Your first week

A useful first week is deliberately unambitious. Open a demo account, pick one market, and place small trades with a written plan for each: why you entered, where the stop-loss sits, and what would make you close. The aim is not profit — demo profit means nothing — it is building the habit loop of plan, execute, record, review, so that the process is automatic before real money raises the emotional stakes.

When you do go live, the first deposit is tuition rather than capital. Fund it with an amount whose complete loss would irritate you and change nothing else about your life, and keep position sizes small enough that no single trade matters much. Consistency compounds in a way that large wins do not: steady small returns on a surviving account beat spectacular gains on an account that eventually blows up.