Qualifying for a 5%ers Funded Account

Thought I’d share my experiences here, I am a noob still but going for a $5k account with these guys.

I started this in January (22nd) and so far I am about 3% up or $169 on the way to the $400 profit target (stage 1).

I am trading a variation on the breakfast breakout strategy on the London open, looking at 5 currency pairs.

Win rate is around 46%.

I will try to update this every day.

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Looking forward to it. Good luck greetings from a new member.

You’ve already made about $170 out of $400 needed? That’s fast!

I read about this London Breakfast thing in a British forum, once. It’s the FTSE-100, right? It seemed entirely logical and soundly based, and very similar to Fisher’s famous “ACD Breakout Strategy”?

I just hope it’s a proper, full English breakfast and not some lightweight vegetarian substitute? Do you get pastries with that, as well? :doughnut:

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I had actually got to around 6% up (~$260) in the first week or so but I had been doing some rather rash things like using 1% of my bank per trade and going for 2/1 risk to reward. As I say, I am a noob!

The Breakfast Breakout does in fact work (in theory) for pretty much anything, although certain pairs do work better with it than others. I am trading mainly AUDUSD, GBRUSD, USDJPY and EURGBP, but have my eyes on a few other pairs too.

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We all were, at some point!

1% per trade’s ok if the win rate warrants it (probably not with 46%, though?). 2-reward to 1-risk not so good! 1:1 might be ok?

This makes sense. High liquidity/volatility period all around, so breakouts from it “mean something”. Logical. Good luck!

So another good day with 3/3 successful trades, I now have 7 winners on the bounce, something I’ve never had before so thanks to @pink_hat_trader for the advice about using a lower risk to reward ratio.

I’ve only been going for a 1-0.5 ratio rather than my usual 1/2 ratio but I am enjoying the 100% record to date -yes I know it’s a tiny sample so far and I won’t keep a 100% record but it is nice while it lasts!

So now I am up to $227 profit and need another $173 to complete phase one.

Here’s the trades for the last couple of days:

I’ve increased the risk to 1% as I now have a bit more confidence with this new lower reward ratio strategy, I am allowed to lose $250 a day which would be 5 losing trades at this level, something I am fairly confident won’t happen.

Also today I traded USDCAD for the first time after watching it for a few weeks, here’s the details of that one:

The markets are playing nicely for me at the moment and today had I gone for my usual 1/2 RRR then all 3 trades would still have been successful (and I would have completed phase 1), but I am happy with the current situation, will need to monitor this.

EDIT - took one more trade just after posting this and got my 8th straight win.

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Cool - you’re going “like a train” (and gathering supporters/passengers in the process!). Don’t be in a hurry, though.

Good approach: a lower R makes everything easier to handle, in trading. This is exactly where so many people go wrong (as I used to myself). There’s a reason that most people in beginners’ forums say 1:2 and most people sitting on commercial trading-floors say more like 1:0.5

(There aren’t so many commercial trading-floors left, since the pandemic, because it’s more and more a virtual business, with people working from home, but you know what I mean?).

Nice thread. Keep up the good work! :smile:

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Just did some test trades using this same strategy on the NY Open - usually it doesn’t work so well for NY as for London but using the 1:0.5 risk to reward ratio I had 4 winners from 5, so I may start trading this as well for this challenge, from tomorrow, but with smaller risk level.

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There’s also a (slightly?) similar forex system, just for trading Cable, taking 1.00 to 3.00pm UK time as the “opening range”.

You can see the logic? That’s 2 hours of the “overlap session” between Europe and the US session, so a breakout from that range is significant.

I have no idea whether it works and have never tried it!! Not a recommendation! But I think I can see some logic, there?

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Interesting, I will have a look at that.

I have noticed today every pair I trade has broken out of the NY opening range in the same direction as it did for the London range, I wonder if that’s a regular thing as well?

Would make trading a lot easier if it’s even fairly regular.

:smiley:

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First losing trade today using the new risk to reward ratio, it was always going to happen so at least that is now out of the way. But other than that 2 winning trades and a break even so overall not bad, a break even type of day.

Here’s the loss, EURUSD;

Now arguably I entered this too soon but it did look like a breakout, retrace and a retest had happened but it then reversed again quite quickly and hit my SL. A bigger SL would have worked and it did eventually go back up later on.

I may set my SL to the opposite side of the 5 minute range instead of just around the middle, I can afford to use bigger SL now my risk to reward ratio is smaller.

I’ve checked and if the SL was at the other end of the range then it does hit my TP, in fact it would have hit a 1/1.5 RRR.

Next up, the break even trade on USD/JPY

Now I got out of this one as I didn’t like the look of the price action, or rather the lack of it. In the end it’s a tiny profit but I will just call it a break even trade.

Usually this pair drops quite quickly if it goes short early on, but had I held it then it would probably have been a profit as it didn’t quite hit the SL, although it’s hard to say for sure due to spread and the fact I am using OANDA prices on Trading View and not sure who 5%ers use - but if I used the SL on the other side of the range as I mentioned earlier then this would have been a profit.

Now for the winners, first AUDUSD;

Now I was happy with this one as my big weakness is I am extremely impetuous, it’s a problem that affects me in life generally and obviously in trading this can be a big problem but one I am trying to solve.

I waited for the price to break and retest and then break out past the 21SMA as I knew that might be a blocker.

In the event the 50 MA was more of a blocker but no problem it hit the TP within about 7 minutes, I walked away for this one and just let it play out so always nice to come back to a winner instead of a loss.

Finally the DAX40, DE40 or GER40 whatever you want to call it;

I’ve been experimenting with this one as a possible candidate for the 20 pip/$20 challenge but as you can’t do that due to margin I thought I’d use it for the 5%ers challenge.

It’s a bit different to my normal strategy as I am using the 5M timeframe with Heikin Ashi candles and I wait for the first hour range to form before entering.

But as you see a nice quick win here, there was a small pullback just before I entered and it hit TP within a minute or so.

I couldn’t do more trading today as I had to do the school run as my wife is poorly but I am fairly happy with today especially considering all 4 trades were in essence correct, just need to tweak a few things.

Oh, my win rate on 5%ers is now exactly 50%! :smiley:

Learnings from today: Set the SL to the opposite side of the range where practical.

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Well I have had a look at this and it does seem to have some merit, may do some test trades today with it, thanks for the heads up.

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Good luck, if you try!

My residual concern, with these things, is always about the long distance in-between observing that a breakout’s more likely to continue in the same direction than to reverse (which may well be true, overall, in some markets, at some times of day?) and actually finding something profitably and safely tradable out of that often-valid observation.

The devil is always in the detail! :grimacing:

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I’m assuming this is news.

:smiley:

US unemployment claims?

Can’t even do test trades in peace.

No - not for another few minutes, yet.

That will have been EUR Main Refinancing Rate and Monetary Policy Statement, I think.

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:stuck_out_tongue:

It always amazes me how price reacts to something so mundane and then it always gradually falls back again.

Is that a valid strategy to trade news from the extreme back to where it originally came from?

Lots of news coming out of Europe today. There’s also a emergency meeting in Brussels about EU defense spending.

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Are you trading with leverage?

Yeah. I love leverage :smiley:

30/1

Yea me too! Ha!

Okay cool. What kind of lot sizes are you using btw? Is that the Qty in your screenshots?