STEAL The 1-Minute Strategy That Made Him $1.8M+ (Works Every Session)

Quantitative futures trader JJ Simon breaks down his 1-minute fair-pricing system for Nasdaq futures on prop accounts. He enters on displacement candles, optimizes profit targets first, and sizes contracts to hit static dollar targets like $3,000 or $6,000 per trade while keeping expected value positive.
Chapters
I started with about $5,000. First month I made $17,000. Second month another $20,000, and then $40,000, and then $60,000, and then $80,000, and then $100,000.
So these are, you know, the 2 setups that you've used to achieve over $1.5 million in payouts. No indicators, pure price action, and in essence really simple.
I studied quantitative finance in college, basically just applying it to the charts in a mechanical way. If you can follow a bias on prop firms, you're going to make a ton of money.
He is the world's number one youngest quant trader with over $1.8 $1 million in total payouts so far. Introducing JJ Simon.
There is going to exist a statistically optimal risk and take profit for every single trade you take. First, the drawdown that you have available, the rules of the account. Lastly, your win rate. If I'm taking like a 1:4 risk to reward, then my bias only needs to be right about 20% of the time. Pair that with optimal risk and can be incredibly profitable. Low risk, low reward is not going to get you anywhere. You have to utilize the prop firm capital that they're giving you. So in my opinion, high risk, high reward is the way to go.
But in this episode, JJ shares his exact strategies which led him to such Insane payout numbers. He goes through the exact rules dependent on the prop firm rules.
If I buy an eval, I have a 91% chance of getting nothing. 9 times out of 10, you lose $100. Basically optimize for your take profit first. The stop loss, on the other hand, is going to be essentially random.
Do you ever find though with that methodology that price could take you out and still the whole bias and everything still be intact?
100%. But thankfully I have 45 accounts and I'm ready to enter again. I'll start with one, I'll get the payout, reinvest that payout.
Now I'm gonna run 5 funded He goes through how he manages multiple prop firm accounts and he shows his complete system with live trading. This is the episode you've been waiting for to see a true quant trader trading prop firms and exactly the system behind it.
If I'm trying to trade reversion and I lose 3 in a row, then I'm done. It's just a market that's most likely not going to revert according to my statistics. The sessions are 90 minutes long that I trade.
Okay, so you just focus on that 90 minutes?
Yep, first 90 minutes of every single session. New York, Asia, London. New York PM.
Oh, okay. So every—
Every session.
Okay.
A very easy way for literally anyone watching to automatically check if they're going to make money on prop firms before they buy a single account is to—
JJ, thanks for being here with us today, and I'm super excited to dive into this. I know that the people are probably super interested into, you know, exactly how you've been doing everything that you've been doing and achieved such incredible results on prop firms in such a short amount of time. You know, where's best to begin?
Yeah, 100%. I think we should start with the strategy and then I'll show everyone how you can adapt the strategy to run on prop firms specifically. Perfect.
Let's go. Let's do it.
All right. So the strategy that I use is called fair pricing theory. Now, I studied quantitative finance in college and this is sort of some stuff that's taught there, basically just applying it to the charts in a mechanical way. You have a theory which creates a bias, and if you can follow a bias on prop firms, you're going to make a ton of money. So this is the main theory behind the strategy. Now, fair price is what I'm trying to use to price the Nasdaq futures. And Nasdaq futures, we're trading companies because it's the Nasdaq. And what that means is I'm only looking at external factors that impact the price. So pretty much just news. And session opens. So I'll give a little demonstration here of a session open and how I would use fair pricing theory to trade that open. So if you assume price is coming in at whatever level, and then this down here would be 9:30 AM EST. So just the normal New York session. From here, there's going to be an influx of volume from overnight orders being executed and institutions entering. This is going to create an initial unfair move. So coming into the session, this is going to be my fair price, just the opening price of the 9:30 AM session. Now, the first trade that I'll take once a day, every single session that opens, I will take a continuation trade.
Hmm.
Pretty much it's just going to be in the direction of the opening candle, assuming it aligns with a high timeframe bias that I have. And high timeframe bias is just for reversion. So pretty much just inverting whatever happened for the previous 6 to 12 hours. But the main entry signal that I use is literally just the opening candle. It allows me to get in a slightly plus EV trade on a prop firm environment. Then when you pair that with optimal risk, you just want to take as many trades as you can with your bias. So the first trade, literally the color of the first candle, as long as it breaks structure of the previous candles, then I'm good. Then I'm good to enter and I will do A 38-point take profit and a 25-point stop loss for this trade. If the opening candle is larger than 25 points, I'll just simplify it, cut my contracts in half. That would make this 76 and that would make this 50. But that is literally it for the first trade, just a very quick continuation of the opening move, trying to capitalize on an unfair displacement. After that though, what I'm looking for is reversions to the opening price. Okay, again, opening price just 9:30 AM. The initial move, whichever way it goes, it doesn't matter to me. All I'm looking to do is revert back towards what I claim to be the fair price, which is sort of what fair pricing theory is— just a return to the opening price. And in terms of the entry, there's a few different entries that you can do. The first one is a displacement candle. Now, what I use for a displacement candle Means the body of the candle must be larger than the body of the previous candle, and it also must close below the wick. So in this example, it's a slight displacement candle because it closes below the wick of the previous candle and the body is larger. So that is the first and the easiest entry signal. Very mechanical. Literally only 2 things to look at.
