Review of the Premium Trader Program by Funded Trader Plus

Review of the Premium Trader Program by Funded Trader Plus 0

July 2023 marks the beginning of a new era of prop firm challenge features. With the leading firms FTMO and MyForexFunds removing their time-limits from all challenge phases, firms who already offer no-time-limit challenges will need to “sweeten the pot” in a different way in order to attract clients to their programs.

Funded Trading Plus, one of the first firms to offer challenges without a time limit, announced on July 18, 2023 that they now offer a new “Premium” program for their 2-Phase challenge. Given the timing of this release, it seems this offering is a competitive response to the major change in prop firm time limit standards.

In this article, we are going to explore what the Premium Account is, how it compares to FTMO, and who this account benefits the most.

First, if you haven’t heard of Funded Trading Plus before, this firm came unto the prop firm scene around 2021, although the organization grew out of Trade Room Plus, a company live trade room that started in 2013. It is founded and run by professionals (no college-drop-outs in their young 20’s, here). I have immense respect for FTP because of their professionalism, transparency, and reliability. They have a kind and hard-working team who are happy to answer your questions quickly.

Funded Trading Plus has offered no-time-limit challenges since their inception. It was one of their main appeals and distinguishing factors. Now that the industry is shifting, it will be interesting to see how this firm differentiates itself in the coming months and years.

[PRO TIP: Use “DFX10” for a 10% off  coupon code on your Funded Trading Plus account!]

What is FTP’s Premium Account?

The Premium Account is a new, 2-Phase trading challenge, with a 8% profit target in the first phase and a 5% profit target in the second phase. 

The relative drawdown for the Premium Account is 4% daily and 8% overall.

There are no restrictions on when you can trade, you don’t need to use stop losses, and you can hold your trades over the weekend. 

Once funded, the profit split is 80% for you and 20% for the firm, with the option for weekly payouts.

funded trading plus premium program

One of Funded Trading Plus’ greatest features is its scaling program. As long as you hit 10% profit of your funded account, you’ll qualify to scale up. Most other firms require a waiting period, such as hitting 10% over 4 months (FTMO), but with FTP you can achieve this and scale at any point in time.

The Premium Account stands alongside Funded Trading Plus’ original 2-phase option, the Advanced Program, which has a profit target of 10% and 5% for the first and second phase, respectively. The Advanced Program has an overall drawdown of 10% and a daily drawdown of 5%, so if you like to work with more drawdown, the Advanced Program may be a better option.

The program is described as being designed with Smart Money Concepts traders in mind

[If you want a prop-firm passing, rules-based SMC strategy, check out my Scalping Course!]

They also offer one of the quickest scaling plans you can find.

For instance, you can scale up to once a day for a max total of $2,500,000. As long as the scaling target of 10% is in your account, you can scale. FTMO and MFF ask traders to achieve an average of 10% over a couple of months before scaling is even considered as an option.

The Premium Trader Program vs FTMO

FTMO, in comparison, still has the highest profit target at 10% for Phase-1 and 5% for Phase-2 even though they just discontinued their time limit requirement. 

They also have strict funded account rules regarding trading around news, needing to close your position to avoid holding it overnight or holding over the weekend. You can avoid these rules by switching to a “Swing Account” but you’ll need to use 1:30 leverage and the fees and missed order fills for scalping can get pretty costly.

Thus, if you’re a scalper or a day trader who enters around news releases, you’ll want to consider a firm like Funded Trading Plus over FTMO. 

Who is the Premium Trader Program For?

The following types of traders may want to pick FTP for their prop firm challenge:

  • Scalpers
  • Smart Money Concept Traders
  • News traders
  • Traders who are aiming to scale their accounts
  • Anyone who has been burned by their prior experiences with FTMO or MyForexFunds 

 

Overall, the Premium Account is one of the best offerings Funded Trading Plus has posted to date. If you’d prefer a one-phase challenge, check out their Experienced Trader Program or if you want to avoid challenges altogether, check out their Master Trader Program.

Remember, do your due diligence, look up their FAQ pages, and don’t be afraid to ask the help desk questions! FTP’s staff is highly reliable, quick to respond, and very helpful.

 

How to Actually Pass Your FTMO Challenge in 2023

How to Actually Pass Your FTMO Challenge in 2023 0

Who here has lost a prop challenge before?

No really, raise hands – that’s right, we want full class participation here. 

Okay, so it’s your first year of trading, you’ve learned a few strategies, likely ones with indicators, likely from some 20-something college dropout on Youtube. And I know what you’re thinking – wait, isn’t this guy some YouTuber who’s in his 20-somethings, who also taught indicator strategies? Well you’re wrong, I’m actually in my early 30’s. And please don’t “yuck my yum” – indicators have actually served me really well. 

Anyways, we were talking about you. 

So you’re mostly losing money month to month, and you’re remembering so fondly the days of joy and ecstasy when you do actually make a little money, and you conveniently forget about all those other days when you pulled your hair, cried tears of sorrow and anguish, and you told yourself, “I’m never trading a prop challenge again”. 

But you still cling to hope. 

And you still keep showing up

And despite allllllll the evidence saying otherwise, you say to yourself, after only trading for five months, “Yeah, I think I’m ready for a prop firm challenge.” 

You know where this is going. 

You’re going to fail that challenge and the 4 others you’ll take after it. 

And I’m not actually not here to talk about that experience. 

Trading for a prop firm, before you’re actually profitable or ready, is the duh answer to the question of why people fail their prop challenges. 

Lack of trading experience is the “duh” answer and it’s not what this post is about. 

Instead, today we’re going to talk about 3 reasons why you with your years of trading and your experience and your hard work, are going to fail not one, not two, but multiple challenges. 

And likely lose your funded account as well. 

By the end of this post you’re going to become enlightened of the crux of what is preventing you from reaching this prop firm trader status and with each one I’ll share with you a few remedies, so that you can overcome and finally stop this vicious cycle.

And if you stick around long enough, you might just find a piece of treasure hidden in this post. 

So, I often speak with a positive and mostly academic way of presenting information on this blog, but today is going to be a little bit different. I want to tell it to you straight and with a healthy dose of humor to boot. 

If You’re Going to Prop Trade, You Must Understand This ONE THING

Okay, enough intro, let’s dive in. 

I think before anything else, we need to cover a ground rule. 

There’s something you need to understand before we talk about why most people fail challenges. 

Here, let’s sit down, I need to make sure you’re not standing for this in case you faint. 

So, make yourself ready to receive what I’m about to give. (That sounds weird)

So, make yourself receptive to what I’m about to say. 

 

Ready? 

 

Prop firms are designed to fail traders. 

 

(That kind of hurt your hope a bit, didn’t it?)

stop losing money in the marketsWell, don’t worry, I’m here to catch those tears when they fall. 

But before we move forward, it’s time to accept that trying to achieve an idea of being a“good enough” trader is not what it’s going to take to actually become funded. 

And if you get fed up with prop trading and decide to trade with your own account instead, you have not failed as a trader, you’re just making a choice that fits your preferred style. 

So please, please, please, please, please, everyone just take a deep breath, stop being so hard on yourself. 

Trading is hard, it comes with a ton of a failure, so if you’re failing, you’re just having a normal trading experience. 

When it comes to prop trading, it’s not about being some kind of professional-level trader, it’s about being a savvy prop firm trader who can play the game and play it well. 

Prop trading is a game and by the end of this video, you’re going to be well-equipped to play that game and get around its rules. 

WHY TRADERS FAIL FTMO CHALLENGES

Okay, now that we’re back to earth and grounded, let’s get started with the 3 reasons why most traders will fail their ftmo challenge and how to remedy these problems so that we can overcome them. 

Reason #1: Trading With Strategies Not Designed for Prop Challenges

Reason #1 that most people will fail prop firms is that they believe professional strategies will get them funded. 

So many people, logically and rightfully assume that using a professional-level strategy will get them to profit, right?

WRONG!

I want you to remember this advice instead: learn from people who have exactly what you want and we are placing emphasis on the adverb in that sentence.. 

Don’t know what an adverb is? Well, good thing you’re becoming a prop trader and not becoming an English teacher. 

If you want to pass a prop firm challenge, then you need to learn from people who have also passed prop firm challenges. 

So a reason that a lot of people may fail is that they’re using these professional-level strategies that are not actually capable of hitting the FTMO target of 10% in one month. Or they just have a lot of months that are low-income, break-even, or lose. 

So one way you could remedy this issue is to avoid FTMO altogether and instead take a no-time-limit prop firm challenge, kind of like Funded Trading Plus (plus there’s a nifty 10% off coupon to go with it – Use “DFX10” at checkout for 10% off). 

