90-Day Development Plan

The 90-day development plan from Trade with an Edge gives you a concrete roadmap: when to paper trade, when to go live, and what milestones mark the transition. It's the system for learning the system.

Phase 1 — Months 1–1.5 (Paper Trading)

Goal: Gate compliance above 90%. Not profit. Compliance.

Actions: Run the Sunday workflow every week. Paper trade using TOS paper money account at your intended real account size. Log every trade in the journal with full gate compliance. Track the compliance percentage in your journal dashboard.

Advance when: 20+ paper trades completed. Gate compliance ≥ 90% (18 of 20 trades had all 6 gates green before entry). Win rate is secondary at this stage.

Phase 2 — First 10 Live Trades (Real Money, Reduced Size)

Goal: Experience the emotional difference. Survive it.

Actions: Start at 0.5% risk per trade (half the Phase 3 standard). Run the same Sunday workflow. Same journal. Same gate compliance requirement. The only difference: real money.

What to expect: The first time a real stop is hit, it will feel different from paper. The first time you override a gate rule under real money pressure — and you probably will, once — log it, name it, and don't do it again.

Advance when: 10 live trades completed. Gate compliance ≥ 85% (real money is harder than paper). P&L is secondary — compliance is the metric.

Phase 3 — Full Execution

Goal: Consistent execution of the system at 1% risk per trade.

Actions: Full Sunday workflow. 1% risk per trade. Journal all trades. Friday review weekly. Add the Wheel strategy after 3 months in Phase 3 (the Pro tier education covers this).

Milestones: Month 3: Add second concurrent position if Phase 3 compliance is above 90%. Month 4–6: Add Wheel strategy (if account ≥ $15K and swing compliance is proven). Month 6+: Evaluate adding Wheel Pro tier with covered call income system.

The Friday Review — Weekly Progress Check

Every Friday, 15 minutes, before the weekend:

1. Open the journal. Look at this week's gate compliance dots. Any red dots = a gate was missed. Name which gate and why. This is not self-flagellation — it's data collection.

2. Was every stop honored? Any stop that was moved or ignored is logged as a violation. The pattern of stop-moving shows up clearly when you look at 20 trades at once.

3. Did you trade off-list? Any trade that wasn't on the Sunday watchlist is logged as a FOMO entry. Count them. Zero should be the target.

4. R:R on closed trades. What was the average R:R achieved vs planned? If consistently closing at 1.2R when the target was 2.5R — you're selling winners too early. The trailing stop sequence fixes this.