Start a blind drill and Blind Drill chooses a lively historical trading day. The ticker and date stay hidden, the server releases bars one step at a time, and you trade with virtual money. Finish whenever you are ready. Your scorecard then shows your results and the moments when you broke your own rules.
The aim is to make a decision, see its consequences and examine the process behind it. P&L is part of the record, but it does not determine your discipline grade. A profitable trade can still contain a rule break.
Start blind or choose your day
A stock blind drill starts at the 09:30 ET open. Blind Drill selects from lively days: for each stock, the first two hours must have moved at least as much as that stock's typical day in the library. This gives you movement to practice through without making you hunt for a date. It does not mean the day will offer an obvious or profitable trade.
Crypto blind drills start at 13:30 UTC. The ticker and date also stay hidden until the session ends. In either market, future bars are unavailable during the drill, rather than merely covered on the screen.
If you want a specific day, choose a stock or crypto pair from the library, select an available date and set the start time. The library changes as recent days are added. Stock coverage is roughly the last month, with a new day added every trading day.
To learn the interface first, open DEMO. It is a synthetic practice day, not a real stock, and needs no account. You can try every control and the full scorecard before starting a trial.
Set rules before your first fill
Open My rules before a trade fills. The default virtual account is $25,000, with a maximum risk of 1% per trade, a maximum daily loss of 3%, a limit of 3 trades and a chasing threshold of 1.5% from VWAP. These are practice settings, not personal investment recommendations.
Edit the rules for the exercise you intend to run. After the first fill, they lock for that session. This keeps the grade tied to the limits you started with: a loss is not a reason to raise the daily limit halfway through the exercise.
Stock defaults use $0.01 slippage per share and commission of $0.005 per share, with a $1 minimum. Crypto defaults use slippage of 0.02% of price and commission of 0.1% of trade value, with a $1 minimum. These assumptions affect the simulation and its net results.
Control the pace and read the chart
Play advances the replay; Pause gives you time to inspect a decision. Next bar advances one historical minute. Playback speeds are 1, 2, 4 or 10 bars per second, with 2 as the default. There is no fixed session length, and you can end at any time. Time spent pausing is part of how you choose to practice.
The chart offers 1, 2, 5 and 15-minute timeframes. These change how the underlying minute bars are grouped on screen. A longer chart timeframe does not create more detailed underlying data.
Open Indicators to select VWAP, EMA 9, EMA 20, SMA 50, SMA 200, Bollinger Bands, Volume, RSI or MACD. The crosshair legend shows prices and indicator values. Draw line places a horizontal price reference; Clear lines removes those drawings. Full screen gives the chart more room. Your browser remembers your timeframe and indicator choices.
On a phone, the screen uses an app layout. A strip shows Day P&L and your position above a chart sized to the screen. The bottom bar contains Play, Next bar, Buy and Short. The trading panel has Order, Open position, My rules and Activity tabs.
Build an order around the risk
Choose Buy for a long position or Short for a short position. Orders can be market, limit or stop orders. You can attach a stop loss and take profit to each order, then inspect the preview before submitting it.
A stop loss belongs on the loss side of your intended entry: below a long entry or above a short entry. A target belongs on the other side. The interface checks the order details, but choosing a sensible practice setup remains your decision.
Size to my risk uses the distance to your stop and your risk limit to calculate the number of shares, or fractional crypto units. Set a stop first. The live preview shows the dollar risk, its percentage of your account, the potential reward and R:R. Moving a stop changes the distance being used, so read the preview again before placing the order.
You can add to a position, move its stop or target and close it. Those actions also matter to the grade. Adding to a losing position or moving a stop further away can break a rule even if the eventual exit is profitable.
Understand the fill model before reading the result
Market orders fill at the next bar's open plus slippage. They do not fill instantly at the last price you saw. A limit order fills at the open if price has already passed the limit; otherwise it fills at the limit price when the bar touches it. A stop order triggers when touched, with slippage added.
If a bar touches both your stop and target, Blind Drill assumes the stop was hit first. This is the conservative choice. A 1-minute bar contains an open, high, low, close and volume, but not the order of every trade inside that minute. The model cannot reconstruct a tick-by-tick sequence it does not have.
There is no Level 2, no tick data and no real exchange execution. Modeled fills are suitable for reviewing this practice exercise, but they are not evidence that a broker would have filled the same orders at the same prices.
