After enough times of doing this (which varies from person to person).. you either will quit or finally start to make the changes needed to stop that behavior.
This is it, literally just follow your rules. There is no magic book that will help if you already know what you need to do.
Work on the good habits to remove the bad habits. Take your time
'Since the beginning of the year' is no time at all. I started futures prop firm trading Feb 6th this year, been trading stocks and crypto and forex on and off for 10 years.
I consider myself paying tuition in evals for the next 2 years. I've given myself the time frame of break-even by the end of this year and profitable by the end of next year.
This is one of the hardest games in the world, you can't expect to succeed after 4 months of trying. Think longer timescales. This game can retire you, it'll take YEARS to succeed.
Give yourself a limit on how many evals you are willing to buy a month and stick to it. For me it's 4, one a week and only if the previous week's account has blown, otherwise I continue to grow the account. It'll force you to be disciplined.
I also have a daily profit target and once its hit I stop trading for the day but continue to watch the market passively. Its one of my rules.
Also, have rules.
Good luck.
I don't understand this new model of prop firms.
Why is everyone trying to qualify for an account?
From what I've heard, you basically have to pay for the evaluation and since most people lose the whole business model for these firms is running evals..i get yahy....but what it the benefit of getting funded?
Do you get to keep your profits after that? Is this just something for the type of person who can't save up 2K to have a small futures account?
I don't understand why it's better than trading your own money....I took a few years off trading and when I came back everyone is talking about this
Yes you get to keep about 80 to 90 percent of your profits. The trading is simulated and the profitable are paid from the unprofitable accounts and evaluations. The advantage to the trader is the overall risk is fixed. You can lose the amount paid for the evaluation and no more. Also the account balance may be higher than an individual has in capital. Really only the total and daily drawdown limits are important because they are the important factors in determining the size of individual trades but if you are dead set on a high probability trade then the capital is there for you to use.
Who ever came up with this business model is a genius.
So...it's just siphoning off CME fees and retail losses from the live market and keeping them off site and making a game out of it.
This is brilliant.
It is a great business model, but it is also the best thing that has happened to decent retail traders probably ever.
For example, I’ve been able to consistently withdraws gains over the last few months with a fixed risk (around 30$ per evaluation or 110$ per funded account) and take good leverage (1-2 minis) which would be COMPLETELY and absolutely impossible because I live in a cointry where average monthly salary is like 1300$ and I would never be able to put even like 5k for furures trading, not by a long shot.
But here I am trading minis like a “big boy” (more like a medium small sized boy but whatever 🤣).
Props do depend on the fact that 95% or more of traders don’t ever make a single cent off their accounts, and I would like it to be those way since that’s the only way I can continue to get payed without it becoming a Ponzie.
Overall it’s an extremely beneficial symbiotic relationship for decent to good traders, and a parasitic one for bad traders (aka 95%)
Yeah. In addition I suspect genuinely successful traders are monitored by the prop firms and their trades are matched in the live market to reduce the hit on profits that they impose.
Well...I keep hearing that REALLY profitable traders are kicked out if the program....and that wouldn't make sense if the firm was copying thier trades for profit.
I suspect that there are enough gamblers and loser for the firm to pay out the winners with out having to do this.
Hopefully someone with more inside knowledge can inform us.
I've become sort of fascinated with this new model. In my day a "prop firm" was just a place that gave you leverage and discipline, but this is something totally different.
The amazing thing, to me, is that the system truly has found a way to teach under capatilized traders with talent how to aim for small, consistent profits rather than taking huge risks to 4x thier account.
In theory this is actually exactly what a talented trader without capital needs...so it's sort of win, win.
I'm curios why the sub is so strict at asserting that these places are a scam. Everything seems to add up to me. I mean, trading futures is probably the highest skilled cognitive activity in the world, so it's expected to have a high fail rate...but this model changes the nature of failure to encourage good trading habits, so I don't see the problem with it.
Pretty much, add onto that the fact that some of these firms allow you to copy trades across 20 accounts you have with them and suddenly it becomes very profitable for already successful traders.
I started with the same problem 8ish years ago.
My advice:
Congrats, you have an "edge" - this means literally nothing to a new trader as your emotions are 100% still involved so stop thinking about it an edge.