Mm-hmm.
If you're getting a displacement towards the fair price, Then I would take a short.
Which timeframe would you be, you know, looking for that candle on?
Only the 1-minute timeframe.
Everything. So everything we talk about will be on the 1-minute?
Yeah. Everything here is 1-minute. The only thing I'll do on the 5-minute is look for my high timeframe bias. But you could also just look at the 1-minute for 12 hours previous and then still get that same bias. That's pretty much what that's used for. But anyways, displacement candle will tell me to send the first entry in. And displacement candles are— it's the first entry requirement. The second one is a break of structure. Now, for break of structure, it is pretty similar to a displacement entry, but it's slightly more profitable. The reason why I take displacements, even though they're less profitable, is because I have so many prop firm accounts that I'm trying to trade daily.
Hmm.
So if I'm trying to get through 40 accounts, I want to spread my risk across all of my accounts and then take as many trades as possible with a slight bias towards a fair price.
Okay.
Now for the break of structure entry, it's similar to the displacement, except it's just the traditional definition of structure. When there's a wick down here that is lower than the 2 candles previous, the candle before and the candle after, if the wick is lower and then a candle comes in here and it breaks the structure, then I will take a short position. Just a standard break of structure entry. Now, the interesting thing about this with prop firms Is you can see if I was to enter here, then I'm getting however many points this is in my favor towards a fair price. It could be 50, it could be 25, it could even be 100 points, just depending on how far the market moved in the initial continuation. So when it breaks structure, I have it on my chart marked out exactly how many points I'm looking to see in a return to the market open price.
Okay.
Based on that, it's going to be a value near these, like most of the time, I will choose a different prop firm account based on the rules that the prop firm gives me. Some prop firms, it's better to have 100-point take profits, some it's better to have 50, some it's better to have 25. So I'll optimize in this prop firm-specific way by taking funded accounts based on exactly how many points are in my favor.
What are the sort of differences that would then dictate that? So like, what are the specific rules that prop firms might have that then make you make this decision?
100%. So the way I trade prop firms is using static risk and static take profits. So every single trade— or not every single trade, but a majority of the trades that I take— the risk is going to be something like this with a 1:1.5. And this is great for an evaluation. The reason why is the evaluation has a $3,000 profit target and then a $2,000 max loss. This in and of itself is a 1:1.5. So if you separate your trades into a 1 to 1.5, you're automatically going to have a higher pass rate just because of how the drawdown trails. But then for these funded trades up here, I'm going to choose to take the 100-point trades on funded accounts that don't have consistency.
Okay.
Basically, if I can let, let an account run for 100 points with 1 contract, 2 contracts, 3 contracts, whatever, the larger win, I'm able to realize all of that expected value if the prop firm does not have a consistency rule. Same if the prop firm does not have a strict policy where they move you to a live account. If you get moved to a live account, usually your sim capital gets reduced and then you get a smaller live account. So there's no point in going for like $20,000, $30,000 wins when your live account is going to be a fraction of that.
Mm-hmm.
So basically these optimizations here is built on a prop firm specific environment to maximize the expected value of a funded account. And then in the transition to live account, make sure that I'm being moved to the live account in a way that's gonna benefit me. Either taking a payout at the end or getting a large enough live account to make it worth my time trading it. Evaluations always going to be a 1 to 1.5. It's going to be 25/38 or change the contract size to make it 50/76. Evaluations as well will be all of my displacement candle entries. Funded accounts I like to save for the break of structure just because it's a much stronger entry. But evaluations, I'll send as many of them as I possibly can off displacement candles anytime I see a displacement towards fair price. I have a bias, I have an entry, and I have optimal risk. And that's what I'm going to do on my evaluations.
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Yeah, so firms with consistency rule, just like the evaluations, the evaluations have a 50% consistency rule. So automatically when I'm assigned a consistency rule, I'm trying to limit my winners. If you win too much, then you have to win even more and more and more, and your chance of getting that payout decreases because your profit target increases by way too much. So what I'll do is I'll take a 1 to 1.5 risk to reward on consistency accounts. It's very simple. Same reason as devaluation. Sometimes I'll do a 1 to 2, but this is mostly based on the firm and the profit targets that they assign you to reach for payouts. But These entries are better for consistency, and then you can even do one to three, four, five, even six. As many points as in your favor towards fair price on the non-consistency account. Of course, yeah. All right. So now let's talk about news events because, like I said in the intro, fair pricing theory is mostly determined by news events. The open is kind of an event in and of itself just because there's an influx of volume that creates an initial unfair move. After that, though, and during times when it's not a session open. By the way, the sessions are 90 minutes long that I trade.
