I Failed My Funded Trading Plus Challenge – Lessons Learned

I Failed My FTP Challenge – Here’s What I Learned

As of last night’s Asia trading session, I failed my Funded Trading Plus challenge. 

How do I feel?

Actually, after almost two months of battling a drawdown, I feel pretty relieved. 

My challenge was a mess, to put it bluntly. During that time I developed worsening symptoms of my chronic illness and could no longer wake up to trade the NY session (I’m located in Southern California. The NY/London crossover officially starts at 4am here). 

So instead, I tried to trade an end-of-NY-session crossover strategy that I had used in the past but hadn’t fully backtested for post-Covid volatility. That was a dud and further drained my account. 

I also made a switch to trading during the Asia session. I tried using the trend-following strategies I teach in the Scalping course during this time and the results didn’t quite match the preferred London or NY sessions. 

Do you see the pattern in this? 

funded trading plus failed

I made far too many changes during a challenge. Shifting too quickly left me feeling a bit chaotic and I failed myself in my own discipline as I made a few trades that broke my rules amidst feelings of anxiety.

The ideal is to run your challenge with a strategy and system already in place with your discipline well intact. You should have evidence that this process is profitable before starting your challenge.

My experience with this Funded Trading Plus challenge ran against that simple formula.

So when I say I’m relieved, I imply that I feel like I received the outcome that my trading choices deserved. I’m at peace with this result. In the truest sense of the word, this was my karma for behaving like a trader going through retrograde. The way I traded over the last few months was not reflective of the practices of a responsible trader. 

Given my life circumstances, I did the best with what I had and it wasn’t enough to merit a win. 

So now that this first challenge is over, I can take time and space to reflect on the process and decide what to do next.

I intend on taking another Funded Trading Plus challenge, but not necessarily right away. FTP gives you 30 days to “reset” your account. At this time, it seems you get about 20% off of the initial fee for a retry. 

Even if I am not ready to trade right away, because there is no time limit to the challenge, I can sign-up again and wait to start the new challenge. I want to be sure I have evidence that I can be profitable with a new approach before attempting to take it live.

For this entire year, I’ve been thinking about taking my trading to another level. For most of my time as a Forex trader, I’ve depended on mechanical strategies and short time frames to execute scalping trades. 

While this approach helped me to develop a routine, make money, learn to follow my rules, and be procedural about trading, I’m no longer able to maintain the daily routine of a mechanical scalper. With 3+ years in the market, I feel like this next step is appropriate should I prevail as a successful trader over the long-run.

The Next Step: Learn to Trade Like a Professional

As I do more research on the kinds of trading practices kept by professional traders who have decades of experience behind them, I’ve found that about 90% of these individuals:

  • Utilize discretionary trading styles on higher time frames, such as the 1H to Daily charts. 
  • Utilize both fundamental analysis and technical analysis that accounts for the way big money hunts order flows and responds to news
  • Apply a variety of technical analysis tools to understand where to position themselves for high-probability returns: candlestick patterns, trend lines, supply and demand zones, Fibonacci retracements, etc.
  • Mostly use indicators to understand the overall market structure, not necessarily to trigger entries or exits
  • Use multi-timeframe analysis and top-down approach to understanding directional cycles
  • Apply conservative risk management standards (For example, most will risk less than 1% per trade)
  • Are buoyant and can apply analysis to any market setup

At this watershed moment, with a failed long-term prop firm challenge in my peripheral view and a vision for more consistent profitability in the future, I think it’s time to take the next step and dive deep into professional-level trading skills. 

The Beginner’s Mind

Becoming a “Beginner” again is far different 3 years into trading rather than starting out completely fresh as a new trader. There are many things that I intuitively understand from experience, such as dealing with losses, drawdowns, winning streaks, emotions while trading, etc. I’m also comfortable with trading platforms, submitting orders, reading charts, and have a general understanding of nearly every technical tool and trading approach out there.

When you’re first learning to trade, when every concept you come across is new, information overload is common. You don’t know how to prioritize information. It’s easy to decide not to learn something that feels uncomfortable.

The beauty of “starting over” when you already have experience is that you have more situational awareness and knowledge to help conceptualize difficult topics. You’re not exactly starting over, you’re merely adding more information to mental categories that are shallow in depth. 

