Trader Koroush AK has laid out a five-stage framework for moving from beginner status to elite-level trading, built on three variables: strategy, risk, and mindset. In his model, strategy combined with risk produces profitability, strategy combined with mindset supports scaling, and risk combined with mindset determines whether a trader survives long enough to improve.
His central argument is simple. If a trader is not making money, the problem usually falls into one of three buckets: the strategy does not work, the strategy cannot be executed under pressure, or the strategy is not durable over time. That makes diagnosis less abstract. The bottleneck always comes back to one question: is it strategy, risk, or mindset?
Level 0 and Level 1: structure comes before profit
At Level 0, traders usually have no real system, only scattered tricks and intuition. They lack written entry, exit, and stop-loss rules, keep no journal, collect no screenshots, and have no usable data. Position size may swing wildly from one day to the next, while wins are credited to skill and losses blamed on bad luck. Koroush AK says the first task here is not finding a winning strategy. It is building structure.
That means recording every trade immediately after it closes, including entry, exit, screenshots, and emotional state. It also means setting a routine of 2 hours a day, 5 days a week, for trading or studying, while keeping sleep, diet, and exercise in order. For capital, he caps the maximum portfolio size at $100. The first 30 trades are not meant to generate profit; they are meant to create a repeatable process.
At Level 1, the trader starts learning support and resistance, candlestick structure, and market behavior. Exchange setup, order types, and fund security also become part of the skill set. This is where basic entry triggers, stop losses, and take-profit rules begin to take shape. A strategy exists now, but it is still unstable, and many traders stall by jumping from one approach to another instead of refining one.
For this stage, the suggested portfolio ceiling rises to $1,000. The focus is still not on pressing size. It is on fixing risk per trade. Koroush AK gives 1% of account equity as a reasonable starting point and uses the position sizing formula position size = max risk ÷ (entry price - stop-loss price). The goal is consistency in execution, not income.
Level 2 and Level 3: turning clean data into a real edge
Level 2 is the point where a trader can follow rules consistently. Koroush AK describes it as a stage where more than 90% of trades match the system, journals are complete with screenshots and notes, and workflows include checklists and emotional reviews. Even then, the equity curve may still be flat or slightly negative. The issue is no longer discipline alone. It is how to isolate variables and improve the rules with evidence.
He places heavy emphasis on asset selection. A 10% improvement in choosing the right asset can improve entries, stops, and targets at the same time, while a similar improvement in entry timing affects only one part of the trade. Traders at this level also need to identify the market conditions that suit their strategy, understand expectancy through (win rate × average win) - (loss rate × average loss), and review journals by separating winners from losers. The method is repetitive on purpose: change one variable at a time, then test it across 30 or more trades.
By Level 3, the strategy is profitable on a consistent basis. He describes this as entry into the top 5% of traders: expectancy is positive over 30-plus trades, the equity curve trends upward, and the trader can tell the difference between a decent setup and an exceptional one. The question shifts. It is no longer how to trade at all, but how to deepen an edge without breaking the process.
Two priorities define this stage: active trade management and ongoing edge development. Active management is about protecting profits and handling exits with more precision. Edge development is about keeping the strategy aligned with changing market behavior, because excess returns decay over time. Koroush AK suggests broadening the playbook, for example by adding breakdowns and reversals if a trader has only traded breakouts so far, and introducing conviction-based sizing so stronger setups can carry more risk than weaker ones.
Level 4: scaling is a different challenge from getting profitable
At Level 4, profitability is no longer the main milestone. The system has to be scalable. Koroush AK describes this stage as one where trading can generate stable four-digit or even five-digit monthly income, portfolio size becomes meaningful, multiple strategies are used across different market conditions, execution feels highly fluid, and emotions remain controlled even with large positions on.
The work also changes. A trader is no longer just building a machine, but maintaining it, upgrading it, and stress-testing it. His scaling path is explicit: $1,000 → $2,000 → $5,000 → above $10,000, with at least 30 trades completed at each level before moving up again. Past that, the trader must think at the portfolio level, keep testing for new edges, and deal with liquidity limits that only become visible at larger size.
Mindset runs through every stage in this framework. Level 0 is about habit formation. Level 1 is the first encounter with emotions in live trading. Level 2 is about following rules under moderate pressure. Level 3 combines system and judgment. Level 4 is where execution becomes smooth. Koroush AK’s conclusion is narrow and practical: no single edge lasts forever, and the most valuable skill is the ability to keep developing new ones through process.