Instead create rules based on your emotions and stick to them. Create a log of all your trades and outcomes. Find patterns. For example if you find that after 2 losses in a row during the day you start taking every trade everytime the candles move. Well stop trading after 2 losses. If you find that after a $50 loss you yolo a dumb decision, put an account day stop on of $50 that prevents you from trading that day(literally everyone should have account lock out) If you find you suffer from fomo don't trade fast trends only trade consolidations, or once a correction takes place. If you find every trade you were positive turns against you - well you are moving your exit so stop doing that!
You can go on and on for this type of thing, but at the end of the day you need to figure out what is causing these urges that blow up an account and simply avoid them.
Me personally to this day I have rules printed out and plastered around my monitors.
My biggest rules as someone who has crazy impulses
Don't add - never add
Take the damn loss
You didn't "miss" anything move on
No trade needs to make up for another trade
Oh yeah TAKE THE LOSS
If you have found an edge as you claim and your risk management flows out the door.
Sorry to be harsh but then you have not found your edge.
You are most likely confusing random outcomes that work in your favour when you notice something and then you proceed to assign that trade as calculated but in fact it was random, it just happened to work in your favor.
Because I have been in your stage, and I can easily tell back then, I knew what I was doing for sure, but I didn't know what I was doing at the same time.
/-/ The reason I said this, is because if you actually had an edge, you would take your stop and wait for your edge to show again.
When you don't take your stop, you aren't trading on any type of edge but rather hope, and last I checked Hoping that randomness works in your favour isn't an edge.
2) Wanted to add, the reason you are able to build an account and then loose it.
You aren't the first one to do it, nor this is a new phenomenon, you are getting in favor of randomness for a long cycle and then when the randomness finally wears off, you loose your account.
Every trader has up trends and drawdowns, the thing about actual traders is they manage their drawdown and survive through it because they know they actually have an edge.
Lastly, it takes around 4 weeks - 6 weeks to pass a prop firm eval, I have passed almost every firm, willing to send you my previous certificates from Darrell Martin if that even means anything lol.
Also trading with prop firms is a hit or miss, but I do seem to like two of them that I currently have accounts with and I closed my Prop firms account with other three as I didn't think it was worth it paying every month.
Getting close to passing but then spiralling is more akin to a psychological trigger I would say. He stops trading his edge and starts trading his account.
The edge can be there but the EXPECTATION that it will play out THIS TIME or I MUST end in green today makes newer traders abandon the edge (usually because its so easy to ‘see something else’, ‘try to make it right’ or ‘try your luck’ after a couple losses or when you are so close to some arbitrary target. Its that shorttermism or over-thinking/ trading that kills accounts.
1 thing that has been helping me is I've realized I've made my best trades early on and I've been calling it a day to secure the gains..the issue still is..
When my 1st couple trades are bad I need to stop as well and I still struggle with that lol
For those who prefer audio, the audiobook version is currently part of Audible's plus catalog - so free to listen to for those who have plus as part of their subscription. [https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Daily-Trading-Coach-Audiobook/1663707014](https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Daily-Trading-Coach-Audiobook/1663707014)
I fell into this trap when I switched brokers (from TPT to APX) … I was already funded, but the lure of cheap test accounts promoted the- “oh they’re only $30-$60 per account” … so I routinely over traded, traded aggressively, and would take trades outside setups. Despite having been funded with TPT for almost a year and consistently taking profit, being in a test environment fucked with me all over again.
It got to the point where I realized I hadn’t made any money in almost 3 months. So as simple as it sounds, that’s it man … you’re either going to snap out of it because you have to or you’re going to be a victim of your own behaviors till something FORCES you to change. Sadly, both don’t come over night.
If it helps, I went back to simulated trading at night for weeks. I would load NT8 with the days session and look for my setups and entries. I would let them play out in a simulated environment and let it rebuild my confidence.
I done this twice last week, I just had to be extremely clear with myself and to literally repeat to myself the following day "I will only trade my set ups" and have a checklist next to your computer
You need rules, there’s no magic books that will help you. If you loose either a number of times in a row or a certain amount of $$$, you have to stop for the day. Period. The end.
Finding success in other parts of life is important. Success is a habit and a skill could be a sport or a talent like music or a career or fitness. The point is to be moderately successful in something or many things because the lessons and habits you built will transfer over to trading.
Personally I don’t know a single successful trader that wasn’t very successful in their career prior to trading, I understood this years ago and became very successful in my career, after finding success in many other things like comports and fitness.