The eight checks behind your discipline grade
The score starts at 100 and stays within a 0 to 100 range. Each recorded rule break lists the time and subtracts points. Your chosen settings determine the relevant limits; the penalties below are fixed.
- Entered without a stop: minus 20. An optional order field can still be required by the discipline check. Set the stop before entering if you want the trade to meet that rule.
- Kept trading after maximum daily loss: minus 20. The default daily loss limit is 3% of the account. Continuing after reaching that limit is recorded separately from the loss itself.
- Exceeded per-trade risk: minus 15. The default maximum is 1%. Check the preview and position size rather than judging the risk from the number of shares alone.
- Moved a stop further away: minus 15. Giving a position more room also changes the loss you initially accepted. The scorecard records that change.
- Added to a losing position: minus 15. Increasing exposure to an existing loser is a distinct action, regardless of what happens afterward.
- Chased beyond the VWAP threshold: minus 10. The default threshold is 1.5% from VWAP. The check measures entry distance against the rule you selected.
- Re-entered within 3 minutes of a losing exit: minus 10. Blind Drill labels this a revenge trade. The label describes the timing rule, not a claim to know your thoughts.
- Exceeded the trade limit: minus 10. The default maximum is 3 trades. Another entry can break this rule even if its size and stop are otherwise within your limits.
The grade checks these behaviors. It is not a complete assessment of a trading strategy or a prediction of live performance.
Read the scorecard without skipping the costs
The scorecard shows net and gross P&L, P&L as a percentage of the account, trade count, win rate, average R multiple, expectancy per trade, profit factor, largest loss, maximum drawdown, commissions and minutes in trades. A trade list lets you connect those totals to individual decisions.
R expresses a result relative to the initial risk taken. A result of 1R represents one unit of that initial risk; a loss of 1R represents one unit lost. Average R summarizes those relative results. It does not replace the dollar figures, especially when position sizes differ.
Expectancy per trade here means the average net result per trade in dollars. It describes the completed sample, not what a future trade is expected to earn. Profit factor divides gross winning dollars by gross losing dollars. Read that alongside commissions and net P&L rather than treating the ratio as a promise.
Maximum drawdown describes the largest decline from a prior account peak during the session. Largest loss concerns a trade, while drawdown describes a fall in account value. A high win rate can coexist with substantial losses, which is why the scorecard presents several measures instead of one verdict.
When you finish, the remaining day appears in grey. A blind drill reveals its ticker and date. Members can revisit past sessions and their recent average discipline score in account history. Demo results created without signing in stay associated with that browser.
Know what the market data contains
US stock bars come from actual trades on IEX, a US national stock exchange. Prices reflect those trades, but volume counts IEX activity only. It can therefore look lower than total-market volume on other charts. That matters when interpreting volume and volume-based indicators.
Stock bars cover 04:00 to 16:00 ET, including pre-market and the regular session, but no after-hours. During regular hours, a minute without an IEX trade appears as a flat bar at the previous price. Stock VWAP is measured from the 09:30 ET open.
Crypto pairs such as BTC, ETH and SOL against the US dollar use prices from decentralized exchange trading pools. Those on-chain prices can differ slightly from centralized exchange prices. A crypto day runs from 00:00 to 23:59 UTC; the clock uses UTC and VWAP starts at 00:00 UTC. Quantities are units and can be fractional.
All replay data is historical and at least one trading day old. Market data cannot be exported or downloaded. Blind Drill gives no signals or investment advice, and simulated results do not predict live results.
Give the next drill one job
Before starting, choose one behavior to examine: attaching stops, keeping risk within the limit or stopping after a losing exit, for example. Set your rules, run the drill and pause when a decision needs thought. Finishing quickly is not a requirement.
Afterward, read the timestamps beside the rule breaks before looking for a better entry in hindsight. Identify the decision you would change using only information that was visible then. Keep the next exercise focused on that habit. One drill, one honest grade, one specific adjustment is a practical routine to repeat.
Start with the trial, then choose a plan
A new email starts a 7-day free trial with every feature, no card and no charge when it ends. Paid plans offer identical features: $15 monthly, $99 yearly (about $8.25 a month), or $149 once for a founders lifetime seat, valid for as long as Blind Drill runs. Founder access is limited to the first 100 buyers. See plans and pricing for renewals, cancellation and the 14-day refund policy.