Learn market mechanics + options basics, get LEAN running, launch the journal.

• Market mechanics: order types, spreads, liquidity, settlement
• Options fundamentals: calls/puts, Greeks, IV & IV rank
• Risk 101: position sizing, expectancy, drawdown math
• LEAN engine running locally, first toy backtest with fees modeled
• Trading journal schema defined
• Site live + first 4 posts published (4-week cadence held)
• Milestone: explain a put credit spread P&L graph unprompted

Code 2–3 strategies, backtest honestly, run them hands-off on paper.

• Strategy classes: trend, mean reversion, premium selling, momentum
• Backtest hygiene: out-of-sample, walk-forward, bias catalog
• 2–3 candidate strategies coded + backtested with fees/slippage
• Paper trading live (LEAN + broker paper accounts)
• Dashboard v1: positions, P&L, strategy metrics
• Each strategy published as a full writeup with code
• Milestone: one strategy hands-off on paper for 3+ weeks

Fund $1–2k, trade the best paper performer, automate the review loop.

• Fund $1–2k; deploy best paper strategy at ≤1% risk per trade
• Weekly review ritual (30 min, automated packet)
• Automate journaling ingestion + alerts
• Identify first spinnable open-source byproduct
• "First month live" retrospective published with real numbers
• Milestone: 4 weeks live, process followed 100% (P&L is not the metric)