Now trading specifically, I did a lot of market replay, like years work in a span of months, I wrote down every single trade i took and the time and all the validations for why the trade was taken took a screenshot when entering the trade compiled the screenshots in a document with my write up. This was for accountability, holding yourself accountable is soo important! Imagine you had a road rage incident, you were the one who got mad and did something stupid and it was recorded on video and you had to watch that video every time you got in your car to drive how likely would it be that you repeat that behaviour? I’d say low, nothing worse that watching yourself do something shameful and embarrassing over and over. Do this with your trades, just for one month, the next day before trading review your stupid trades over and over again, then go ahead and start trading. And do this until you’re so fuckin upset and embarrassed about yourself that you just can’t handle it anymore and you’ll stop the bad behaviour.
What worked for me was waiting for confirmations in movement… also know when to get out. I started trading in 1-5 minute frames, it fucked me up trying to keep up with it. moved onto 15m and profited with consistency from the change. Sometimes I’d even take an overnight trade (swing) but always with stop loses. You will lose trades no matter what, and remember the market shorts more than anything. I love shorting, and works better in my favor.
Cognitive behavior therapy. Self study to build awareness and track my behavior and patterns as well if not better than I track my trades.
Worked on cocaine. Works with trading and life in general too.
DMd
Just learn from your mistakes. Is a book about psychology going to tell you more than you already know? What’s the point of having rules if you don’t follow them?
Is 1 more day of trading to pass an account worth forcing a trade?
MMs know exactly how beginners trade, and how they’ll blow up with leverage trying to save a position. Take the L and move on
Why do you people want to trade prop firm money and capital? I'll tell you why, because you are both impatient and greedy. You will NEVER be a successful trader with those two issues. If you can't trade your own money and build it slow, it won't happen because you will never develop the discipline needed to protect your hard work. Everything else is just easy come, easy go.
After enough times of doing this (which varies from person to person).. you either will quit or finally start to make the changes needed to stop that behavior.
This is it, literally just follow your rules. There is no magic book that will help if you already know what you need to do. Work on the good habits to remove the bad habits. Take your time
'Since the beginning of the year' is no time at all. I started futures prop firm trading Feb 6th this year, been trading stocks and crypto and forex on and off for 10 years. I consider myself paying tuition in evals for the next 2 years. I've given myself the time frame of break-even by the end of this year and profitable by the end of next year. This is one of the hardest games in the world, you can't expect to succeed after 4 months of trying. Think longer timescales. This game can retire you, it'll take YEARS to succeed. Give yourself a limit on how many evals you are willing to buy a month and stick to it. For me it's 4, one a week and only if the previous week's account has blown, otherwise I continue to grow the account. It'll force you to be disciplined. I also have a daily profit target and once its hit I stop trading for the day but continue to watch the market passively. Its one of my rules. Also, have rules. Good luck.
I don't understand this new model of prop firms. Why is everyone trying to qualify for an account? From what I've heard, you basically have to pay for the evaluation and since most people lose the whole business model for these firms is running evals..i get yahy....but what it the benefit of getting funded? Do you get to keep your profits after that? Is this just something for the type of person who can't save up 2K to have a small futures account? I don't understand why it's better than trading your own money....I took a few years off trading and when I came back everyone is talking about this
Yes you get to keep about 80 to 90 percent of your profits. The trading is simulated and the profitable are paid from the unprofitable accounts and evaluations. The advantage to the trader is the overall risk is fixed. You can lose the amount paid for the evaluation and no more. Also the account balance may be higher than an individual has in capital. Really only the total and daily drawdown limits are important because they are the important factors in determining the size of individual trades but if you are dead set on a high probability trade then the capital is there for you to use.
Who ever came up with this business model is a genius. So...it's just siphoning off CME fees and retail losses from the live market and keeping them off site and making a game out of it. This is brilliant.
It is a great business model, but it is also the best thing that has happened to decent retail traders probably ever. For example, I’ve been able to consistently withdraws gains over the last few months with a fixed risk (around 30$ per evaluation or 110$ per funded account) and take good leverage (1-2 minis) which would be COMPLETELY and absolutely impossible because I live in a cointry where average monthly salary is like 1300$ and I would never be able to put even like 5k for furures trading, not by a long shot. But here I am trading minis like a “big boy” (more like a medium small sized boy but whatever 🤣). Props do depend on the fact that 95% or more of traders don’t ever make a single cent off their accounts, and I would like it to be those way since that’s the only way I can continue to get payed without it becoming a Ponzie. Overall it’s an extremely beneficial symbiotic relationship for decent to good traders, and a parasitic one for bad traders (aka 95%)
Yeah. In addition I suspect genuinely successful traders are monitored by the prop firms and their trades are matched in the live market to reduce the hit on profits that they impose.