If you decide to go that route, then you don’t even need to read the rest of this blog. Here’s your solution to stop failing with FTMO, you’re welcome. 

But even if you search the ends of the earth for a prop firm with as few rules as possible, you’re still going to run into either a rule, or an ambitious profit target, that’s going to make it difficult to just walk right in and pass a challenge. 

Therefore, it’s likely that the highly professional strategy you learned from some seasoned former investment firm trader will not be durable enough to pass your FTMO challenge. 

You may need to learn a completely different strategy, use a different risk management tactic,  or learn a whole other trading style that you have never tried before. 

Speaking of new strategies.. 

What’s that.. Oh, look, a 50% off coupon for my own FTMO-passing strategy. 

[USE “FULLPRICESUCKS for 50% OFF the DFX Scalping Course]

A plug for my own course, how completely unexpected!

 I’ll just leave that right here, do with it as you will. 

 

Reason #2: Not Using a Manipulative Risk Strategy

The second reason why most traders fail their FTMO challenge even if they have a profitable strategy is that they’re not using a risk management strategy that will take them to the 10% profit target . 

This usually means that traders will either over-leverage on their risk or they’re not using a savvy enough of a risk management approach that can help them manipulate their wins. 

So FTMO asks the trader to hit 10% profit within 30 days. 

If you take out the Saturdays and Sundays that you can’t trade, then you are left with 23 to 25 actual trading days. 

Some of those days you might not even get a signal for your strategy. 

So overall this is not a lot of time to work through a strategy. 

If you wind up in a losing streak, it’s highly unlikely that you’re going to get out of it by the end of the challenge. 

Most people can’t get by and do this by risking only 1% per trade unless they have a really high win rate and a really risk-to-reward ratio. 

So the logical next step, may be to bump up the risk per trade. 

Some people will risk 2 or even 3 or 4% per trade. 

And this can be really exciting when this works but it’s hella depressive when it doesn’t. 

If you’re more of a swing trader, you may be able to get away with risking 2% per trade so long as you have a high win rate or high return. 

But the more trades you take each week the likelier that bumping up your risk will just hurt you over the long run. 

Believe me, I’ve been here too. I have passed a challenge using  2% per trade, taking 2 trades a day most days of the week, only to get into the verification stage and then completely be blindsided by a losing streak and lose that verification. 

It is completely natural that strategies have losing streaks. 

Instead, there’s another way you can approach tackling this big 10% target. 

Try risking more when you win and less when you lose.

The most common tactic for this I see around the world of forex prop traders is to make sure your strategy can achieve a 1:3 risk to reward and has a higher than 50% win rate and then when you win, you take that 3% you won and apply it to the next trade, where you’ll be risking 3 or 4%. If that trade wins, then you’ll have passed your challenge. If it loses, then you just return to risking 1% per trade. 

So all you need to do is focus on showing up and then just get two wins in a row. 

Bam! Challenge won. 

Another tactic that I see that I also like to use for myself, is to have a variable risk percent for each level of the challenge. 

So for instance, starting out the gate I might risk 1% on a trade when I’m at that break-even balance. If I win and go higher, like hit 3% return, then maybe I’ll bump up my risk per trade to something like 2%. And inversely if I were to lose and have a 3% drawdown on the account, then maybe I’ll risk something like 0.5% per trade until I can get back up to that break-even status. 

This fluctuation is really useful when there are a lot of winning streaks or losing streaks and it can help you keep a more strong psychological mindset and not be too dissuaded by any gargantuan loss. 

ftmo challenge passed resultsAnd when you DO get funded…

Now there’s another important point we need to touch on while we’re talking about risk- You need to know that the slimy tricks that you’re going to play while you’re trying to pass your challenge are not actually sustainable when you are funded. 

Not in this dumpster fire. 

The biggest reason why most people fail to keep their funded account is that they continue to trade the same way as they did when they were trying to get 10% in profit in one month. 

Granted, this doesn’t mean that you’re not capable of having these really big winning months I’m just saying for your sanity when you start prop trading as a fully funded prop trader, just aim for a realistic 2% in the month. 

Hit that win, get your refund fee for your challenge and keep that around just in case you lose your funded account so that you’re never paying for more than one challenge account. If you have to start over. Again. 

My biggest tip that your greedy mind will likely scoff at and probably ignore is to just aim for 2% a month and be done with it. 

Go for consistency in profit, not massive gain, at least when you’re navigating the first few months of being a prop firm trader. 

Hope for the best, expect the worst, and maybe wind up somewhere in the middle. 

Reason #3 Trading With Fear

And the last reason why traders will fail their FTMO challenge is that from the first trade of the challenge they are stuck in fear. 

I have never won a prop challenge while feeling scared. 

Inversely, every time I’ve won a prop challenge or have received a funded account or got a payout, I felt confident that month and I trusted my strategy. 

When you’re feeling confident, you’re less likely to break a rule or seek to revenge trade or play around and overmanage your trade. 

Confidence comes from having trust in your strategy, not from doing cocaine while you trade, that’s just straight-up toxic behavior!

(I don’t know why so many people find Wolf of Wall Street inspiring, he loses in the end! It’s not going to work out for you, it didn’t work out for him. )

Anyways, you build confidence when you actually understand that your strategy works.

You need to have evidence that it’s profitable. This ain’t some whoo whoo magic, I’m not asking you to perform trust falls with your strategy. 

And the best way to gain that evidence is to:

1) Backtest

2) Demo trade

3) Trade it on a very small live account. 

Basically, have some experience making money on your strategy before you take it to a prop challenge. 

And maybe keep a meditation practice so you stop being such a reactive person.  Capisce? 

Conclusion

Okay, you read the title of this video, and you knew it wasn’t going to be an easy answer to swallow. I don’t doubt that at least twice while reading this that you probably thought to yourself, “I’m not going to do that!” But seriously, if you’re losing challenge after challenge after challenge, then just stop. Stop! Go back, find something that resonated with you in this post, and do it, do it today. 

Try something different as suggested by someone who has actually passed prop firm challenges. 

[Oh look, here’s one of my certificates from passing FTMOchallenges] 

Maybe now you’ll take me seriously when I say, please, review, go back, and find one thing to do today you can use to make yourself a better trader. 

You really don’t need to lose three more challenges in order to finally take this seriously. 

Your bank account will thank you. 

Alright, I’m done here for today, thank you for reading, subscribe if you want more insights into prop trading, and I wish you all nothing but the best of strength and luck with your own trading. 

I’ll see you in the markets. 

 

Take care!

How to Create a Trading Plan: The Definitive Guide

How to Create a Trading Plan: The Definitive Guide 2

Here’s a fun fact:

Do you know what people do when they’re blindfolded and told to walk 20ft in front of them?

This is an experiment done across many different landscapes and timezones, yet the results are always the same.

If you were to blindfold a group of people in an open space and then tell them to walk across to the other side of the field, they’ll start walking in circles.

It turns out, that humans need some kind of horizontal plane of reference, be it the horizon or buildings, to help guide a path forward.

Otherwise, the brain can’t fixate on a direct path.

You need to be able to see where you’re going.

So when you’re seeking to build skills as a trader to achieve consistent profit, having a destination in sight helps you get there.

Maybe you’re familiar with the symptoms of not trading with a plan:

  • you circle back to the same failed strategies or psychology time and again,
  • you do extra work finding new strategies or ways to become a better trader,
  • you change your mind about what you want or how you want to trade,
  • and overall, just second-guess yourself as a trader.

As the saying goes, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

Walking in circles isn’t just a metaphor, there are so many ways in which our brains use logic from the physical world to influence our inner world and the ways we think. So in order to guide your path to profitability, you’re going to need to develop a trading plan.

Whether you write a plan for each of your strategies you perform or a plan for each phase of a prop trading challenge, the beginning of every trading pursuit or goal you aim for needs to have a trading plan.

Yes, I’m implying a written document, not just an idea in your head.

While a goal may name the destination, your trading plan is supposed to show you some of the milestones along the way by listing what you should and shouldn’t do during each session, as well as what you plan on doing if you face unexpected challenges or lucrative opportunities.

In the world of trading where there’s so much movement and so many different assets changing direction all at once, you need to narrow in and define for yourself what you’re going to focus on.

You can’t trade everything you see in the market and make up a plan on the spot.

You need to create rules for yourself.

In this way, you are responsible for defining what you do and don’t trade and how you go about doing so. In this tutorial we’re going to go over what you need to include in your ideal trading plan. I’m going to show you a trading plan I’m making for the Funded trading Plus challenge, and we’ll go over different things you can include to adapt it for different trading goals.