For example, I may not know how to apply fundamental analysis to my trades just yet, but I am familiar with many economic events that drive markets, such as interest rate decisions, non-farm payroll, retail sales, etc. If I was just starting out and attempting to learn fundamental analysis, these would all be new words and concepts to learn. Instead, at this stage, I am familiar with the terms and their basic meaning – now I want to learn how they all fit together and go deeper on what their numbers entail for market sentiment. 

It’s kind of like when you’re learning a new language and you more easily remember vocabulary that sounds similar to words in your own native tongue. It’s far easier to associate already-known concepts than have to drill an entirely new concept into your head. 

So this is all to say that learning how to trade like a professional is a process. It’s not one that you can Bootcamp in six months. There’s far too much information to acquire and too many processes to practice. Dealing with your psychology is also something you can only master with experience and time. 

It’s not embarrassing for me to say that I’ve failed this challenge because I’m still relatively young in my career as a trader. I share this with you so that you can reflect on your own time in the markets and give yourself some slack if you’re not where you thought you would be by this time. Trading is not easy. If it was, more people would routinely profit. I also hope that some of you will be influenced to join me on this learning adventure, as long as you’re ready to scale your knowledge. 

My Trading To-Do List for the Next Few Months (and Even Years)

  1. Daily read books and take courses offered by professional-level traders who have a solid trading record. Some possibilities include:
    1. Anna Coulling (“Three-Dimensional Approach to Forex”)
    2. Kathy Lien (“Day Trading and Swing Trading the Currency Market”)
    3. Brent Donnelly (“The Art of Currency Trading”)
    4. Karen Foo (“Fundamentals of Currency Trading”)
    5. Research other traders who have a solid track record, are professional not only in their trading style but the way they hold themselves and conduct their Forex education business. Academic background in finance is preferred but not necessary.
  2. Find a trading approach that compliments my lifestyle
    1. Trade 1H – Daily charts for entries so I can limit my trading session to about an hour a day, in the afternoon when NY closes and I am certain to be awake
    2. Mixes fundamental analysis with technical analysis – I actually enjoy reading the news. Having a sense of why the markets are moving helps build confidence in a trade idea
  3. Find a trading mentor who I trust
    1. Ideally, this is someone who can regularly review my trading decisions and pinpoint flaws and strengths in my thinking process
    2. Is someone who has a lifestyle and approach that mirrors my own ideals (Calm, genuinely kind, values financial freedom over materialism, enjoys the art of teaching and mentoring – isn’t in it just for the money)
  4. Be more scrupulous in tracking not only my trades but also what I am doing to develop my education as a Forex trader.
    1. Sometimes it’s easy to “do more” without really learning from the experience. I want to make sure what I am learning is directly connected to trading improvement and actually has an impact on my trading over the long-run
    2. Sometimes it’s easy to not do enough or to avoid the difficult work. I want to be sure to go slow with topics that I don’t immediately understand and give myself enough time and patience to work on the tough stuff. I anticipate this being an issue with learning fundamental analysis
    3. My tracking tools can include: Trading journal (trade stats, overarching trading idea, emotions and thoughts that arise while trading, etc.); Weekly reflection of best/worst trades, what I researched and learned that week; Forex education journal (Jot down a few lines in a log each day as to what I studied, what insights I had, and how I spent my time learning)

This is merely the blueprint of what my game plan will entail as I begin again and learn new Forex strategies that may push beyond what I was comfortable doing in the past. I hope to document this process and share it with you all. I don’t doubt that some of what I come across will also benefit you in your own trading. 

Sometimes it’s the big failures that act as kindle for the fire that will light you up and motivate you to reach a new level. Whether it’s blowing up your account, failing a challenge, experiencing a major life change, or facing a long drawdown. Sometimes big problems help us open up to solutions that we might have rejected in the past, out of fear or laziness, or even the belief that we’re not capable of learning.

In the aftermath of a serious problem, one option is to stay caught up in emotions. Another is to use it as a springboard to learn deeply from the experience and make new choices. Don’t forget, you can always get value out of your failures by reflecting upon what happened, taking responsibility for your role in the outcome, and using that knowledge for your improvement.