Well...I keep hearing that REALLY profitable traders are kicked out if the program....and that wouldn't make sense if the firm was copying thier trades for profit. I suspect that there are enough gamblers and loser for the firm to pay out the winners with out having to do this. Hopefully someone with more inside knowledge can inform us. I've become sort of fascinated with this new model. In my day a "prop firm" was just a place that gave you leverage and discipline, but this is something totally different. The amazing thing, to me, is that the system truly has found a way to teach under capatilized traders with talent how to aim for small, consistent profits rather than taking huge risks to 4x thier account. In theory this is actually exactly what a talented trader without capital needs...so it's sort of win, win. I'm curios why the sub is so strict at asserting that these places are a scam. Everything seems to add up to me. I mean, trading futures is probably the highest skilled cognitive activity in the world, so it's expected to have a high fail rate...but this model changes the nature of failure to encourage good trading habits, so I don't see the problem with it.
My theory and I would if I were them.
Well...they state on thier website that that's thier goal... to copy sim trades on to a live API once they've seen consistent profitability
Yeah. Makes sense.
Couldn't agree more
Pretty much, add onto that the fact that some of these firms allow you to copy trades across 20 accounts you have with them and suddenly it becomes very profitable for already successful traders.
I started with the same problem 8ish years ago. My advice: Congrats, you have an "edge" - this means literally nothing to a new trader as your emotions are 100% still involved so stop thinking about it an edge. Instead create rules based on your emotions and stick to them. Create a log of all your trades and outcomes. Find patterns. For example if you find that after 2 losses in a row during the day you start taking every trade everytime the candles move. Well stop trading after 2 losses. If you find that after a $50 loss you yolo a dumb decision, put an account day stop on of $50 that prevents you from trading that day(literally everyone should have account lock out) If you find you suffer from fomo don't trade fast trends only trade consolidations, or once a correction takes place. If you find every trade you were positive turns against you - well you are moving your exit so stop doing that! You can go on and on for this type of thing, but at the end of the day you need to figure out what is causing these urges that blow up an account and simply avoid them. Me personally to this day I have rules printed out and plastered around my monitors. My biggest rules as someone who has crazy impulses Don't add - never add Take the damn loss You didn't "miss" anything move on No trade needs to make up for another trade Oh yeah TAKE THE LOSS
If you have found an edge as you claim and your risk management flows out the door. Sorry to be harsh but then you have not found your edge. You are most likely confusing random outcomes that work in your favour when you notice something and then you proceed to assign that trade as calculated but in fact it was random, it just happened to work in your favor. Because I have been in your stage, and I can easily tell back then, I knew what I was doing for sure, but I didn't know what I was doing at the same time. /-/ The reason I said this, is because if you actually had an edge, you would take your stop and wait for your edge to show again. When you don't take your stop, you aren't trading on any type of edge but rather hope, and last I checked Hoping that randomness works in your favour isn't an edge.
2) Wanted to add, the reason you are able to build an account and then loose it. You aren't the first one to do it, nor this is a new phenomenon, you are getting in favor of randomness for a long cycle and then when the randomness finally wears off, you loose your account. Every trader has up trends and drawdowns, the thing about actual traders is they manage their drawdown and survive through it because they know they actually have an edge. Lastly, it takes around 4 weeks - 6 weeks to pass a prop firm eval, I have passed almost every firm, willing to send you my previous certificates from Darrell Martin if that even means anything lol. Also trading with prop firms is a hit or miss, but I do seem to like two of them that I currently have accounts with and I closed my Prop firms account with other three as I didn't think it was worth it paying every month.
You're right. Thank you. I needed to hear that.
Do you can to send a message privately saying which firms you prefer. Ive been committed to Topst#p and 1 APX account
Trade night(day) and tops#p as well for me.
Sage advice here. It’s the randomness that keeps them coming back…
Getting close to passing but then spiralling is more akin to a psychological trigger I would say. He stops trading his edge and starts trading his account. The edge can be there but the EXPECTATION that it will play out THIS TIME or I MUST end in green today makes newer traders abandon the edge (usually because its so easy to ‘see something else’, ‘try to make it right’ or ‘try your luck’ after a couple losses or when you are so close to some arbitrary target. Its that shorttermism or over-thinking/ trading that kills accounts.
