The full walkthrough — setup, risk, ranking, tips
This is a game. A realistic one — every candle is real historical data — but at the end of the day, a game. The point isn't to mint a P&L number that proves anything; it's to build pattern recognition, fast, on tape that actually happened. Take it seriously enough to learn from it. Don't take it so seriously that you stop having fun.
Before you start, you'll set a few things on the launcher screen. Each one matters:
Quick glossary: NQ = Nasdaq · ES = S&P 500 · YM = Dow Jones · "structural stop" = a stop placed at the recent swing high/low.
Number of days — 10, 25, 50, 100, or 250. The smaller numbers are volatility-filtered — you only get days with a meaningful opening range, since flat tape isn't useful practice. Pick 100+ and the filter is off, so you get the full historical pool from Jan 2018 through March 2026, including quiet days. 10 days is curated practice; 250 days is grind mode.
Assets — pick which index futures you want in the rotation: ES, NQ, YM, or any combination. Each instrument behaves differently — NQ is the fast tech-heavy one, ES is the broad market, YM is the slow industrial. Trading all three side-by-side teaches you to read divergences (when one moves and the others don't, that's information).
Top chart / Bottom chart — top is your context (5-min or 15-min). Bottom is always 1-min — that's the trade-resolution chart, where stops and targets get hit candle-by-candle.
Window start / end — what time range of the day you replay. Default is 09:00 to 10:30 ET, which covers pre-open auction through the volatile first hour. Widen or narrow as you like.
SSMT, FVG, ORB — three optional indicators you can toggle on or off. SSMT marks session sweep levels. FVG highlights fair-value gaps between candles. ORB draws the high/low of a custom opening-range window. Use them or don't — they're tools, not requirements.
SPACE or → — Advance one candle
L — Go long (buy)
S — Go short (sell)
P — Skip this day
ENTER — Auto-play after entry (lets the trade resolve hands-free)
This is where the game gets real. When you press L or S, a modal pops up with three decisions to make. These are the most important decisions in the whole session.
Pick your asset — if your rotation has multiple instruments, choose which one you're trading. The point values matter: NQ pays $20/pt, ES pays $50/pt, YM pays $5/pt. Same chart move, very different dollar P&L. A 30-pt NQ winner is $600. A 30-pt ES winner is $1,500. Position sizing is implicit in your asset choice.
Set your stop loss — three modes:
Set your take profit — three modes:
The trade summary at the bottom of the modal shows your risk in dollars and your reward at TP. Look at it before you confirm. If your R:R is upside-down — risking $400 to make $200 — that's a structural problem, not a setup problem. Skip and wait for a better one.
The horizontal lines that print as you advance bars are real reference levels — places where the market has historically reacted. Color legend:
The leaderboard is split into five trade-count tiers — 10+, 25+, 50+, 100+, and 250+ trades. The tiers are stacking thresholds, not exclusive buckets: if your session has 60 trades, you appear on the 10+, 25+, and 50+ boards. If it has 110, you appear on those plus 100+. Higher tiers are increasingly selective and the noise washes out.
How a session enters the board:
The higher tiers (100+/250+) reward traders putting in the reps; the lower tiers (10+/25+/50+) keep things lively for quick sessions. Same skill metric across all of them — win rate.
How sessions are ranked: three sort keys, in order:
1 · Win rate. Primary metric. Skill, plain and simple.
2 · Trade count. Tiebreaker when win rates match. Two players at 65% — the one who took 80 trades beats the one who took 50. Why? Sustaining a win rate over more decisions is harder than over fewer. Trades = exposure = commitment. We reward it.
3 · P&L. Final tiebreaker. Same win rate and same trade count? Whoever made more dollars wins.
When does your score post? The session is bucketed by the moment you take your last trade — not bar-by-bar. So a run that starts Sunday at 11pm and finishes Monday at 1am posts to Monday's daily board cleanly. Nobody loses recognition because they finished past midnight.
Within each tier there are four time periods:
Daily — resets each day at midnight (server time). Today's game.
Weekly — resets every Monday. The grind board.
Monthly — resets on the 1st. Where consistency shows up.
All-time — every opted-in session that cleared the tier, summed. The slowest needle.
Platform badge — when you set up your handle you picked a "Compete on" platform (X, Instagram, etc.). That just shows as a small badge next to your handle on the board — it doesn't gate which leaderboards you appear on. Everyone's on every board.
Don't take the rankings too seriously. They're going to constantly shift. The board exists to give you a feedback loop, not a final score. The trader you're competing with most is the one you were yesterday.
Yesterday's home run doesn't win today's game.
This is a game of probabilities. You're never going to hit 100%. Even a great win rate (60–70%) means three out of every ten trades are losers — that's normal. The job is to keep the wins bigger than the losses, on average, over enough trades for variance to wash out. Then sharpen, repeat, and stop checking the board between trades.
When the last bar of your last day prints, you'll get a summary screen with everything you just did:
9 stat cards — Trades, Wins, Losses, Skips, Win Rate, P&L, Best Streak, Avg Win, Avg Loss. The full picture in one view.
An equity curve — your P&L plotted trade-by-trade, so you can see whether you ground it out steadily or rode one big winner.
Auto-post to the leaderboard — your results submit automatically. Guest sessions don't post — nothing leaves your browser.
Screenshot the summary if you want to share it. Then click play again — the next session is one click away.
Real data, real decisions, no real money at risk — the perfect place to make every mistake you'd otherwise make with your real account. Make them all here. Then go trade for real.
CFTC Rule 4.41 — Hypothetical Performance
Hypothetical or simulated performance results have certain limitations. Unlike an actual performance record, simulated results do not represent actual trading. Also, since the trades have not been executed, the results may have under- or over-compensated for the impact, if any, of certain market factors, such as lack of liquidity. Simulated trading programs in general are also subject to the fact that they are designed with the benefit of hindsight. No representation is being made that any account will or is likely to achieve profits or losses similar to those shown.
Risk disclosure: Trading futures involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
Real data. Real decisions. No real money at risk.
Make every mistake here.