Okay, so you just focus on that 90 minutes?
Yep, first 90 minutes of every single session. New York, Asia, New York PM.
Oh, okay, so every, every session. Okay.
Yep. I just want to realize my bias as many times as possible with an optimal risk. Now let's talk about news events. The reason fair pricing theory works is because you're trying to have a bias towards what a fair price of the future should be. If you can get your bias right, then you're going to be profitable on prop firms. That's it. Now, the way news impacts futures is by changing the fair price. There's 2 types of news. There is expected, and then there is unexpected. So the expected news— this is 8:30 AM red folder news. EST. Unexpected is stuff like tweets, speeches, things like that. You don't know what's going to come out. My favorite trade to take is the expected news reversion. Basically what that means is if we have news coming out here at 8:30, the price is coming in 8:30, you are going to see a huge candle coming off of news. It could be multiple in a row, it could just be one, but it's going to be a very large candle. If the news is expected, meaning it's the 8:30 scheduled red folder news, usually happens twice a week, CPI, PPI, whatever. This is already priced in. The price action that's happened for the previous 6 to 12 hours is moving the market up or down to a fair price because the news is priced in. Basically, that means there's a forecast and 90% of the time it's going to be very, very close to the forecast.
Mm-hmm.
In a way where if there is an initial move, it is extremely unfair. So basically the theory is that news is priced in, it is forecasted. If the outcome is extremely similar to the forecast, then you can trade a reversion because this here is a fair price. So I use the exact same entry model as previous just to trade these reversions.
So that same premise really, and same philosophy behind the trade.
Yep. Now, of course, there is also unexpected news that would mostly be Trump tweets, speeches, Fed chair, whatever. Example for this would be the price is here, and then out of nowhere, Trump tweets something extremely positive for the economy, and then it goes all the way up here. Instead of trying to revert like I would here, this is actually changing the fair price of the futures.
Mm-hmm.
The reason this one doesn't is because it was already expected what the result would be. So the initial move is unfair. This one completely unexpected. No one expected him to tweet this or that. So it's going to change the fair price of the futures. After the fair price has changed, I will use the most recent consolidation as the new fair price going forward. So this would be my new fair price. You are allowed to do 2 different types of trades with unexpected news. The first one is a continuation. If you are able to get in somewhere here, you're going to have a slight positive expectancy in terms of news drift. News drift is basically a common studied phenomenon where if news is positive, is more likely than not, just very slightly, to continue upwards just over the next few hours. So if you're able to get in as soon as you see that tweet, as soon as you see the chart having a huge jump, then that's slight positive EV. Then follow it with optimal risk, of course. After this, you could also take a similar type of news drift. There's consolidation here, so if it breaks structure up, then I would take another news drift trade long. On top of that, I would trade a reversion So consider it keeps going up. After that, I would revert back to the most recent consolidation. Okay. This consolidation is what I determined to be the fair price because it is where the price has stagnated after an unexpected news event. So these are pretty much the only ways to trade my strategy. Continuation, reversion, continuation, reversion, continuation, reversion.
In terms of the drift side of things, like how do you determine your take profits? in those scenarios because it's probably going into more of a price discovery area. Maybe not like within all-time highs or anything, but just generally speaking in comparison, in these trades you're targeting the fair value. In the reversion here, you're targeting the fair value, but the drift is obviously very different. Exactly.
Yeah.
It's heading in a direction where you might not have a fixed target.
Exactly. Yeah. So continuations are always a little bit worse than reversions, just for me and in general. Because you don't know exactly where the fair price is if for some reason it's up here.
Yeah.
And you don't know how far it's gonna continue. Reversion's so easy. You just mark out that exact price the market opened at and just revert to that. But like you said, the continuations are hard. What I will do for continuations is give myself the largest possible stop loss.
Okay.
And the reason why I do that is if you have a slight positive bias, so a slight linear drift that you're expecting the chart to go through, There's a ton of different equity curves that the price could go through on its way to complete this positive equity curve.
Mm-hmm.
So pretty much you're realizing a bias and you want to have a stop loss large enough to where a small amount of these random simulations of price come down to stop you out. So most of the time I'll take these on funded accounts. And that's because if you have a bias, that small percentage of edge in your favor is much more valuable to capture on a funded account than an evaluation. Because obviously you don't make money on the eval. Funded account gets you the payouts. So that's where you want to realize most of your bias, which is why I take the strongest trades here and these trades here with a very large stop loss and a strong bias.