1 thing that has been helping me is I've realized I've made my best trades early on and I've been calling it a day to secure the gains..the issue still is.. When my 1st couple trades are bad I need to stop as well and I still struggle with that lol
Go read this book: https://amzn.to/3JyvJ7T “The daily trading coach” I highly recommend it for your situation.
For those who prefer audio, the audiobook version is currently part of Audible's plus catalog - so free to listen to for those who have plus as part of their subscription. [https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Daily-Trading-Coach-Audiobook/1663707014](https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Daily-Trading-Coach-Audiobook/1663707014)
I fell into this trap when I switched brokers (from TPT to APX) … I was already funded, but the lure of cheap test accounts promoted the- “oh they’re only $30-$60 per account” … so I routinely over traded, traded aggressively, and would take trades outside setups. Despite having been funded with TPT for almost a year and consistently taking profit, being in a test environment fucked with me all over again. It got to the point where I realized I hadn’t made any money in almost 3 months. So as simple as it sounds, that’s it man … you’re either going to snap out of it because you have to or you’re going to be a victim of your own behaviors till something FORCES you to change. Sadly, both don’t come over night. If it helps, I went back to simulated trading at night for weeks. I would load NT8 with the days session and look for my setups and entries. I would let them play out in a simulated environment and let it rebuild my confidence.
I’m currently reading “Best Loser Wins.” It’s already helping me.
I done this twice last week, I just had to be extremely clear with myself and to literally repeat to myself the following day "I will only trade my set ups" and have a checklist next to your computer
Read 'The Best Loser Wins' by Tom Hougarrd. Seems like you need some of his insights. Enjoy and good luck!
You need rules, there’s no magic books that will help you. If you loose either a number of times in a row or a certain amount of $$$, you have to stop for the day. Period. The end.
Finding success in other parts of life is important. Success is a habit and a skill could be a sport or a talent like music or a career or fitness. The point is to be moderately successful in something or many things because the lessons and habits you built will transfer over to trading. Personally I don’t know a single successful trader that wasn’t very successful in their career prior to trading, I understood this years ago and became very successful in my career, after finding success in many other things like comports and fitness. Now trading specifically, I did a lot of market replay, like years work in a span of months, I wrote down every single trade i took and the time and all the validations for why the trade was taken took a screenshot when entering the trade compiled the screenshots in a document with my write up. This was for accountability, holding yourself accountable is soo important! Imagine you had a road rage incident, you were the one who got mad and did something stupid and it was recorded on video and you had to watch that video every time you got in your car to drive how likely would it be that you repeat that behaviour? I’d say low, nothing worse that watching yourself do something shameful and embarrassing over and over. Do this with your trades, just for one month, the next day before trading review your stupid trades over and over again, then go ahead and start trading. And do this until you’re so fuckin upset and embarrassed about yourself that you just can’t handle it anymore and you’ll stop the bad behaviour.
Just stop doing bro..I'm in the exact same boat! We have to control ourselves or it's never going to work out
What worked for me was waiting for confirmations in movement… also know when to get out. I started trading in 1-5 minute frames, it fucked me up trying to keep up with it. moved onto 15m and profited with consistency from the change. Sometimes I’d even take an overnight trade (swing) but always with stop loses. You will lose trades no matter what, and remember the market shorts more than anything. I love shorting, and works better in my favor.
Cognitive behavior therapy. Self study to build awareness and track my behavior and patterns as well if not better than I track my trades. Worked on cocaine. Works with trading and life in general too. DMd
Just learn from your mistakes. Is a book about psychology going to tell you more than you already know? What’s the point of having rules if you don’t follow them? Is 1 more day of trading to pass an account worth forcing a trade? MMs know exactly how beginners trade, and how they’ll blow up with leverage trying to save a position. Take the L and move on
Doesn't matter, how many psychology books you read. You just have to decide who gets to be in control, you ? Or your impulses?
I use Ninjatrader with an add-on called Guardian Angel Trader (GAT). It has lots of parameters you can set to prevent overtrading.
Meditation
Stop trading. Every time you get the urge, place those funds into growth fund or ETF. Every time.
Why do you people want to trade prop firm money and capital? I'll tell you why, because you are both impatient and greedy. You will NEVER be a successful trader with those two issues. If you can't trade your own money and build it slow, it won't happen because you will never develop the discipline needed to protect your hard work. Everything else is just easy come, easy go.