THE FIRST TEN: A PROTOCOL, NOT A DEBUT

Ten live trades run as one written experiment: PlayBook setups only, one position at a time, the full plan–journal–review ritual on every trade, and step-back triggers — committed now, before trade #1 — that send you back to paper without shame. A clinical trial’s protocol is the honest comparison. Before the first patient, the trial writes down: who is eligible, what dose, what gets measured — and, the part everyone remembers when things get emotional, the stopping rules: the pre-agreed results at which the trial halts, whatever the investigators hope. Nobody calls a halted trial a failure of character; the stopping rule firing IS the protocol working, and the data from a halted trial is still valuable, still publishable. Your first ten are a trial of one: your process, under real fills, at a fixed dose. The triggers below are your stopping rules — written now, while you are the calm investigator, so that the excited subject you may become mid-block cannot renegotiate them.

THE FIRST-TEN PROTOCOL · STAGE 10 · LESSON 4

THE TAKEAWAYS

• Eligibility: only setups holding a PlayBook page whose verdict admits them — MINE, or IN THE BOOK on stated terms (Stage 9). CANDIDATE setups stay on paper: the block is not where a page gathers its evidence; it is where a proven page meets real money. One position at a time, and the block trades only the structure class Lesson 3’s card admitted — if the PlayBook’s admitted setup needs a structure the cap rejected, the block waits. The protocol does not re-open Lesson 3’s arithmetic for a good chart.
• The per-trade circuit — no step skippable, in this order: (1) the plan card, written before the ticket exists (Stage 7’s spread plan card: setup, structure, the three numbers, the four doors). (2) The read-aloud guard from the PlayBook page, if the page carries one — Stage 9’s leash becomes a live habit here. (3) The ticket: one multi-leg net-limit order, worked from the mid, never legged, never market (Stages 2, 7, 8). (4) The fill report reconciled against the plan the same day — actual fill vs the mid, fees itemised, the toll journaled in dollars. (5) Management by the written doors only (Stage 8): profit, invalidation, time, max-loss. (6) The journal entry at the sitting: three tags, result in dollars and R, process grade. (7) The feelings file, separately (Stage 9) — Lesson 5 teaches you to read it at the block review.
• The pace rules: the next trade may not open until the previous trade is closed AND journaled AND graded — the block advances paperwork-first, so a fast market can never outrun the record. After any losing trade, the next live trade waits at least one full session (Stage 8’s circuit-breaker, extended to the block’s rhythm): the revenge window is a known hour in a known state, and the protocol simply is not in the market then. Ten trades at this pace spans weeks of calendar. That is intended: the block is a season, not a weekend.
• The triggers, stated as doors — pre-written, mechanical, not negotiable mid-block (Stage 8’s language for exits, applied to the block itself). DOOR 1, A BREACH: any trade the process grade marks BAD — oversize, unplanned entry, a bent door, a skipped journal — pauses the block; the weekly-review treatment (Stage 9: name it, price it in R, one guard written) must be filed before the next trade; a second breach ends the block. DOOR 2, −2R (−$284 on the example): pause for a full audit of the block’s journal — every fill, every grade, the friction totals — before any further trade. DOOR 3, −3R (−$426): the block ends, whatever the calendar says; return to paper for at least twenty compliant trades and a written block review; a second block is a fresh Lesson 6 decision, never an automatic reload. DOOR 4, LIFE: any Stage 0 line changes — work, debt, the emergency fund, sleep, a stop-sign — and the block ends at any score, green included; Lesson 1’s re-audit is the only way back in. Note what is absent from all four: embarrassment. Each door is the protocol collecting its data and stopping at the dose it pre-agreed.

