My name is Sean, and I’m from India—a third-world country, I guess? but that’s how it is Unlucky me.
My first introduction to trading was through crypto in September 2024 when Bitcoin was around $58K. I traded some other coins but ended up getting liquidated. A month later, I discovered Forex and somehow managed to deposit $18 into my broker account. I started trading XAUUSD without realizing how volatile it was—I had just seen some reels of people making huge profits trading gold, so I thought, “Why not?”
Idk how but I managed to turn that $18 into $102, only to lose it all in one go within two weeks. I still remember that day when those $102 got liquidated, and now, I want to restart my journey with proper preparation. I recently joined a trading course, and so far, it’s going well.
I hope to connect with other traders as well. Also, I’m curious about funding challenges—how do they work, and what’s the best way to pass them?
Mate - XAU is on rollercoaster and can be brutal if not ready for it! For funding challenges they test risk management & consistency so focus on small but smart trades.
One step = you must do it once only, to qualify for what they call funding. Whatever “it” means, often 8% profit without having 8% drawdown.
Two step = you must do that, as above, then after that something similar again (usually smaller, like 5% profit without having 8% drawdown).
Two important things to know -
When they say 8% it is very misleading because they mean 8% of the nominal account size ($20k or $50k or whatever they call it) but the real account size is what you are allowed to lose obviously, because if you lose it then the account is lost. So "8% profit without having 8% drawdown” really means 100%, you must double the available loss limit. So it is more demanding than they say!
If you do CFD, it is not real funding anyway, they are really your “counterparty” even after you are “funded” and they win when you lose, but if you do futures the funding is real, and it’s a partnership and they win when you win. So they are 2 totally different things.
So wouldn’t it be better if someone just do the OneStep instead of the TwoStep, in that way we only have to do once to get “funded”.
And I want to get these funded account because i don’t have that much of a savings for myself to start trading with my own money, I just need that minimum 5k account and with that i’ll risk around 10-20$ per trade targeting double of the risk.
But anyways thanks for the above explanation , I do have a lot of ques about these funded accounts.
Yeah i just found out about this so I don’t trade on Gold anymore, I was driven by those instagram reels showing huge profits in xau and at that time i didn’t knew about the risk. And i was gambling, But now i know if i want success in trading i have to manage my expectations and be consistent.
The prices to try each are different, so we must choose the one we prefer to risk? It is risk assessment and risk management like all trading?
I understand. Remember “that minimum $5,000 account,” if you need 8% profit without 8% drawdown, is actually a $400 account.
I can’t trade or write very good English, but I understand math. To risk $20 per trade from a $400 account is 5% risk per trade, this is enormous, and if you target double the risk then your win rate will be about 33%, and probably you will experience also a run of 30 trades some time with only 3 or 4 winners, because the 33% does not occur evenly, and then you will be more than $400 down, and blow out, and that is even if you make no mistakes at all!
I think it’s possible but very unlikely to pass in the way you suggest.
I wish you good luck but for me, from this account they misleadingly call $5,000, I would risk around $4 or $5 per trade and target the same size as the stop loss, R=1.0, but possibly you are right and I am wrong, so it is definitely not “advice“!!
That’s a shame, because it would be extremely good advice, if taken that way.
These prop firms are making their livings out of the repeated fee-income from hopeful traders who think of it as a $5,000 account and treat it like one (i.e. using position-sizing far too high, and reward-to-risk ratios also often too high). They lose the account.
Very often they think they’ve “just been unlucky” and try again.
There are countless tens or thousands of them.
One of the biggest forex prop firm funding companies, FTMO (widely considered one of the best ones, in spite of its high prices) bought a Swiss hedge fund last year, and have just bought one of the world’s biggest forex brokers out of the profits they make from the repeated fees of people “paying again”.
There’s no point in paying, even for the $5,000 account which is actually a $400 account, until you KNOW you can pass it. That’s what free demo accounts are for - learning that kind of thing!
Don’t be fooled by Anna’s protestations of “lack of experience” and “lack of knowledge”. It’s very clear from her posts on this subject that she knows exactly what she’s talking about, whether she’s passed an evaluation or not.
This is the hugely important fact that most people overlook.
I think the usual way people try to “assess” these things (actually “guess” would be a better word than “assess”!) is to look at the longest losing run they’ve had over some too-small sample size, add maybe 50% to it “to allow for bad luck” and assume that will be about the worst that can happen.
It isn’t, of course.
Far from it.
The “longest consecutive losing run” isn’t the problem with these things. It’s more like “the bad patches”, and those are (usually) about 5 times as common as “long losing runs”.
But people get this wrong, very often, and miscalculate.
Now that you mention it, risking $10-$20 per trade does seem too much. My goal is to risk only 1% per trade, so I can take 100 trades with a $5K account. This way I can also build the right mindset for when real money is on the line.
I know some members are suggesting for a demo account, and i’ve been doing that but in that way my emotions are not involved and whenever my SL hits I feel nothing, which isn’t the same as trading with real risk involved.
Yeah it’s not possible because I only have like 3-4 months of experience
And thanks for a solid advice I’ll keep that in mind.
Yeah that’s what I think, Sticking to your strategy for long run can help us in our trading, That’s what I’ve learned over the past few months. Now all I want is some people who can help me to be good at trading, like what are they looking to trade for the upcoming week and why they are looking to trade those pairs. Hope there was some kind of chat system here.