Understood. So in terms of the large stop loss in this scenario, for example, would that look to be below the sort of previous consolidation?
Yeah. It's a very simple mechanical optimization. I assume on a live account even more optimizations would exist, but it's very important to simplify your strategy. as much as physically possible for a prop firm environment.
And with this one as well, in terms of the target, would you still be looking at your sort of 1 to 1.5 as an average, or would you literally just wait until price starts to consolidate?
I'll do 2 different things. First, I won't have a profit target, and it is a continuation trade, so obviously you don't know how far it's going to go. But if it's on an uptrend in my favor, in a continuation, and it's forming structure, on its way up, if it ever breaks structure against me, I will exit. Okay.
Will you trail the stop or will you just manually be monitoring?
I'll just manually monitor and exit whenever it breaks structure, because sometimes it could wick and then continue up, and that's technically not a break of structure. So it's really important.
So do you wait for a candle close?
I will, yes. Always waiting for candle closes on displacement and break of structures.
Understood.
Yeah, perfect.
And then, so these are, you know, the 2 setups that you've used. to achieve over $1.5 million in payouts. What's so interesting about this though is that there's no indicators, pure price action, and in essence, really simple. Yeah. When broken down.
100%.
You know, and would you say though that there's a real need to understand these numbers? And I guess that leads to a question of like, what was your process to get to this point where you have these very specific models, specific numbers that you follow, specific time windows? How did you build, you know, that? sort of really detailed approach.
Yep.
You know, what led you to do that? Obviously you mentioned, you know, as we came into this episode, like having that degree in quant finance, is that something that has helped and sort of pushed you in this direction?
Yeah, 100%. I think just studying a lot of math, statistics, and finance, of course, helped me develop this approach. But I think for people watching, the most important thing to do is try and find the optimal risk for prop firms. There is going to exist a statistically optimal risk and take profit for every single trade you take. And that's based on a few factors. First, the drawdown that you have available, the rules of the account, like consistency, winning days, whatever. And lastly, your win rate, basically your risk to reward and how often do you win that trade.
Hmm.
So if you have a very, high win rate, meaning very small risk to reward, maybe like a 1 to 1, then it is okay to risk more.
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If you have a very low win rate, like you're targeting 1 to 6, you'd want to risk less.
Yeah.
And the reason, the reason for that is within the prop firm environment, you want to make sure that a trailing drawdown does not impact your expected value. Basically, anytime you make profit, a drawdown trails up.
Yeah.
You're losing that because if you make $1,000 and it trails up, then you still only have $2,000 worth of drawdown. At least you're $1,000 in profit, but you didn't make any new drawdown to trade with. So basically, the way that I made money on prop firms is finding a good risk to reward for the evaluation, which is probably just going to be 1 to 1.5 for everybody if it's a minus $2K Plus $3K. And then on—
What account size is that?
That's a $50K.
That's a $50K.
Yep. And this is all futures, NASDAQ only is what I trade. But the funded account is where it gets a little bit more difficult to model expected value. Pretty much, if you're technically savvy, you could code simulations, basically imitate the prop firm rules combined with your exact risk to reward and exact win rate. And from there, You'll know exactly what is the optimal amount to risk on every trade and the optimal amount to have a profit target on every trade if you're modeling for the expected value of the prop firm. Now, obviously it is a little bit difficult to simulate things like this. Even AI can't do it. I tried to have it simplify some things for me, but it's, it's unable to, which is unfortunate.
Hmm.
But a very easy way for literally anyone watching to automatically check if they're going to make money on prop firms before they buy a single account is to backtest in a prop firm environment. I see everyone online backtesting these equity curves for live accounts and then, okay, it went up, good equity curve over time, the strategy works. Then they're going to try it on a prop firm account. They're going to get confused why they keep hitting the max loss. It's because prop firms are designed in a way where those positive equity curve live account strategies don't work. And what you should do is go on your backtest and pretend you have 10 accounts with Topstep, Lucid, whatever. You have 10 funded accounts. From there, you're going to trade the same risk to reward on every single account, every single trade on the evaluation. From there, you can determine your pass rate. All you need to do is backtest for your pass rate and don't backtest for your equity curve. Your equity curve like this one, that doesn't matter on a prop firm.
Hmm.
All you need to find out is your pass rate. And from there, I have a nice little formula where you can find how much it costs you to get a funded account. That would be the cost of a funded account evaluation, like $100 divided by your pass rate. If your pass rate is 25%, that means you pass 1 out of 4. So it costs you $400 to achieve your funded account.
Mm-hmm.