The Components of Your Trading Plan:

  1. Goal
  2. Your Motivation/Why
  3. Strategy
  4. Risk Management
  5. Contingencies
  6. Log (Optional)
  7. Other Components

What to Include in Your Trading Plan:

1. Title

This may or may not seem obvious, but be sure to give your plan a title that makes sense for the role this plan will play in your greater trading career.

You will likely have a few different trading plans over time, so it helps to name them in a way that keeps things organized.

For example, if you are making a plan for a prop firm challenge, like the FTMO challenge, you can title it “FTMO $100K Challenge 2022”. Or if you name your plans for different strategy systems, you can title it according to the name of your strategy.

How to create a trading plan2. Goal

Next, your trading plan should immediately tell you what the purpose of the plan is, that is, what your goal is for trading this system.

Be descriptive, here.

Some examples:

  • Return on average 2-5% per month for 2022
  • Have 3 consistently profitable months in a row
  • Follow 100% of my trading strategy checklist rules for 21 days straight
  • Grow my account by 20% this year
  • Build my account to $50k within 5 months
  • Pass the FTMO challenge within 30 days by returning 10% of $100k

Notice how some of these goals have clear time-based or performance-based outcomes? Such targets are easier to track – you’ll know whether or not you’ve profited +2% in your account this month by looking at your brokerage statement. You want to be able to clearly say whether you’ve achieved your goal or not.

The reason for putting down clear numbers in your goals is not to constrict you, but to help you decide how you’ll design your trading strategy and risk management plan, especially the latter.

You can adjust these numbers as you go, but by having a target you can track how well other components of your trading plan help you meet your goals or not.

3. Your Motivation/Why

ALERT!

This is possibly the secret key to ensuring that you will actually follow through with your trading plan.

Anyone can write a plan and make it look like a good idea.

This isn’t only true for trading, but other big behavior-changing goals, as well. Think about fitness.

Here’s a simple fitness and nutrition plan:

  • Lift 3x/week
  • Jog 3x/week
  • Yoga on rest day
  • Go on an evening walk every day
  • Stick to a whole food plant-based diet, no sugar or processed foods

Seems simple, yes?

But performing this every week is the hard part.

The plan is effective. You will definitely morph your body into a healthier version of yourself by following these simple rules, but you will only achieve that outcome if you put the plan into practice regularly without fail.

Fitness coaches will often say that you need a really good “why” to help you sustain motivation while you’re still changing your habits and gaining momentum. Sometimes wanting to look good isn’t enough when you’re 5 seconds away from eating a chicken waffle slathered in high-fructose corn syrup after a long and tiring day of work as you pass an old favorite restaurant.

Better health and fitness reasons that will make you second guess short-term pleasure in order to achieve long-term freedom:

  • I want to be able to be there for my kids when they’re in college and stop feeling so winded every time I play with them
  • I want to see my abs for the first time in my life so that I can prove to myself that I have control over my body and my energy levels
  • I want to end this illness and see if I can use a safer and more effective approach in place of expensive drugs so I can live a vibrant life again

The pain of the greater loss needs to outweigh the pain or inconvenience in the moment.

Your trading plan is similar and your mindset as you execute the plan is likely going to have a greater effect on your results than the system rules.

I am diving deep on this topic for this guide because I want to emphasize how important it is to have a CLEARLY DEFINED MOTIVATION for pursuing profit from trading.

Your reason for choosing this highly risky, long path to becoming financially free as a trader needs to be so moving that it can make you second-guess acting out a trading mistake as you’re thinking about doing it.

Wanting to earn something like $5k per month won’t cut it.

Money, itself, usually isn’t the reason people want it.

Instead, it’s the options that money gives to life that make it so useful.

What can trading success help you feel or experience in your life?

Is it to be the first person in your family who isn’t indentured to debt? To afford a life-changing opportunity, like a professional degree? Is it to quit your job that makes you feel like you’re wasting away your life?

Make your motivation crystal clear. Make it emotional because it will be the emotion-evoking moments in your trading that will make or break your success – you need to be able to speak to your emotions in the language of emotion.

“Yes, I know I really don’t want to take a loss on this trade today, but I can’t let myself chance a bigger loss – I need to trade skillfully, otherwise I’m never going to get out of debt. Following my trading rules is key and right now they’re telling me to take this loss.”

I want you to begin thinking like that for every single move you make in your trading.

Your reason to trudge the path will help you prevail and learn from your mistakes. Give this one time and thought.

4. Overview of Your System: Your Trading Strategy

Usually, most traders focus all of their attention on this section.

That’s fair, you need a strategy that’s profitable for your trading goals, whether that means greater profit in the short-term or long-term.

However, I recommend keeping this as simple as possible. Your risk management and psychology will have the greatest effect on your ability to profit, overall, and other parts of this plan help you mitigate when those areas face problems.

For your strategy, be sure to include the main rules and principles that your strategy utilizes.

Your rules should define, clearly, what you do or do not trade.

For many traders, this could mean listing a specific set of candlestick patterns you trade, the main mechanics of an indicator setup for entry, etc.

Your trading principle should tell you what high probability situation you seek to use with your strategy.

Some common ones include:

  • Trend trading major/minor pairs
  • Trading a NY reversal
  • Trading London breakouts
  • Scalping News
  • Trading smart money liquidity setups

Again, like your trading goal, you should be able to simply and clearly understand the basis of why your strategy should work and how its rules were chosen to take advantage of the situation.

I think this is important to include, because you may find over time that your strategy rules don’t actually fit its principles. When you discover this, you can decide how you can change your rules or change your principle in order to ensure you’re only trading high probability setups.

Be sure to also include important technicalities regarding your strategy, such as:

  • The sessions you trade and the time you trade
  • What pairs or instrument classes you trade
  • The mechanics of your entry and exit plans
  • Your expected R:R and even expected win rate

 

5. System Cont.: Your Risk Management Plan

While most traders spend a ton of time fine-tuning and working through a trading strategy, seasoned pros know that the most important aspect of your trading plan is actually your risk management plan, which includes the ways in which you handle emotionally-charged trading situations.

So if you’re feeling like you’re running around in circles way too often, it’s probably because you’re spending too much time focusing on your strategy.

Stop that.

Instead, put your time and energy into learning about risk management, discipline building, and developing the ability to understand your own emotions and make systems to address them as they come up.

For your risk management plan, you’re going to want to include these key trade-related measurements and tactics:

  • How much of your account you’ll risk per trade
  • The maximum number of trades you’ll take each day
  • The maximum amount you can lose per day
  • The maximum drawdown you’ll let yourself experience with your account/prop challenge

To make your risk management strategy effective, these outcomes you’ve listed from above need to come with consequences. You need a plan for how you’ll address each situation and set yourself up to learn as much as you can from losses. You’ll also want to include in your risk management plan:

  • What happens when you exceed your risk per trade
  • What happens when you hit your max. # of trades per day
  • What happens when you hit your max. loss per day
  • What happens when you hit your drawdown

You’ll also want to add:

  • What happens when you break your trading rules

Your strategy and gameplan for what you do when you’re in a loss or breaking rules needs to cover two things:

  1. You need to create space between yourself and the trading desk
  2. You need to replace bad behavior with good behavior

Some ways to do this include:

  • No longer trading for the session, day, week, month, etc. – that is, take a break from trading because either the market doesn’t currently work with your strategy or you can no longer trade your strategy without breaking rules
  • Take time to review what happened – going over your trading journals, your account equity over a period of time, etc.
  • Learn from experienced traders how to manage drawdowns or improve trading behaviors/psychology – do some research
  • Make a plan to implement any tactics or behaviors for better trading performance that you learn from your research
  • Put the plan into action – schedule your tactics/habits, get someone to help hold you accountable, etc.

Make sure you write out a plan that works for you.

Think of this as a flow chart:

  • If X, then Y
  • If I break my rules during my trading session, then I stop trading for the entire day. If I break my rules more than two sessions in a row, then I stop trading for the entire week.

By having a “Worst Case Scenario” plan, you don’t have to rely on yourself to make a decision about your trading in the moment. You won’t likely be in the best mindset during a drawdown or some serious rule-breaking, so it’s better to make these plans while you’re feeling confident and in control.

6.  Contingency Plan

A trading contingency plan focuses on what you’ll need to do when things not necessarily related to trading go wrong, yet will still have an effect on your ability to trade with a sound mind.

