The demo record
Graduation is not a feeling. It is four conditions, and each one can be checked in a minute.
Facts checked on October 22, 2026
The question arrives in every beginner's second month: the demo is up (or down), patience is thin, and a voice — often a broker's email — suggests a small live account 'to make it real.' Sometimes that voice is right. The difference between graduation and impatience is whether four conditions are already true.
One: the record. Fifty logged demo trades at your real size, with three or fewer rule breaks, reviewed in writing. Two: the capital. Your live amount clears your market's computed minimum viable capital — or, if you are consciously running a learning account below it, the shortfall is named and the tuition capped. Three: the costs. You know your measured per-trade cost from the journal, and your cost stack at your frequency is under 2% of capital a month, or you have accepted the exact percentage in writing. Four: the budget. A total-loss figure for the education phase exists on paper, and losing it would not change your life — gate one, again, because it is always gate one.
The standard shortcut — 'just put $100 in live, to feel real money' — fails every condition at once: the size is below every floor (so the mechanics teach distorted lessons), there is no record requirement, and the feelings it teaches are the ones of a size you will never trade at again. Its real function in the funnel is conversion: a funded account, however small, is a customer. If you want real stakes during the demo phase, the honest version is a written consequence you control — not a deposit someone else profits from.
Almost nothing, by design. Same market, same size logic, same journal, smaller first positions if your rules say so. The traders who survive graduation treat it as a venue change, not a promotion. And keep the demo: when you later test a new market or a new rule, the demo is where it goes first — graduation is per-market, not a lifetime rank.
Run the checker with your numbers
The verdict gives you the arithmetic for your market and your capital. The Start-or-Wait Kit gives you the complete workbook: the demo-record audit (the 50-trade review grid), the staged capital plan up to your market's minimum viable capital, the 90-day learning plan week by week, and the real-cost tracker — the spreadsheet experienced traders build by hand, ready to fill in.
Included in the $39 Start-or-Wait Kit
Sources: FINRA Regulatory Notice 26-10 (April 20, 2026) and the brokers' own pages for the PDT tracker; ESMA Decision (EU) 2018/796 and the AMF restatement for European CFD loss figures; ASIC Report 828 (FY2023–24) for Australia; CFTC retail forex materials for the United States; Barber, Lee, Liu & Odean (Taiwan market data) and Chague & De Losso (Brazil) for day-trading outcomes; the FPFX Technology dataset of 300,000+ prop-firm accounts, reported by Finance Magnates (2024); broker-published minimum deposits and margin schedules as dated on the dataset page. If a figure has moved since our check date, the issuer's own publication wins — and write to help@doogex.com so we can correct ours.