From there, you simulate that a bunch of times to find your exact pass rate, divide it from the cost of your evaluation. You'll know exactly how much it costs you for a funded account in the long run, assuming you're following— assuming you follow the same strategy and risk in the actual market. From there, once you have this value, all you need to do is make sure your expected value of your funded account is larger than this. That means you're going to make money. The expected value of a funded account is pretty much how much you can take out of the account in its lifetime. Only payouts. That's the only thing that matters.
Yeah.
Hitting your max loss, all you lose is $400. You don't lose the $2,000 of sim capital or whatever, so you only lose $400. So take that same exact backtest and now pretend that you have 10 funded accounts. Same exact thing. Try different risk to rewards. See which one of the risk to rewards in terms of— and by risk to reward, I mean static numbers. I don't mean only do a 1 to 2 or only do a 1 to 1.5 based on your account, your rules, the strategy. You should be following a static risk and one static risk must be theoretically optimal. If there's so many to choose from and it's applied to these specific rules. So again, same thing with the eval, backtest to find your expected value of the funded account. Basically, if you were to have 100 funded accounts over the course of a year, how many payouts in total would you get with what specific risk to reward? One of them will be optimal and that's the one you should choose. And then your expected value should be greater than your average cost to get a funded account.
Mm-hmm.
From there, You automatically know your strategy is profitable. All you have to do is follow it in the actual prop firm market.
Would you say though, using that model, is there limitations or things to sort of be aware of, especially with these sort of changes within the futures industry that we're seeing? Well, futures prop firm industry that we're seeing over recent months and probably gonna continue to see going into the future as well?
Yeah, 100%. The 2 things to be aware of, the first one is variance, 100%. Anyone who trades should be aware of variance, 100%. Basically just means how lucky you are or are not. And you need a sample size large enough to where variance is not going to be a problem. I'd recommend 50 evaluations. Backtest 50 evaluations. At that point, you'll have a good estimate of your pass rate. If you only try 3 and you lose all of them, it's not because the strategy doesn't work, it just had a slight drawdown period.
Hmm.
You shouldn't change after that because again, you could have a very positive equity curve on your evaluations, And then you just hit a little drawdown and you stop. That's not going to— it's not going to get you that positive bias over time. In terms of what you were saying with the futures prop firm environment changing is very true. Rules are changing day to day. Live accounts are being introduced more often to traders. So the same expected value could be lower or it could be higher. And most of that is based around the live accounts. It's every trader's goal, obviously, to get to the live account on a prop firm and then scale their capital. So you need to be aware of how that would change your expected value. Now, thankfully, it is a pretty easy formula to find your expected value of a live account. Assuming I had a $10,000 live account, the expected value of this account is $10,000.
Mm-hmm.
If I have a funded account with $2,000 worth of drawdown, maybe it's $1,000, maybe it's like $1,200, whatever I can on average get in payouts. Live account, very easy to find the expected value. Assuming you're a breakeven trader, it would just be $10,000 because you start at $10K and then you have equity curves that pretty much oscillate around $10,000 in the long run. You do pay some fees, which can decrease your equity curve a little bit, but assuming you're slightly above breakeven and you wouldn't be profitable on a live account on your own, that's why we're trading prop firms, then you would have $10,000 worth of expected value in the live account. So as you're simulating, be sure to understand If you run up a huge sim balance, you're likely going to get a live account worth $10,000 or whatever. So you need to definitely, definitely include that in your expected value calculation.
And when it comes to these particular models, would they be something you can replicate on the live account or is this specifically modeled around prop firms only?
All of this stuff with the specific profit targets and risk to reward is prop firm specific. If I was to trade a live account, I would only trade reversions, first of all. I would only trade break of structure, second of all. And third, Most likely only trade expected news reversions. Those are the strongest of the trades that I take. That's why I risk the most on them in my funded accounts. But in general, on a live account, you would not want to do a static risk and a static take profit. You would want it to be discretionary based on what the market is showing you. But in a prop firm environment, static is 100% the way to go.
And why is it that the expected sort of news reversion is the Sort of A+ setup for you, right?
It's because news every single time is priced in. There's always a forecast for it. You can see it on Forex Factory. Like 99% of the time, it's going to be very close to that forecast. Sometimes it's going to be an outsider, and the outsiders are pretty obvious to tell on the chart. Basically, it's just going to go up and it's going to keep going up. You won't even see a short entry, so you don't even get concerned with losing that sort of trade. But the expected ones are 100% the strongest since the initial candle is 100% of the time unfair. The reason why the market open is a little bit worse is because sometimes this initial continuation could be going towards a fair price that is up here. The market open is not fair 100% of days at that exact price. Yes, it's just a very strong bias that you can use on prop firms. But with news, I can't say 100%, but I'd say a very good portion of the time, the pre-news price is going to be fair.
