From Unprofitable to Getting Funded Journey

Trading Discussion Trade Journals
1

Hello everyone :smiley:

I’m SpongePip and I’m writing this topic to share with you my journey from unprofitable to getting funded by a prop trading firm. If you want to know more about me and my trading journey, you can read My Introduction.

Why do I want to join a prop trading firm?
As I’ve said in my introduction topic, I don’t have a job, and I don’t plan to get one until I finish my studies, so I can’t really add capital to a small account and grow it this way. Getting funded is also the easiest way to start dealing with some serious amounts of money as a beginner.

My Trading System (Work in Progress)
I built a temporary trading system which I’m currently backtesting. The system is based on price action and I only trade a couple of candlestick patterns.
I will talk more about this system in another thread as soon as I have the full and final rules.

Demo Trading
Last week I also started demo trading this system and so far the results are pretty good. I managed to earn 8% in the last 4 trading days. You can follow My Demo Account on Myfxbook.

Risk Management
I’m risking 1% per trade (sometimes a little less because I opened the demo account with only $ 1000 and I can’t be 100% accurate with the volume of each position since the stop loss size is usually quite big… my bad).

Prop Trading Firms
In my introduction topic I said that “If I’m profitable doing demo trading, in January I will open a small live trading account and start tracking my trading results, hoping they get better and better with time. Eventually, I will get to a point where I can apply for a prop trading firm.”
Well, meanwhile I discovered the existence of remote proprietary trading firms. They will verify you are able to trade and make profits, and only then they will give you a funded live account. You’ll have to pay a small fee in order to apply for them and your net profits will get split between you and the firm.

That’s a game-changer for my journey because it means that I no longer have to build a trading history on a small live account and I will use that money to pay the fee and try to get access to more money and more opportunities. Of course, I will make sure I have big probabilities of passing their verification process before applying.

Psychology
I know that if I go from demo trading straight to real live trading I won’t have the opportunity to test my system and the psychology behind it in a live market environment.
The verification process is done with a demo account and after that, I won’t have to trade with my own money and I think that’s a psychological advantage.
My only risk would be the fee I pay and I’m willing to lose it.

Next Steps

  1. I will continue backtesting and demo trading the strategy until I get to a set of final and profitable rules for my system that I would be confident enough to trade, even with my own money.
  2. When step one is done I will apply for a remote prop trading firm. I don’t want to go too fast, neither too slow. When it’s the right time and I’m feeling confident about everything, I will do it.

I will update this thread once a week or whenever there’s something new regarding this journey.

I’d love to read and reply to your comments.

Stay in touch!
:zap:

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Nice work Spongepip, im also pursuing funding, currently on evaluation just now. Will be really interesting to see how your journey progresses.

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Hi @Paulscaff1
Thank you for your kind reply.
Which trading firm are you applying for?

Good luck with your evaluation!
:muscle:t3:

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I think it’ll eventually be lifted the more you post/longer you stick around. So many spammers around here I think it actually works out. :slight_smile:

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Im currently on FTMO challenge, sitting near breakeven and waiting on a reset to start again next week.

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I’m also looking at getting on the FTMO challenge in the new year. Be interested to see how people on the thread get on!

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@Paulscaff1 Hope you can end up with a nice funded account this time.
Can’t wait to read more about you and your journey so let us know!

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Hi @cashisking86
I’m gonna try with FTMO as well and I’m gonna keep this thread updated until I get my craved funded account.
Also can’t wait to read more about your journey.
:muscle:t3:

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Update
Last Week of October 2020

Hello everybody,
I’d like to share with you the progress I’ve made in the last week of October.

Demo & Trading System
For the second week in a row, I managed to make profits. My account is up 8% for the week and 16% for the month (I started this demo account on October 20). I’ve added the link to Myfxbook to the thread.
So far my trading system seems to be working and I’m gathering every day more and more data that I can use to improve the system and create a final set of rules.

Remote Prop Trading Firms
I honestly feel confident enough to start trading with something more real since there are no emotions involved in demo trading. I’d like to apply for a remote trading firm as soon as possible and the best one I found is called FTMO.
They have an evaluation process that consists of a Challenge (earn 10% in 30 days) and a Verification (earn 5% in 60 days). I already paid the € 155 fee for a € 10.000 account and I have two weeks to start it by placing the first trade.
I was planning to start it tomorrow but I completely forgot about the huge unpredictable impact the US Elections may have on the markets. The week ahead has a busy economic calendar as well so I decided not to take the risk and continue demo trading. At least I can see the performance of my system in a high volatility market environment.