In the contingency plan I created, I include a list of reasons for not trading, or at least reducing the frequency you trade or risk you take. These are contingent upon 3 key areas:

  1. Psychology – this would include any emotional states that affect your ability to make sound technical analysis or risk decisions. I would include here depression, grief, anger, stress, etc. Your worst trading mistakes arise from similar states of mind (anger can lead to revenge trading, depression can cause taking greater risks or avoiding setups because it doesn’t feel like trading matters anymore – it’s better to stay out during these transient times)
  2. Life – I included this category to cover any life events that can take away from your availability to trade – this can be weddings, funerals, change of jobs, moving to a new city, etc. It’s up to you to decide how emotional/physically you’ll be available and you can decide whether you want to reduce your risk, reduce your frequency of trading, or just stay out of the markets altogether until you’re situated again
  3. Personal – This last section is more of a grabbag for anything that doesn’t fit the others and may be individual to your personal life – for example, I’m currently pursuing a PhD in Business and will either stop trading or show up only for red news event days when I’m in finals for my courses.

Technical Troubleshooting

You also need to include contingency plans for what you’ll do when your tech breaks, the internet goes out, or any other trading resource is unavailable to use.

I promise you, if you’re in this for the long haul, you’re going to run into your internet going out or your computer/laptop/mouse/platform glitching or breaking on you while you trade.

The best plan is to always have a backup or figure out a place you can go to in order to set yourself up to trade for the rest of the session.

7. Optional: Log

Lastly, I included a log, but I don’t recommend using this unless you’re trading for a prop trading challenge or some other relatively short-term goal. An excel spreadsheet or software trading journal is a better tool for tracking your trades over the long run.

When you’re evaluating your trades during a challenge, it’s helpful to have your rules and strategy all in one place. By keeping a log of your trading outcomes on the same sheet as your plan, you’ll have an easier time deciding on how your plan is performing and whether you need to make any important changes.

8. Other Optional Components

The above categories and parameters will cover the majority of what you’ll need to plan when you’re setting yourself up for success while trading. However, there are a few other components you could  include if they are relevant to your situation. Feel free to also add others that you believe will help you.

The goal in creating this plan is to put everything you need to know to do while you trade, written down in one place.

Some additional things to include:

  • How you’ll break down your risk plan across multiple accounts
  • Equity chart as you track weekly or monthly balances over time
  • List of brokerages and which strategies you trade on each one
  • Worst/Good/Best targets for your performance goals
  • A “Retry” plan for when you should consider aiming for a retry for a prop trading challenge instead of completing the goal

I hope this article helps you organize your thinking and planning as you put together a working system for your success in the markets.

Your plan will likely shift, change, and evolve over time.

Instead of seeking to create the perfect plan, get yourself comfortable and familiar with the art of planning and gathering feedback from reviewing your plans regularly. This habit will accelerate your path to profit.

As always, I wish you nothing but the best of strength and luck with your trading!

I Passed the FTMO Challenge – Again!

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I’m excited to share with you all today that it happened again!

I passed a second FTMO challenge – this time with a 100k account, using only the Discipline FX Scalping Strategy as taught in the Disciplined FX Scalping Strategy Course.

I was able to pass a challenge with 10 trades over 7 days using a mechanical strategy. This strategy had an 80% win rate and returns 1.4 times your risk for each winning trade.

This challenge was a free retry after deciding to wait on last month’s challenge as my strategy took an unexpected dip and with the holidays approaching, I didn’t want to chance it turning around.

So let’s go over some stats of this experience:

  • There were 10 trades one of which was a mistake trade that got a little profit on another was just to capture a trading day – so really there were eight trades.
  • The average profit was about $1672 and the average loss was $1588
  • I took a couple of trades with E/J but basically, almost every single trade was with the A/U

Now, these were all scalping trades. I don’t think there was a single trade that returned more than maybe 16 pips – and while that may seem like nothing, and it may seem like that it must be on a 1m chart or 5m chart, this was actually on a 15m chart and these trades could sometimes last as few as 10 minutes or as long as a couple of hours.

That’s actually why I like Forex – it’s a slower-paced market compared to waking up and scalping stocks

FTMO verification passed

Let’s talk about risk

<< Want to use the same resources that helped me learn how to trade and build discipline? Check out the FREE PDF of the Disciplined FX Syllabus!>>

As with my last challenge that I passed, I used a variation in risk as the account increased.

So I started out with a 1.4 percent risk per trade. Once I hit that three percent gain mark, I bumped it up to two percent, and then for one trade, I took a 2.5 percent risk for that trade. since that got me up close to the profit target, I then decided to dial it back down to 1.4 risk in case there would be losses so that I can stay up in this profit range.

And then for my last trade, I took 1.1 percent risk on that trade where if I hadn’t won that trade I could go back to risking maybe something up to 2% where I wouldn’t feel uncomfortable in taking that risk because I had already risked those percentages before.

So it kept me in a comfy zone where, knowing my stats about this trade, I know it’s has a higher win rate than a higher return so I was willing to take a bet that within three trades I’d be able to hit the profit target so by risking less as I got closer I would just keep re-measuring how much money do I need to hit target and risk according to that 1.4 ratio return.

Prop Trading Psychology

This is a huge part of what will lead you able to stick with a risk management strategy or your trading strategy and I will say every time I take a challenge, while my discipline’s rock-solid, I have my moments. It is so easy to want to move take profit targets or take out a trade early to be sure to capture a win. That’s the one inconsistency that I run into when prop trading, although it didn’t happen this time.

I think going in with a strategy that has a high win rate helped to appease some of the anxiety around trading for a challenge that has a time limit.

Now if I was trading something like five percenters or a new firm which I’m going to tell you all about, called funded traders plus, these two have very realistic time limits on taking the challenge, I’d have stuck to a certain risk percent, like 0.5 or 0.75%. These longer-term challenge models are less stressful.

Let’s Talk About Risk Management Models

So I have 3 that I want to share with you. I’ve used them all before for different accounts, strategies, and challenges.

Steady

it’s basically as it sounds – you’re using the same percent risk per trade on every trade. if you’re trading something more short-term, like FTMO, you might have to bump this up a bit to make sure you hit that profit target – it could be taking 1% per trade or 1.5% per trade, or 2% per trade.

It helps to know the stats of your strategy. This is why I like mechanical strategies because I can pull so much data from them than discretionary ones. Because with discretionary trading, you never know if you’re not going to take the trade when it comes down to game time.

So at least with mechanical strategies, I can run many different stats on them (What days of the week perform better than others, what % likelihood a trade will turn around and profit after starting out in deficit, etc.)- I think some of you guys know I’m a Ph.D. student (so researching variables is my bread and butter)!

So if you know your drawdown, as well as an average return for the month, you can adjust your risk per trade to fit your strategy, while also being mindful of the 5% daily drawdown, 10%  total drawdown, and the 10% target that you need to hit so that could end up being 1-2% risk per trade.

Scaled

The second approach is a scaled model – this is what I use for this challenge where you might want to designate something like a low, medium, and high risk.

I started out with what I consider medium: 1.4% per trade.

Once I hit that 3% target getting into this profitable zone, I bumped it up to two percent and I was willing, if the balance went down, to go back to 1.4% risk per trade.

And if it went under, such as going into a significant drawdown, like down 5%, I would consider going down to 1% risk per trade or less.

Such was not the case – Instead, the count continued to grow. Once I got into that middle zone of over 5% return, I was willing to take a 2.5% risk on that next trade – it ended up being a win and that bumped me up close to the profit target.

That’s when I moved down to a low risk, so that was back to 1.4% and then after that trade, I just kept measuring how much money I needed to hit the profit target. Then I would risk accordingly. (Target – current balance –> divide by 1.4, and that’s what I’d risk on the next trade [this was usually under 1.4%])

<< WANT TO TRY IT FOR YOURSELF? Feel free to use my FTMO affiliate link >>

Market Dependent Model

The last model I’ll name here is what I’m going to call the market-dependent model of risking according to what you see.

So this would be better for someone who is using a discretionary strategy or knows enough about their mechanical strategy to say how it performs in different types of markets.

If it’s a more volatile market you may want to risk more or less depending on what you see and how your strategy performs in that kind of market.

I think this last approach is what professional traders usually use, (but then again they aren’t necessarily trading for a challenge)

 

So any of these three models can work – there’s no one good choice.

you have to know what works for your strategy – this is why I highly recommend backtesting to really get to know what your strategy is. Define the parameters of your strategy instead of saying you’ll just trade triangles. Get to know stats by backtesting.