And with these 2 models and what examples that we have in front of us, they're obviously showing sort of a bullish example with a reversion to the downside. I'm guessing the exact same would be the— if it was to flip, if we were to have obviously the sort of push aggressively to the downside and the reversion upwards, it would just be the same principle just flipped over.
Yeah, exactly. I'll take reversions, continuations any way that the chart is showing me.
Cool. So as we move on to the sort of the next question, which would be in regards to when you've seen people trying to implement this, You know, what has been, if you were to sort of really think about it, what would be the key struggles or hurdles? Because no doubt, you probably have people coming to you who have been trying ICT strategies, even maybe order flow strategies, or price action based, or indicator based. And now you're really taking them, I won't say out of their comfort zone, but really just showing them, hey, here's a mechanical system.
Right.
And a lot of the time with those other systems, you can make it mechanical, but most people are obviously using a lot of discretion.
Yeah.
Um, and probably unfortunately a lot of people don't actually have an edge or an expected value. They just have a, a particular set of sort of rules and concepts that they're using, and they might even be using them, you know, day to day in a random sort of, uh, combination.
Yep.
So when it's come to actually, you know, using a mechanical system, you know, backed by data, something that you've used yourself, and now you've seen success with other people as well, of course, But what has been sort of that hurdle, if any, you know, that stand out to you when sort of making that transition, making that change to trading in this manner?
Yeah, 100%. I think the thing most people get wrong about my strategy, there's 2 things. The first one is that for whatever reason, people are gonna try and backtest it on a live equity curve. They're gonna pretend that they have a live account and they're gonna backtest for that equity and they're gonna be surprised Why am I not making money? Well, you're using a static risk and using a static risk to reward that's optimized for prop firms. If you personally want to optimize this bias for live accounts, go for it. But prop firms right now are so incredibly profitable where you should only be trading prop firms. So basically what I'm saying is please backtest in a prop firm specific environment, find your pass rate, find your expected value. Don't be surprised when you use a static -500, +750 when it doesn't work on a live account because it's optimized for a prop firm. That is more of a macro thing that most people are confused about and get wrong. But in the specific strategy, something most people are struggling with is the adaptation of fair price. For example, we think the open is fair, so I'm going to trade reversals to the open. It's not going to win every day. The days that it doesn't win are days where you don't want to keep shorting into a bullish market or keep buying into one that's absolutely dumping. So I try to adapt fair price if my trades are losing. So I won't keep trading back towards the market open if it's trending heavily in one direction. That's a little optimization that you can do. It does unfortunately change the strategy from very step-by-step mechanical to a little bit discretionary.
Mm-hmm.
But as you get better at it, you can add your own discretion. Of course, everyone has stuff that they know, stuff that they've learned. Some of it might work. You should try to use the bias of fair price. Maybe you have a different entry model than mine. Maybe you have other confluences, but If you're on a prop firm, at least use the bias. The bias is what is so incredibly profitable, and that's why I take so many trades per day.
In terms of that, that was one of the questions I was going to have in terms of like, do you have certain rules around the number of trades you take? Do you have to put some sort of control or limits? Because even though it's mechanical, obviously that human nature element of, you know, maybe taking quite a few number of trades, maybe having a number of losses, How do you find one, the focus on the discipline side to make sure that each trade is alongside your mechanical system versus, you know, maybe taking a handful of trades that were with the mechanical system, but taking losses.
Yep.
And then in the process of going on tilt and then overtrading, because you know that you're taking a large number of trades in a day, But then suddenly, does that open the door to you going off system and going off your mechanical playbook?
Yeah, 100%. Just with the opportunity to take so many trades throughout the day, I guess it could be very easy to fall into that gambler's mindset of, I just want to enter, I don't really care where it's going to go. But there's a few things that I could say regarding that. Personally, if I'm trying to trade reversion and I lose 3 in a row, then I'm done. It's just a market that's most likely not going to revert according to my statistics. So I'm just done at that point. Second, tilt on prop firms is a very interesting thing to talk about. Most people attribute all of their losses on prop firms to going on tilt, but it's not actually as bad as most people think.
Hmm.
