Take a strategy to real money

The checklist between a paper result and a live run, with the mistakes the first real-money runs made at each step.

Real money is the same strategy on a live project's wallets. Nothing about the code changes. Everything about the stakes does.

1. Earn it on paper

   Backtest the window you have, then an earlier one. If it made money in only one, it may have been the window. Compare with holding the market. Then run it on its own paper book for at least a day and check, in the Log, that it decides as its backtest did.

2. Size it for the wallet, not the starter

   Starter sizes are paper sizes. The Funding fade starter defaults to $500 of notional, which a live run would send as is from a $15 wallet. Set every size from what each wallet holds and the leverage you'll run. Keep each perp order over the venue's minimum: Hyperliquid refuses an order under $10.

3. Cage it

   Give every entry an exit. Put a stop and a take-profit on the run itself. Add an invariants block with a drawdown, a daily loss and a trade count, and flatten and pause on a breach. Test the cage with a written test case.

4. Check the venue takes you

   Make sure each venue accepts orders from your wallets before you deposit. Deposits to Hyperliquid are at least 5 USDC, from Arbitrum.

5. Go live, deliberately

   Stop the project's paper runs first: when a project goes live, its running strategies trade live at the sizes they had. Switch the project to live, turn on each wallet's perps mainnet if it trades perps, and fund the wallets.

6. Start small and watch

   Run it on one wallet. Check its first fills against the venue, read the Log's problems after the first hour, and add a dashboard.

7. Know how it stops

   Stopping a run leaves positions open. Know how you'll close them (the perps panel, or close out) before you start.

A caged perp trend#

Sized by a setting, flat on the slow cross, with risk limits that flatten and pause it:

uses { bars: "^1", perp: "^1" }
// params: fast=20, slow=50, usd=15
const close = bars.close(market, interval);
const f = ema(close, fast);
const s = ema(close, slow);
metric("fast", f);
metric("slow", s);
when (crossover(f, s)) { perp.long({ usd: usd }); }
when (crossunder(f, s)) { perp.close({}); }
invariants {
  drawdown() <= pct(5);
  dailyLoss() <= 10;
  trades.perDay() <= 6;
  on_breach: flatten_and_pause;
}

Run it on Hyperliquid ETH, 1h bars, with a 3% stop and a 5% take-profit, on one wallet, with usd at least 10 and at most what the wallet holds times the leverage.

Who can switch a project to live#

Only you. An AI connection or API key can trade live only if you allowed it, once, when you connected it or on the AI & API page. Without that, anything that would send or arm a live trade is refused with a message saying where to allow it. See API keys and session keys.