To sum this up, the next step for me is verification. That has a 5% target instead of 10%. I’ll probably risk the same way I’m risking now with the scaled model – but maybe dial it back a bit. I could also take the full 60 days and just take a steady, small percent risk per trade.

If I pass that too, then going into a funded account I am planning on risking tiny and I’m expecting tiny targets.

I will be happy to stop trading for the month once I hit a 3% return.

but that will be for a later post. For now, I’m happy to celebrate this win and share it with you!

Why You Should Use cTrader For Your FTMO Challenge

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Welcome back to the Disciplined FX blog – my name is Andrew Bloom and if you haven’t met me before, I am a Ph.D. student in the field of business with a concentration in entrepreneurship and I’ve been a day trader for about four to five years and a day trader of forex markets for about 2-3 years. I also started Disciplined FX last year to help teach traders from all walks of life how to become profitable in forex markets while focusing on building habits that support discipline and using mechanical trading in order to develop that routine mindset when you’re actually in front of the charts.

[This post contains FTMO affiliate links]

So I’m going to make a guess as to why you’re here today – I’m going to wager that you’re looking for a good reason for either cTrader or mt4 mt5 and you’re hanging out on the fence there. You’re not really sure which one to go for as you’re submitting your FTMO application.

Personally, I believe there’s one very good reason why you should pick cTrader (See my post on their best features, here) instead of mt4 mt5 , the typical gold standard platforms for day trading any market, but the reason why isn’t gonna be why you think it should be.

Hear me out on this.

What Traders Look for in a Platform

Let’s quickly talk about what people are looking for in a platform.

So you might be looking for things like the ability to program your own strategies using expert advisors, or the ability to set alarms to use a variety of indicators. Now, these are all worthwhile elements of a good platform but something that I think really takes the cake is the ability to easily and intuitively place a trade at any given moment and ensure that your order will be submitted the way you want it to.

Ultimately, we want to make quick orders, especially if you’re a scalper like me or a day trader who is waiting for a very fine and precise moment to enter the trade.

Regardless of what platform you use you’re going to want to have an order form that you are comfortable with and able to use on the spot to put in your stop loss, take profit targets, as well, and you can trust that that order will be placed correctly.

Why Do You Need a Great Order Form?

So why am I focusing on orders?

The reason is that I don’t think you actually need to be deciding on a platform for your FTMO challenge because I don’t think you should be using FTMO‘s platforms.

Instead, I think it’s really useful – and this is true also in professional day trading – to use either your own broker’s charts or a charting software that you trust, such as Trading View, where you’ve done proficient backtesting.

You’re going to want to use another chart for making your decisions for your prop trading orders.

For me, I use Oanda‘s trading charts.

Why cTrader FTMO

It means I’m also using their prices which are relatively close enough to the kinds you’ll find on the FTMO platforms but what’s important for me is that I’ve backtested my mechanical strategy on these charts many, many times and I’m using that data to inform the kinds of risk percent per trade as well as statistical components to help me make decisions as to when, for example, I should maybe stop trading on a challenge and look for a retry if something unusual occurs.

I want to use Oanda‘s charts to figure this out because that’s going to be where that information is consistent.

What I do when I trade with FTMO or any other prop firm is just use their platforms as order forms.

I just want to set up the stop loss, take profit, put in the position size, and set it, forget it. Let it unravel on its own.

This is the reason why I think cTrader is the better option than mt4 mt5 – it’s because their order forms are so intuitive. They let you calculate how much you want to risk on your trade based on your account size. They do the math for you and most importantly they let you select your take profit and your stop loss based on pips – you don’t have to know the price ahead of time.cTrader

It takes out that step of having to measure your trade and figure out the price levels, which is such a boon when you’re a scalper like me and you’re thinking in pips.

Some Downsides to Selecting cTrader

Now, the one downside though to using cTrader is that you can’t use their mobile app for your challenge.

If you want to do more mobile trading you’re going to have to use mt4 mt5. However, mt4 and mt5’s mobile order form is like a risk management nightmare in and of itself. I do use it for my own trading because I’ve grown accustomed to it but I don’t recommend starting out on mobile trading with mt4 or mt5 if you’re just getting started with them for the first time.

As you take your challenge, however, let’s assume you’re able to sit in front of a computer. You’re able to use multiple charts. You can easily set your brokerage’s chart as your analysis chart, if you will, on one screen and use cTrader on the other where you can easily submit orders. The one thing i will recommend though is to be careful of jumping across different currency pairs as those orders will switch – they will go back to some kind of default order such as the last trade you took.

There might be settings to change this, but so far my experience has been to be sure you know what your orders are so that in case you’re jumping around, looking for a pair to trade with, you can change that order form again if it gets clicked out.

The Ideal Set-Up

So here’s the ideal outcome: you signed up for your prop trading challenge you clicked cTrader as your platform of choice. You’re using your brokerage’s charts on one screen and you have c Trader on another. You make your decisions on your own broker’s charts – those were the ones you use to backtest – and you just submit your position size you use your stop loss and take profit to calculate how much you want to risk for this trade. Lastly, you fill out your position size accordingly. They do the math for you right there and when you see the signal to go on your broker’s charts, you submit the order on cTrader and that’s it.

You don’t touch anything else. You don’t use their charts to trade with and it’s a very simple, quick process.

So that’s the number one reason why I suggest cTrader over mt4/mt5 is that you’re not actually going to use them as a platform. Instead, you’re just using them as ordering services where you can set up your trade position very quickly, easily, with the math calculated out for you and get on with your trading day or your day in general.

Overall, I like cTrader. (See my post on their best features, here) They have nice charts. But for the purpose of trading like a professional, I believe it’s best to use prop firm’s platforms only as places where you enter your orders – not where you analyze charts.

Don’t Take a Prop Firm Challenge Until You Do This

Don’t Take a Prop Firm Challenge Until You Do This 1295

Okay traders, shotgun question.

Do you or do you not believe you understand all of the rules and stipulations involved with your next prop trading challenge?

Just reading the sign-up page isn’t good enough. While it would be ideal to have all of the rules regarding a prop firm challenge clearly written with language that’s simple enough for someone without a college education to understand, found all in one web page, such is not the reality.

I’ll begin this tutorial by saying that it’s important that you do not select a prop firm based on an advertisement or product page alone! You must read all of the FAQ sections first and then reach out to customer support to clarify anything that doesn’t seem 100% certain.

Assumptions alone can fail your challenge, even if you have a profitable strategy and exhibit good risk management. I’m going to repeat myself because it’s so important: If you want to find out every detail about what you can and cannot do in a challenge, you have to ask customer support.

Don’t be shy, just get on the prop firm’s home page and use the chatbox to connect with a representative.

Questions to Ask the Firm Before You Take a Prop Firm Challenge

So today I’m going to help you make sure you have correct and complete information before you even begin to choose the appropriate firm.

While standard information like expected take profit targets and daily drawdown limits are easily figured out by looking at most FAQ pages, You’re going to need to ask questions that might not even occur to you unless you’ve already traded a challenge. Furthermore, there are other types of questions you should ask that won’t even cross your mind until you’ve had a funded account.

So let me give you these questions now so you can prepare yourself ahead of time even if you’ve never traded with a prop firm before.

To help organize these different questions, we’re going to cover what you should ask about the trading challenge, the funded account, and regulations around failure and retry.

Questions About the Challenge

To properly analyze and select your challenge, your first step is to read the faq pages and product descriptions of any challenge you want to take. Once you’re clear on the basic information of the challenge, your next step is to contact customer support to clarify all the details that are and are not written publicly. Be sure to reword the answer through your own understanding and repeat it back to them for validation. If you don’t get a straight answer about something, don’t be afraid to push and ask again. Now here’s what you need to ask that person.

First, let’s go over a few questions you should ask about the prop trading challenge. I’m going to list them here one by one

  1. Are there any consistency rules for lot sizes or amount risked?
  2. Are stop loss and take profit orders required when setting a trade?
  3. Once you hit the take profit amount are you allowed to take small micro trades to complete the rest of the trading days? 
  4. Are holidays included in the maximum number of days?
  5. Do traders need to stay in trades for a certain amount of time?

Your questions should also include clarifying anything that’s oddly worded on a FAQ page (show example of Lux)

For example, I had to clarify with Lux Trading as to what they meant by saying 29 traded days for both the evaluation and advanced stage. Does that mean 29 for the total of the two stages or 29 for each one? It turns out they have a minimum trading day of 29 for each phase. So it could take at least two months longer to trade with a full account when using Lux as compared to say, FTMO. Lux also fails to explicitly describe their consistency rules for their challenges.