It's actually a completely random entry, which should be breakeven expected value. The only thing that changes is you're introducing a bunch of unneeded variance. You can have the possibility to blow your account or possibility to have huge wins. The problem with huge wins is they're usually capped because it's a prop firm environment, but Going on tilt is not really a problem for me. I think just because I have such a statistical approach where I know if I follow it step by step, I'm expecting to make X amount per month. And I don't really get mad at a loss because I know it's just part of the system. It's part of a positive equity curve of my bankroll that can have down moments at some time. The most important thing though is to simulate, back up your confidence that you know it's going to make money in the long run. An additional thing that I'll tell people with tilting and Like I said, it's not that bad because it's just break-even if you're randomly trading, and it's not the worst thing. But if for some reason you feel you're going into tilt and you have an account that's at $2,000, you're going to get a payout from it soon. If you're on tilt, do not trade that account. You're risking $2,000 of your account to win whatever, so it's break-even. But if you go on tilt, you buy 20 new evaluations for $100 each. That's the same $2,000. It is much more fun and it will get you off tilt way faster to trade all 20 of those evaluations correctly instead of just gambling and coin flipping your one funded account. It's about to get a payout. You can risk the same amount, have more fun, make more money, and then your downside is capped because if you're trading 20 evals individually, your risk will spread across all of them. Worst case, you have a really bad pass rate because you're gambling them and it's like 30, not 30%, 20%, 15%, whatever. At that point, you're not coin flipping $2,000 worth of expected value. Your variance is extremely reduced because it's spread across 20 evaluations. So if you ever go into tilt, do it on the evals, not the funded accounts.
Would you say as well, when you're trading these accounts, as you say about individually, is that individually in terms of per firm or do you mean literally each account? Even if let's say you have 5 with one firm, Are you trading each of those accounts individually or are you trading, say, the 5 set at this firm, 5 at this firm, 20 at that firm, whichever it may be? Like, how are you doing that? Are you sort of treating them as an individual firm set of evals or individual accounts?
Yeah. So let's talk about how I'm able to place 30 trades throughout the day. Yeah. I'll just simulate everyone a random New York session. I'm just going to draw a random curve, a random chart. It could even go like that. Like, it doesn't matter where it goes. This is just going to be a New York session. I'm going to trade it from 9:30 until 11. And the way I'm getting 30 accounts in is I see this is the fair price. I'm just going to trade toward to and from it the whole session. And there's a few different entries that I could take. Obviously the displacement entry is going to give me a bunch of entries. And if it's coming back down, like 95% of the time there is going to be a displacement. Sometimes it reverts in one candle, so I can't really catch that. But most of the time I'm going to have a reversion there, there, there, there, there, there. Just so many reversions throughout the day. And what I do is I notice how many points are in my favor on this one, how many points in my favor on this one. And then of course, trade the different account based on that because it's optimal to do so. But in terms of getting that many trades throughout the day, days like this are actually harder.
Mm-hmm.
Days where it's going up and down, staying near the fair price is much harder. Another example of, or like a day where it's only going one direction. So to go like this, it won't revert, it'll continue going down, maybe it'll stay stagnant and continue going down, like a non-reversion day. Yeah, obviously those are worse for me because I have a bias back towards 9:30 here. Yeah, and it doesn't revert. So most of my trades are going to be losers, not all, because I get in here and maybe I hit take profit, get in here, maybe it wins, maybe it doesn't. But that's 3 entries. And when it's stagnant, I'll usually take a trade in the stagnation. The reason for that is, again, I do have a bias, and if my bias is correct, then it's slightly profitable to take that trade with an optimal risk. Now, days like this, I do what's called layering evaluations. I don't really want to copy trade because it just gives me extra variance that there's not really any need to take if I'm able to get in a bunch of different trades.
Mm-hmm.
So what I'll do is I'll send one account in here, and if there's some structure here, and it breaks structure again, I'll send another one.
Okay.
So basically I'll enter on displacement really early and if it breaks structure, I'll get in again on another account. So these moves here, they give me basically 2 entries, but the same exposure.
Okay.
Just reducing variance through a little bit of a dip.
And would it matter if it's on the same firm or different firms? It doesn't matter as long as the accounts and, you know, the rules are—
Right.
Amenable to your system. Yeah.
As long as you've optimized for the risk to reward and the specific rules, it doesn't matter which prop firm you trade it on. It does make it easier just to do all within the same one because my evaluations are mostly static. Even if I see 50 points to a fair price, I'm not gonna go for 50 points in the eval. I'm only going for 38 because 38 is optimal according to my static risk to reward.
And then in terms of, as you mentioned, the sort of free loss rule that you have, is that per session? Because as you mentioned, like you'll do this particular session, obviously probably one of the more popular trading sessions, the New York open, but then as you said, the lunchtime, Asia. You say London as well?
Yep, works for London.
So when you have the 3-loss rule, is that for that session then? Yeah, you stop.
Yeah, it's 3 losses in a row in one session.
It should work.
Yep, in a row, 3 in a row. It should be pretty clear that the price is trending in one direction and just not reverting. But days like this where it's a little choppy, maybe it could still come back. These days I'm just going to keep taking trades. It's just these right here where I lose 3 attempts all very quickly and you can see price moving away still. Yeah.
Okay.
At that point, there is something that I don't know. For some reason, the fair price is up here. I don't know something, so I'm not gonna trade anymore.
And when something like that happens, let's say, and then it moves on to the next session.
Yep.
Is your fair value then this, let's say in this scenario, this area here?
Yep.
