the Alert Builder - action, sizing, stop, target, and management - and attach it to your TradingView strategy or indicator. Then let it run on demo and do nothing. The urge to intervene is the thing you are training out: automation only works if the system trades and you observe.

While it runs, configure the guard layer: 1% risk-based sizing, a 4% daily loss limit, max open trades, the news filter, and trading hours matching your strategy sessions. Guards configured during calm days protect you on the chaotic ones.

Days 4-5: audit everything

Read the signal feed against the TradingView chart: every alert that fired should have executed or been skipped with a reason you agree with. Check entries against intended prices (spread and latency show up here), stops and targets placed correctly, and any multi-TP or breakeven behavior doing what you configured. Two full days of live-market demo evidence is the minimum that means anything - a quiet Tuesday alone proves nothing.

This is also when you discover strategy-message mismatches: an indicator alert that needed strategy placeholders, a symbol your broker names differently, a TP inside the broker minimum stop distance. Fix them now, on demo, at zero cost.

Days 6-7: the smallest possible live step

If the demo audit is clean, go live at minimum size - 0.01 lots or the smallest risk your account allows - with the guards unchanged. The first live days are not about profit; they are about confirming the pipeline behaves identically with real money, real spreads, and your real broker. Scale only after a clean week, and scale sizing before you scale strategy count.

What the week actually bought you: not a profitable bot - no week proves that - but a verified pipeline, a guard layer you trust, and the observational discipline that separates automated traders from people who own a bot. The strategy can now earn its track record safely.