I had to find out in a chat that a trader has to more or less trade the exact position size with stop loss and take profit targets for pretty much every single trade. Even going from say 0.75% risked per trade to 0.5% risked per trade could discount some of those trading days.

Traders Central is a good example of firms that require consistency rules – they’ve changed what this implies over the last few months, but as of right now, it’s possible to decrease your position size by up to 75% once you hit the profit target. Luckily, they share this in the FAQ, so I didn’t need to hound them as hard about it.

Questions About Funded Accounts

Next, you’ll want to know about the rules regarding funded accounts as well. Just because your strategy and trading style works for a challenge doesn’t mean you can trade the same way with a funded account. For example, FTMO requires funded day trading accounts to close trades by the end of their business day in Prague and doesn’t allow trading 2 minutes before and after news releases.  So your questions about the funded account should include: 

  1. Are there any additional rules for funded accounts? If so, what are they?
  2. Do funded accounts require a minimum number of days traded each month?
  3. If a trader ends the month with less than the initial balance but doesn’t break drawdown and maximum loss rules, does the account balance reset or do they need to continue to trade the same amount?
  4. Can I get paid in my own country’s currency? If so, are there fees?
  5. Can I ever freeze the account in order to take a break from trading?

Questions About Failure/Retry

Lastly, you’ll want to be sure about what happens should you fail your account. Some firms are willing to offer a discount for a second attempt even though it’s not listed on their page. Others are firm on their prices. Consider asking

  1. Do you offer discounts on challenge retries?
  2. If I pass the challenge but fail verification, can I get a free retry or discounted retry?

These questions merely touch the surface. If you can think of others that I haven’t listed here, please be sure to share below.

Again, assume nothing about your challenge and prop firm.

You need to gather as much information first before signing up because there may be rules that will prevent you from passing or staying with the prop firm over the long run.

There are also prop firms that are designed to fail even the best of traders, since there’s so much money to be made in selling challenges with the promise of making bank.

Above all keep your wits about you, be responsible, disciplined, and patient about the process.

wish you all the best of strength and luck, and I’ll see you in the markets. Take care.

“Verification” Is Longer Than You Think

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This post contains links to trading tools for which I am an affiliate.

Lately, there have been some big changes in the world of forex prop trading. 

Funding Talent Failed Its Traders

The company, Funding Talent, recently closed all of their challenge accounts and cut off profitable, rule-abiding traders from their contracts and equity. 

It seems this company is now positioning itself as offering a trading simulation game from which a trader can use their skills to win money matching simulated profit amounts, which confirms some of the fears many traders have about taking on prop challenges in the first place – that is, whether prop firms are actually linked back to managed capital and aren’t a sophisticated game meant to trip you up in your trading so that you’ll be stuck in a cycle of chasing prop challenges.

There are firms that definitely do this. 

However, I also think there are firms that are genuinely looking to fund traders. 

Trust is Key

Trust is the ultimate type of currency prop traders and prop firms are seeking from one another.

Traders want to trust that we will receive honest tools for trading, that there are no hidden rules beyond what’s advertised, and that we can depend on the firm to support us and pay us as agreed upon in the contract. True prop firms are looking for traders who are trustworthy as displayed in their consistency and profitability. 

 

I think the key to differentiating between firms that fund and firms that fraud is to find out how simple or complex the challenge rules are. 

 

More complexity means that there are more possibilities to make an error, screw up, so that they don’t have to worry about paying you anything. 

Firms that give you more freedom to trade your own strategies without complicated, hidden rules, are more likely to be valid and trustworthy in their search for skilled traders. 

I think this act of horrendous business fraud reminds us that we need to be extra careful about reading and understanding the rules and stipulations that come with signing up for any prop trading challenge. 

Furthermore, I believe it’s helpful to have multiple funded accounts and to make a goal of eventually setting aside enough money to fund your own personal account so that you don’t have to rely on prop firms indefinitely. 

Does Verification End Once You Pass Your Prop Trading Challenge?

So one of the most trustworthy firms currently out there is FTMO. 

They recently changed their monthly payout to a biweekly one and they are increasing their percent payout to up to 90% of profit. 

I still think FTMO is one of the better choices for your prop firm portfolio. 

However, while I believe they lay out plenty of information on their FAQ page, I want to challenge the perception that the process of verification ends after you are given a funded account. 

Yes, the verification stage moves into funded once you hit your 5% target, so long as you follow all of their other standard rules around loss. 

So what do I mean by saying that the process of verification doesn’t end once you are funded? 

I want to draw attention to the claim that traders receive their refundable fee back once they pass the challenge and that it is returned to you with your first profit split. 

Here are the key two words in that sentence: PROFIT SPLIT.

So if you pass your challenge but don’t make a profit during your first month of trading a funded account with FTMO, you DO NOT receive your refundable fee back. 

So not only do you not profit, you also don’t get your money back. 

While I think it’s fair for FTMO to cancel accounts that break trading rules, I don’t think they’re being clear enough about this refundable fee rule. (Note: I chose to discuss FTMO for this topic but many other firms use this refund process, as well – be sure you understand the stipulations before you sign up!)

They won’t let you retry for free, either. 

So, this leads me to feel like the process of verifying you as a trustworthy trader lasts much longer than the verification stage.

You need to be aware that this refundable fee only goes to traders that profit through the challenge stage, verification stage, AND the first month of trading. 

I’m not sure if it’s a little different now that they’re offering biweekly profit splits, maybe you only need to hold out for the first two weeks, but do keep this in mind as you’re making decisions about what size account you can afford to take a challenge with. 

As the saying goes, trade, or in this case, deposit, only what you can afford to lose. 

Read next: What to do when you fail your prop trading challenge?

I hope this post provided you with a little bit more food for thought as you navigate your prop trading journey. 

Be sure to subscribe for more forex and prop trading content delivered each week. 

I wish nothing but success for you all and I wish you the best of strength and luck. I’ll see you in the markets, take care!

How to Make +10k Per Month with Less Than 40 Hours/Week

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Andrew, from Disciplined FX, here! If you’re interested in learning how to day trade as your profitable skill, I recommend reading the book I wrote on how you can leverage the most important habits of professional day traders to set yourself up for long-term success in the markets!

I’ve Been Thinking…

I want to share with you something that I’ve been reflecting on for some time now. 

Most of you reading, like me, probably grew up with parents or society pressuring you to get an education in order to create financial security in life. 

You might have been encouraged to hustle for scholarships or take out enough student loan money that could have covered the cost of a house in order to gain a university-level education and therefore qualify for a steady paycheck and benefits. 

This formula of “initial education investment + diploma + time and energy in someone else’s business, nonprofit, or government entity = financial stability and maaaaaybe satisfaction is starting to become more anachronistic and perhaps even mythical. 

 

Steady is no longer stable. 

A lot of my friends and family have what are considered “stable jobs” – sure, they receive a paycheck every two weeks, but their time to take care of themselves is limited, the amount they make barely scratches the surface of the student loan debt or living expenses they incur, and lurking in the shadows of this seemingly stable job is the threat of being laid off or fired at any given moment. 

Some of them like their work but others trudge along because there is no financial safety net to allow them the choice to leave. 

Thus, paying Fedloan Servicing or private student loan companies a ¼ of your budget each month and giving away ⅓ of your entire life, while failing to get enough sleep, have time to be with your family or friends, or just play, all for the sake of acquiring this illusion of a secure job is no longer a reliable formula for financial security, let alone a well-lived life. 

Now, This isn’t particularly enlightening of me to name this issue, as I believe most people are aware of this discrepancy. 

Some of you reading this may be feeling this pain right now. how to make +10k per month from home

(I will say that there’s also a special kind of motivation that comes with knowing you have debt, though. That’s a hidden ability we can use to our advantage. But that thought is best left for another post.)

While I think many folks have a hunch as to what a solution to this problem looks like, they may not have a clear formula for what to do to reclaim their time, energy, creativity, purpose, and financial well-being. 

So that’s what I want to share with you, today. 

A simple formula that I’ve seen others perform, time and again, to spend less time working, make enough money to assuage financial woes, and focus on the activities that create a better world and a more meaningful life. 

We know that relying on a sole paycheck won’t necessarily give you the safety it once promised. 

We also know that trying to drive for a ride-share company on the side or selling your used things on an app each month won’t necessarily grant you financial freedom either. 

So, what to do instead? 

Here’s my formula: We need to combine our favorite skills with income-generating activities OR develop skills that have a high return on investment and take those skills to market. 

Lucrative Skill + Skill Development (Time + Effort + Knowledge + Experience) + Marketability = Financial FREEDOM. 