WORKED EXAMPLE — STEP BY STEP

1. Trades #1–#2, the intended texture. Trade #1 is the stays-up debit from the sample’s PlayBook page, its guard — no ticket before a held close — read aloud at the ticket. It runs to its profit door: +$48, +0.34R, the page’s own printed mark; fees $2.60 journaled. Trade #2, a week later by the pace rule, is tuition: the shelf fails, the invalidation exit is taken as written — −$71, −0.50R, the sample’s own typical line. Running block: −$23 in market dollars, fees $5.20 across the two round trips. Nothing has happened yet, and that is the data: two trades, both GOOD, roughly flat — the process is holding at live weight.
2. The block meets its leak on schedule. The sample’s leak was early entry, and trade #5 is entered before the confirming close — a breach of the page’s guard. It exits at the profit door anyway: +$48. Process grade: BAD. Stage 9’s doctrine is unambiguous: a bent rule that pays is the most expensive win in the block, because it teaches the bend. DOOR 1 fires: the block pauses, and the weekly-review treatment is filed — named (early entry, the pattern’s third lifetime instance), priced (this time +0.34R; the review counts a paying breach at what it teaches, not what it made), and guarded (the plan card gains an initialled checkbox: ‘held close confirmed’, ticked at the read-aloud). Trades resume only with the filing done. (Running tally after five, for the record: −$69 market — trade #3 at the profit door, trade #4 at the max-loss door.)
3. Trades #6–#10, the ordinary road: tuition at the written exits (−$71, invalidation), a profit-door win (+$48), tuition again (−$71), a profit-door win (+$48), and trade #10 closed at the max-loss exit for −$99 — Stage 8’s door taken early as written, not the full −$142. No second breach; no door reached. The block ends because the count ran out, which is the quietest of its five possible endings and the one the design prefers.
4. The block’s final arithmetic, footed in dollars to the fill reports (R per trade is the rounded lens; the dollars are the record): market result −$214; contract fees $26.00 (≈ −$240 all-in) — against a budgeted expectation of −$341 and a floor of −$426. The block finished ahead of its own budget, and the review immediately distrusts that sentence: ten trades is weather (Stage 4), and the sample-size law forbids promoting it to a climate report. What the numbers DO certify is narrower and real: the block’s cost stayed inside the fence the calm investigator built.
5. The block review, graded in Stage 9’s order — process first, errors second, dollars last. PROCESS ACCOUNT: the nine GOOD trades, −$262 market — honest tuition at written doors; the sample’s clean trades were positive, this block’s were not, and the review records that without flinching, because a process account is allowed to be red. ERROR ACCOUNT: one trade, +$48 — green, and the block’s worst line, because it is the only one that taught the trader something false. The two accounts are never merged (Stage 9): the method is not convicted of the breach, and the breach is not acquitted by the process’s losses. THE DECISIONS the review may take: run a second block at the same size; return to paper to work the block’s named pattern (here, early entry’s guard gets its next thirty-trade judgement, Stage 9); or stop — recorded as a complete outcome. Not on the menu: sizing up. The second block’s question is ‘again, or not?’ — ‘more?’ belongs to a much later review, over a much larger sample, and it is asked on paper first.

THE STAGE 10 GATE — THE PROTOCOL IS THE SECOND ARTEFACT

Restating the gate from Lesson 1, now that both halves exist: Stage 10 completes on (1) the scored readiness audit and (2) this protocol, written — the eligible setups named from the PlayBook, Lesson 3’s sizing card copied onto it, the four doors printed with their equivalents in your own dollars, the per-trade circuit in order. Going live is not in the gate. A learner holding both artefacts who records the paper decision in Lesson 6 has completed the final stage of this course in full — and a learner who runs the block and is stopped by Door 3 at −3R has also completed it, holding the most valuable dataset the course can give them: their own process, measured at live weight, at a price Stage 0 pre-approved. There is no version of this stage whose successful completion requires a profit. There is also no version that completes on enthusiasm alone. The artefacts are the stage.

COMMON BEGINNER MISTAKES

• Admitting a CANDIDATE setup ‘just for the block.’ The block tests proven pages at live weight; candidates gather their evidence on paper, where evidence is free.
• Letting the market set the pace — a second trade opened while the first is unjournaled. The block advances paperwork-first; a trade whose predecessor isn’t graded doesn’t exist yet, so neither may this one.
• Editing a trigger mid-block. The doors were written by the calm investigator; a floor moved at −$300 is not a floor, and the review will price the edit as the block’s most instructive breach.
• Reading the block by its P&L. The review reads the process account, the error account, the friction line and the trigger log — the dollars are recorded last and weighted least (Stage 9’s order), because ten trades can’t grade a method and were never asked to.

CHECK YOURSELF

DO IT — WRITE YOUR PROTOCOL CARD

Fill the First-Ten Protocol Card (Downloads) in full, from your own artefacts: the funding page’s facts (Lesson 2); the sizing card copied across (Lesson 3); the eligible setups named by their PlayBook pages and verdicts; the per-trade circuit in order; and the four doors priced in your dollars — breach, −2R, −3R, and the life door with your Stage 0 lines named. Sign and date it. This card is gate artefact two of two: held alongside the scored audit (Lesson 1), it completes Stage 10’s requirements before any account decision is acted on — Lesson 6’s box is where that decision gets recorded. If any panel can’t be filled from an artefact you hold, the empty panel is the audit talking: route back to the lesson that owns it.