# What comes after a good backtest?

Strategies & bots · Where: Strategy › Results › Then practise it · Updated 2026-10-20

Practice. Then practise it points at three steps: run the saved strategy as a paper bot, review it in the journal at twenty trades and again at fifty, and only then trade it small. Every bot trade carries the bot name, so the journal can filter to that edge and compare its live R with the test’s.

## Step by step

1. **Run it as a paper bot** Bots › Deploy bot on paper money. The bot runs the same rules the test ran.
2. **Review at 20 trades** Filter the journal by the bot name. Is the average R near the test, and the losing streaks no longer than the test saw?
3. **Review again at 50** Twenty trades can mislead either way. Fifty that still read like the test is the first real evidence.
4. **Go small** A small live size is the next test, not a reward. The first live trades teach what paper cannot: how it feels to hold the rules through a streak.

## Good to know

- A test tells you what the rules did. The journal tells you what you did with them. The gap between the two only practice closes.

Web page: https://buildtrade.app/help/practise-then-go-small/