This approach may require a lot of time and effort up front, but in the future it lets you acquire the resources to invest less time for the same return. 

 

Let me show you how to do this through 4 simple steps.

 

4 Steps to Making +$10k Per Month

Step 1) Research and Select Your Marketable Skill

As mentioned, there are two paths you can take with this. 

One is to select a skill that you’ve already developed and turn that skill into a business. 

The other approach is to learn a new skill that is inherently lucrative. These skills often involve the exchange of value for large sums of money and therefore have a large return on investment. checking new strategy works for forex EUR/USD

Some skills that fall under this category include selling real estate, learning a high-demand tech skill like coding, developing marketing or sales skills like copywriting and social media marketing, or, my personal favorite and the primary subject of this blog – day trading. 

Start by doing a little research on either starting a business or developing your preferred skill and based on what you discover from this research, write down your top five goals surrounding your project of developing that skill. 

This should include a financial goal, such as making $7,000 in sales or $10,000 in trading profit each month. 

The other goals should include important milestones on this journey that help you reach your financial goal, such as creating and launching your first online course, or passing a prop trading challenge, like the FTMO challenge. 

Step 2) Develop Your Skill

This is where we get to work. Your next step is to develop your skill. 

If you are taking a skill you already have and turning it into a business, then during this stage, your focus is to develop the skill of running a business. 

You’ll want to learn as much as you can about marketing and sales strategies, how to turn knowledge into a product, like a course or a book, as well as how to create a system that runs the business itself. 

So During this stage, you will put a great amount of time, effort, and probably money into learning this skill. 

Some ways you can go about this include finding information on youtube, blogs, reading books, paying for courses, and even finding a mentor to guide you in developing this skill. 

The secret to becoming great in anything is to find people who already do or have what you want and learning from them so as to avoid unnecessary mistakes and take a faster journey by learning your skill in an organized and systematic way. 

Let me reiterate that last part – this path of developing your skill should feel organized and systematized. 

Take notes and review what you learn regularly. 

Track your stats in order to figure out what to improve. 

Also, make sure you’re putting time into practicing your skill almost every day. 

There are certain things that can only be learned by doing them yourself. 

It can also be useful to find groups of people who are learning this skill and build relationships that help you reflect and grow.

Before moving on to the next step, I want to note that this stage of developing the skill will probably take more time than you think. 

Based on my own experience with day trading and learning about how to grow a business, as well as what I’ve observed in other people’s stories of capitalizing on a skill, I’m going to suggest that you can expect to stay in the development stage for at least 1 to 2 years. 

This doesn’t mean that you can’t earn money right away, but to get to that special level you outlined in your goals from step one, be ready to play the long game. 

Impatience will likely come with some costly mistakes that you might not be able to absorb without burning out. 

Think maybe half-marathon, not sprint and pace yourself. 

{If you’re interested in learning how to day trade as your profitable skill, I recommend reading the book I wrote on how you can leverage the most important habits of professional day traders to set yourself up for long-term success in the markets!}

Step 3) Take Your Skill to the Marketplace

This is the time when you take your business live, you land your first deal, or you trade your first prop trading challenge. 

If you’ve been working on a skill like coding or SEO optimization, this may be the point at which you start applying to and interviewing for roles that demand this skill. 

Make sure the numbers add up – if your goal is to earn $7k/ month then be firm on that amount when you get to the negotiating table. 

If you have other requirements you want to see in a job, like the ability to work from home or bring a dog to work, then keep searching for that optimal package. 

You should feel confident in your skill at this point and know that you are valuable. 

Step 4) Grow, Reap, and Repeat 

At this point, you should feel highly knowledgeable and effective in your skill, and some, if not all of your goals from step one should be accomplished. 

At this point, you can decide if you want to create new goals for yourself to take your skill to an even higher level, whether that means writing a book, turning your lucrative skill into a business, launching a social media platform around your skill, or if you’re a prop trader, then perhaps growing funds for your own account instead of only depending on prop trading firms. 

Also, it’s okay to be content with this new level that you’ve achieved and maybe use it to give yourself more comfort or rest in your life. 

Not everything we do has to be about endless improvement. 

You can come back to step four at any time. 

The one thing to watch out for, though, is to not become so complacent in our knowledge and expertise that we start backpedaling. 

This world is continually changing and often our skills need to adapt to new environments and circumstances. 

So make sure to keep a habit of regular personal development and skill improvement. 

Now that we’ve reached the end of this lesson, I hope you can step away from this video feeling like you have more clarity around what your process to success could look like. 

I believe this is an organic formula that most high performers use to achieve greatness in what they do.

{If you’re interested in learning how to day trade as your profitable skill, I recommend reading the book I wrote on how you can leverage the most important habits of professional day traders to set yourself up for long-term success in the markets!}

It’s also not to say that you need to quit your salaried or hourly position in order to have a better life – as there are plenty of meaningful and necessary jobs that serve a great purpose that requires working for someone else. 

You can use this formula to become more valuable and effective in your field or even develop a business or skill on the side. 

Remember that success is not reserved for the talented, the privileged, or intellectuals. 

Anyone can get started on learning a skill. 

Patience, Perseverance, and Proactive reflection can see you through. 

If you have a skill you think you’d like to learn or grow a business out of, or have already achieved these four steps, please share your aspirations, wisdom, and stories with us in the comments section below. 

 

I want to participate in helping more people feel empowered to achieve a level of success and meaningfulness in life than ever imagined before. 

 

I wish you all the best of strength and luck, take care!

5 Steps to FTMO Challenge Success

5 Steps to FTMO Challenge Success 327

Welcome to Disciplined FX! My name is Andrew Bloom, and my vision is to provide simple and effective Forex day trading tutorials that help diverse individuals from all walks of life become profitable and responsible traders. I am also an affiliate of FTMO, but this is a decision I made on my own. I firmly believe that FTMO is the most reliable and trustworthy prop trading firm available. This post contains affiliate links.

I want to share with you all a short list of 5 important steps you need to take to strategize your FTMO trading challenge for success.

 Just last week, I passed the verification stage for a $200k account under FTMO, and next I’ll receive instructions for how to proceed as a funded trader. 

I started this challenge on July 29th and passed through verification in a little under one month. 

However, the time and work that went into completing this challenge with success started long before I ever learned about FTMO or prop trading. 

I should emphasize now that this is an opportunity that is meant for traders who already have experience with consistently profiting in Forex markets. 

On that note, let’s dive into what I believe are 5 succinct steps you can take to ensure success for your FTMO challenge. 

Want to know more about what FTMO is? Click this link to learn about their funded account challenge.

Step 1) Make Sure You’re Ready

You need to pass your own litmus test for determining whether you are currently ready to take this challenge. 

Me personally, I’ve been day trading for over two years, and finally started achieving consistent profit in the markets about eight months ago. 

I would say that at a minimum you’ll want to see three months’ worth of consistent profit in your own live account, regardless of whether it’s a small or large one. 

Note that I did not say DEMO account. 

Trading with a demo account is an excellent way to get started learning how to trade without risking a lot of money, demo trading is not the same as making decisions when you have your own money on the line. 

I’ll be completely honest with you all and admit that I never bothered with demo trading. 

It definitely led to a handful of painful learning experiences, but it took losing a lot of money to help develop a strong dislike of making trading mistakes because of how badly I wanted to avoid losing that much money again. 

Nevertheless, if you’re watching this and you’re new to trading, while you will have to face the growing pains of live trading at some point, you might as well minimize the amount of money you’ll lose by learning the basics of trading with a demo account first. 

So once you have some experience, make sure you’re then able to see at least three months’ worth of consistent profit with a live account. 

Furthermore, make sure you have a strategy or set of strategies that you trust. 

I personally only trade with mechanical strategies that use very strict and clear rules for entering and exiting my trades as dictated by a set of indicators and overall market direction, but if you’re grounded in your discretionary trading skills, then that works too. 

The bottom line is that you need to be able to go into this challenge with evidence of your own profitability with a live account, and a strategy or set of strategies that you are familiar with and comfortable trading.

FTMO.com - Funding for successful traders

Step 2) Adapt Your Strategy

You’ll likely need to adapt your strategy or your risk management plan to meet the goals of the challenge. 

You’re going to need to be able to hit a 10% return on your initial FTMO demo account balance and avoid losing more than 5% of your account in a day or 10% of your account overall.

So if you’re used to risking 2% a trade and you take three trades a day, then you’ll want to reconsider risking less of your account so as to avoid losing 5% or more should all three of those trades result in a loss. 

