Paper-testing a strategy before a funded account touches it
Short answer
Point the bot at the practice account first. Every new Shifu member gets a free Practice account with practice money and no broker login — no card, no plan — so a TradingView alert can be routed end to end — received, sized, filled, journaled — before any real account is connected. Watch a few alerts land, check the size and the bracket on each, then attach the funded account to the same bot and turn on live routing. The alert and the bot stay identical; only the destination changes.
Updated: September 18, 2026
Create the bot exactly as you will run it
Dashboard → Bots → New bot: the real ticker, the real default size, the real sizing rule. A rehearsal with a different message proves a different message.
Route it to Practice only
Open the bot → Account routing and switch on the Practice account (it is there from sign-up, with practice money and no login). Leave the funded account off for now.
Fire the test, then the real alert
Send a test signal from the Setup tab and watch it land under Alerts. Then create the TradingView alert with the same link and message you will keep, and let a few real bars fire it.
Read what landed
On each alert: the size Shifu sent, the take-profit and stop it placed, and any refusal with its reason. In the journal: every fill, labelled paper. If a size or a level is not what your chart meant, fix the message now, while it is free.
Attach the funded account to the same bot
Account routing → switch the real account on, choose its size rule, and turn on Live routing on that account. The next alert places the real order. Keep Practice attached if you want to watch both land side by side.
- What paper proves: the link, the key and the message are right; the bot sizes the way you meant; brackets land at the levels the chart computed; a duplicate or a burst is caught; an exit alert flattens what the entry opened.
- What paper cannot prove: real fills and slippage on a live order book, your broker’s own rejections, and whether your firm allows automation on the account. Those belong to the first small live trades.
- The journal keeps paper and real fills apart, so a rehearsal never dresses up as a record.
Questions people ask
Is the practice account included?
Yes, and it is free: every member gets a Practice account at sign-up with no card and no plan needed. It needs no broker login and nothing real is at stake. Routing to a real account is what the 7-day trial and the plan are for.
Can paper and the funded account run at the same time?
Yes. Attach both to the same bot; each account has its own size rule and its own result on every alert, so you can watch the same alert land on both.
Do paper fills show up in my journal?
They do, labelled as paper, and kept apart from real fills. The routing-quality and speed figures in the journal are measured on real fills only.
Does a paper test tell me if the strategy is any good?
No, and it is not meant to. It tells you the alert is wired correctly and sized correctly. Whether the strategy should trade at all is your call and your backtest’s, not the router’s.