FTMO Demo Challenge
Last week I also started and completed the Free Trial of the FTMO Challenge. You have 14 days to earn 5%. I managed to complete it on Friday after 5 trading days using 0.5% risk per trade (the trades were the same I took on my demo account).

Stay in touch!
:zap:

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Nice work mate, with those results you’ll destroy the challenge! :+1::+1:

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Appreciate it. I will be sure to get my own blog set up when I do!

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Update
First Week of November 2020

Hello everybody,
Here I’m again to share with you the progress I’ve made in the first week of November.

Demo Trading & Elections
For the third week in a row, I managed to make profits. My account is up 5.49% for the week, and I’ve only traded on Monday and half of Tuesday. You can follow my demo account on Myfxbook.
In the previous update, I said that I would have continued demo trading during the US Elections but from Tuesday on, the volatility was too high for my system. My results would have been pretty much random since I’ve started seeing huge wicks on my charts.

FTMO Challange
I was already prepared to start the FTMO Challenge last week, but of course, I didn’t.
Now that the elections are gone, I’m ready to start the € 10.000 Challenge.
I feel confident about it, and if I fail, no problem. I will try again and again and again.

Thank you for reading, and best wishes to everyone with your journey!

Stay in touch!
:zap:

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That’s more or less my journey too :slight_smile:

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Update
Second Week of November 2020

Hello everybody,
Here I’m again to share with you the progress I’ve made during the second week of November.

FTMO Challange
I finally started the FTMO Challenge and so far… not very good results.
I’m currently down 4.34% therefore this is the first week my system doesn’t give positive results.
Well, it’s always the same story!
When there’s something at stake, the drawdown comes :partying_face:
I can afford to lose more than 5% before I completely fail the challenge.
I’m gonna lower the risk to 0.5% per trade and be more conservative.
I have more than three more weeks to break even and get a second chance.

Backtesting
I’m also backtesting the system and the results are good overall. So far there’s a lot of difference from pair to pair but I’m gonna wait for more data before I start making adjustments to the strategy.

Thank you for reading, and best wishes to everyone with your journey!

Stay in touch!
:zap:

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Update
Third Week of November 2020

Hello everybody,
Here I’m again to share with you the progress I’ve made during the third week of November.

Failed FTMO Challange
I failed the FTMO Challenge, I went down -6% for the week and more than -10% in total on the challenge. My system stopped working and I think the reason is that the overall market was in a range.

Next Steps

  1. Continue demo trading
  2. Avoid sideways markets
  3. Consider other systems

Thank you for reading, and best wishes to everyone with your journey!

Stay in touch!
:zap:

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Hey SpongePip It is always the way but I think there have been some interesting threads on Babypips and other sites which examine why back testing and demo trading often yields good results only for live to fail. It’s not just psychology.

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Best of luck to your journey! From now on I will follow this thread, I am also building my way towards a funded account at either FTMO or Traders4Traders. I have a similar thread on Babypips since May, started out with 1,000 euro’s. It’s tough, but eventually it will pay off. Goodluck, looking forward to your updates!

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Update

Hello everybody,

I’m not dead and I didn’t give up on trading.
I’m not making money but I think I’m making progress.
It has been more than a month since I’ve failed the first FTMO challenge. I was pretty upset because the system went really well for three weeks. I was pretty confident about it and I had high expectations.
Meanwhile I’ve read Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas. I already knew about many of the core principles of the book but there’s a big difference between knowing them and applying them. I think those high expectations I was talking about really influenced me and my trading performance.

After reading this book I wanted to switch from manual trading to a more mechanical and quantitative approach. No emotions, no subjectivity no room for discretional decisions.

In the last month I started getting into algorithmic trading on the cTrader platform. I spent a couple of weeks learning about C# using an app called SoloLearn. I’ve already studied C and Java in high school so C# wasn’t really hard to learn.

In the last two weeks I’ve joined a community all about algo trading and I’ve started developing my own algorithms.

I’m very, very, very happy about what I’ve done and learnt in the past month. I know for sure it will help me a lot on my journey towards getting funded. FTMO allows algo trading so I will be back very soon!

Thank you for reading, and best wishes to everyone with your journey!

Stay in touch!
:zap:

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Thank you for your reply. I will find and read all of them!
:smiley:

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Thank you for your reply. I will follow your thread as well.

Good luck with your journey!
:muscle:t3:

1 Like