Similarly, if your trading history or backtest of your strategy shows that you only manage to return 9% or less each month with what you’re currently risking, you may need to increase the amount you risk or change your strategy so that you return more while also risking less. 

Before doing the FTMO challenge, I was comfortably returning 6% of my account each month or less. I ended up trashing the strategy that I was using and crafting another mechanical strategy that would hit the 10% profit target without having to risk more than 3% a day. 

I also changed my strategy to trade only once a day, tops, so I could get more out of a day’s trade than if I had traded multiple times in the day. 

Because I only trade mechanical strategies, I know I can trust myself to follow my rules, no matter what the rules are, as long as a backtest proves to me that the strategy is profitable. 

You can make decisions about your strategy and adapt accordingly by running the changes through a backtest first. 

Another risk management tactic to use is to adjust your risk as you get closer to your profit target. Disciplined FX FTMO Funded Trader Challenge

For the first part of my challenge and verification stage, I was risking 2 to 3% each trade, and as I grew the account, I would trade less, by risking only 1-1.5% of the account, or even less than that, depending on how much return I needed to finally hit profit. 

So when I was around 8% in profit, with a 2.5 risk-reward ratio, I risked about a percent of the account, while adding a few extra hundreds of dollars to accommodate for commission and slippages. 

I hope you see by now, that this is very much an analytics game. 

You should be checking your stats and changing your numbers throughout the challenge. 

To summarize, you’ll need to adjust your strategy to meet the challenge parameters, which may look a lot different from when you’re trading to make the most profit possible.

Step 3) Do Your Research and Sign-Up

Once you have evidence that you’re profitable and that your strategy has a high probability of meeting the challenge targets within the limitation of the rules on risk, your next action is to start the signing-up process. 

This is the time to gather as much information about FTMO as possible. 

Start by going over the parameters of the challenge and read through the entire FAQ section.

Furthermore, seeking out other videos about trader’s experiences with FTMO is also useful in getting a feel for what the experience is like, as well as gathering any tips on how to navigate your challenge. 

The sign-up itself is pretty straightforward, you will need to provide your general contact information, as well as select the platform you’d like to use for your challenge. 

I will say now, that I am highly biased towards using cTrader, because its interface is far more intuitive and clean than metatrader. 

If you’re coming over from Oanda or like using Trading View, then you’ll definitely want to choose cTrader. 

If you’d like to see what this platform looks like, I’ve included a link below to a video I made that goes over its best features. 

As you prepare to sign-up for your challenge, you’ll also want to make sure you can comfortably afford the trading deposit. 

Ideally, this is money that isn’t needed for basic necessities, like food, rent, or other living expenses. 

Similar to the axiom “trade only what you can afford to lose, pay for a challenge with money that you won’t feel stressed about never seeing again, just in case your first challenge doesn’t work out. 

To be extra cautious about international online payments, make sure you pay with a debit or credit card that has strong cybersecurity services. 

You may also need to contact your bank or credit card company to let them know that you’ll be making an international purchase that doesn’t need to be flagged as suspicious. 

Doing this beforehand can minimize your wait time until you receive the login information for your challenge. 

Once you submit your form and your payment, within a few days FTMO will get back to you and give you login information for your platform of choice, including your user name and password. 

Step 4) Set Up Your Charts and Your Strategy

Once you receive your account info, be sure to explore the resources available to the client on the dashboard. 

You’ll want to download or access the web platform on your computer. 

I don’t know if this is also true for metatrader, although I suspect that it is – Keep in mind that you don’t need to create an account with cTrader, itself, you only need the login info provided by FTMO. 

Once you’re in the platform, you can begin exploring its resources and start setting up your chart with the indicators and tools you need to trade your strategy. 

Note: Become familiar with the platform BEFORE you start your challenge.

Mentally walk through each step of your strategy, from entry to exit, and note where on the platform you’ll need to type inputs and click buttons to make it happen. 

Once you “start challenge” on the FTMO you begin the countdown to your maximum 30 days. Once you take your first trade, you begin your minimum 10 trading day counter. 

Remember that you have to have a trade on a day for it to count towards your minimum of 10 trading days. 

Step 5) Trade and Follow Your Rules. 

This is when it’s crucial to have already developed your trading discipline. 

Trading discipline is my specialty and if you’d like to learn about more ways to hone your discipline as a trader, check out my book The Seven Habits of Successful Day Traders on Amazon. The Seven Habits of Successful Day Traders Andrew Bloom

Keep in mind that you may feel more stress and nervousness while trading a challenge than you do when trading your own account. 

I thought I’d just show up and do what I always do with my strategy, but the pressure to hit a target and avoid precise loss limits changes the dynamics of your trading experience. 

When you feel stress rising, pull on your own healthy coping mechanisms to see you through. 

This can mean taking breaks from watching the trading screen, reminding yourself of the success that you’ve already achieved up to this point, and giving yourself permission to retake the challenge if it doesn’t work out this time. 

If you don’t already, I highly recommend that all responsible traders take up meditation. 

It’s not only valuable for trusting yourself to stay calm and disciplined during your trades, but this practice can also positively change the way you respond to stress in all aspects of your life. 

If you have evidence that your strategy works, remember that your one job is to show up and stick to the plan. 

If you’re running into problems during your challenge and you’re led to believe that your strategy won’t cut it, then be sure to get to work and do a solid backtest of any changes you want to make to your strategy before trying it out on the charts. 

Weekends can be a good time to reflect and improve on your performance. 

Do not let yourself get creative and make up new strategies when trading live. 

Anything you do in real-time trading should first go through a backtest

Lastly, be sure to take care of yourself during your challenge by making sure to get enough sleep at night, eating nutritious meals, and giving yourself down time to play and relax. 

Prepare as an athlete would for trying out for a pro team, because with this challenge you are setting up to prove yourself as a pro trader. 

So, what do you think? Can you put these five steps into action to take the FTMO challenge? 

I wish you all the best of strength and luck, and I’ll see you out there in the markets!

 

 

 

FTMO Verification: PASSED!

FTMO Verification: PASSED! 68

Hey there, folks! My name is Andrew Blom, founder and CEO of Disciplined Fx. If you’re new here, welcome! I first started teaching myself how to day trade after developing a chronic illness and needing to find a way to make money from home with a minimal amount of time and energy. Ever since then, I’ve developed so much confidence and hope because of how much day trading has left me feeling successful and empowered to actually make money from home on my own time. I’m also a Ph.D. student pursuing a doctorate in business with a concentration in entrepreneurship. The intention of Disciplined FX is to provide a safe space that supports diverse traders from all walks of life as we learn how to hone discipline and a trading mindset to succeed in forex markets

Update!

I didn’t think I’d make another post so soon, but I just wanted to jump on here real quick to let you know that after just three days of trading the verification for an FTMO funded $200k account, I’ve passed the verification profit target!

All of my verification targets have been met except for the minimum number of days traded. 

This means that I will spend the next seven days taking microtrades each day to meet the 10 trading day minimum, and from there, assuming everything checks out okay on FTMO’s end, I’ll be qualified to begin trading as a FTMO funded trader. 

If you aren’t familiar with FTMO:

In a nutshell, FTMO funds traders who pass their 2-step trading challenge with a $10,000 to $200,000 account to start, and disperses 70% of monthly profits to the trader. 

I can’t express just how excited I am to begin working with FTMO and to put my trading discipline and strategies to work! 

If you want to learn a little bit more about my trading style and experience with passing the FTMO challenge, as well as tips for starting your own FTMO challenge, be sure to check out this first post I made.

The Breakdown of My Verification Experience:

 I used the same strategy as I did for the end of the challenge and took three trades, with only one trade per day I sat in front of the charts. 

My first trade was a loss but the next two were winners. 

Each had a risk-reward ratio of 2.5 and I risked about 1.5% of my account for each trade. 

I trade only once a day because I like to use a “set and forget” strategy that minimizes the amount of time I send in front of the charts, and therefore, also minimizes the opportunities for my emotions to get in the way. 

This has worked well for me but I’m also at a point in my trading where I can watch my trades without experiencing much of any emotional reaction. 

I will say, though, that trading for a funding challenge does come with more pressure, and therefore I felt like this “set and forget strategy” was particularly useful for the kind of higher stakes trading that comes with attempting to hit a profit goal despite what’s going on in the markets. 

 

Overall, I am so relieved and excited to have the privilege to be able to trade for a prop firm. 

If you have any questions about the FTMO challenge, their FAQ section is a good place to start. 

 

I wish you the best of strength and luck, and I’ll see you all in the markets!

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