Which then again, you would mark out and then be waiting to see what price does in the next opening session?
Yeah, exactly. So going into following sessions, the new fair price would be up here.
Understood.
9:30 is not a target after 11:00 AM.
Okay.
It is just a high timeframe bias for reversion because in the long run markets are reverting. Markets are reverting on the 1-second, the 1-minute, the 10-minute, the 1-hour. Markets are reverting. And the reason why 9:30 is only a high timeframe bias is because it's too far in the past for it to still be considered a fair price. If for some reason 9:30 was fair and it was all the way up here, when volume is introduced, it would 100% come back down to 9:30. But obviously it's not. So I didn't, pretty much disclassify 9:30 as a fair price going forward after 11.
Okay. So you won't, there wouldn't be a scenario where you're using, say, on that day, the 9:30 or previous day's sort of fair value prices. It's always based on what the latest, most recent session open and where that fair value's been placed in or news-related-wise.
Exactly.
Where that's been placed in right now.
Yep. And fair value could change throughout the New York session if for some reason there's an unexpected tweet or something like that.
Yes.
And you get a very quick move up, then you 100% have to adjust fair value to the consolidation after that tweet.
Understood.
Okay. One last thing about fair price in different sessions is a little bit discretionary, but you can try to apply it as best you can. Between 11 to 2 p.m., there is basically no volume. It's kind of a dead time in the market. So it is possible, slightly possible for price to be trading at an unfair price between 11 and 2 p.m. Then when the 2 p.m. session opens, which is another session that I trade, if 2 p.m. opens down, I will try to trade it all the way back down to 9:30.
Okay.
Basically just using the influx of volume from the 2 p.m. session as a continuation trade and a reversion trade back towards what could possibly be a fair price. Again, it's a bias. And if I'm taking like a 1 to 4 risk to reward, then my bias only needs to be right about 20% of the time. And it should be pretty easy to have that bias, especially on a prop firm. Then just pair that with optimal risk and you can be incredibly profitable.
When it came to separating the accounts, you know, with different consistency rules, for example, do you just find when it comes to say large trades like this example, would you just purely take those only on evaluations or funded accounts that don't have the consistency?
Yes.
Or is there a world where, you know, even if it has a consistency, you'll just make sure that every trade is fitting the similar Ah, so in terms of this particular example, 1 to 4, you would just have to keep hitting 1 to 4s on that account so that the consistency sorts itself out? Or would you purely just say, make it easier for yourself by saying, okay, let's just take them on a no consistency even?
Yeah. So I'll add some little space here to talk about this. With a 1 to 4 on a consistency account, you should never do that. The reason why is in order to pass, if it's 20% consistency, Then you need 20 RR. Basically 20% times 4 gives you 20 because it's 5 trades of 4 risk to reward to be up 20.
Mm-hmm.
Now it is going to take you most likely 3 to 6 months in order to keep doing 1 to 4 once a day. It is going to take about 3 to 6 months to get your 20 RR if you're doing -1R +4R once a day. And the reason for that is because of oscillation. So assuming you start here at 0 and your goal is 20, we'll even assume you're a very profitable trader with this strategy. If you go up 4, down 1, up 4, down 1, it is not possible to continue that exact same profitability all the way up to 20.
Mm-hmm.
Realistically, you're gonna win 4, lose 1, 2, 3, win 4, lose 1, 2, 3, win 4, lose 4, win 4. Like you're gonna have You're gonna have a positive equity curve if your strategy is good, but it's gonna take you absolutely forever to reach 20. That is another reason why I prioritize the lower risk to reward of like a 1:1 or a 1.5 on the consistency accounts. It's because I'm much— I'm getting to the goal much faster because the goal here, if I'm doing 1:1, is only to hit 5R. And with a 1:1, I am still gonna oscillate and it's going to take a little bit of time, but significantly faster than getting all the way up to here.
And your win rate naturally will probably be higher as well.
Yeah, the win rate definitely is higher the lower your profit target is, and the higher your win rate, the faster you're going to pass evaluations and get towards payouts.
And what would you say in terms of the limitations that you face? Is there— like, you are $1.5 million right now in under 18 months, which is incredible, but would you say there's like almost a cap when it comes to trading in this manner? which might be around that sort of figure, $1.5, maybe $2 million, et cetera.
Yep.
Obviously there's more futures firms that are coming out every single day, for better or worse.
Yep.
Like, what is your mindset when it comes to saying, okay, these, you know, the top 5 or top 10 firms, I've already sort of, you know, maximized my return and sort of moved to live so that opportunity cost might not be there anymore, that expected value might not be there anymore for the system. But now you have a lot more options that might be available.
Yeah.
You know, what does that look like for you when it comes to, okay, making that decision of, okay, maybe we have to go to some of these newer firms? You know, how do you look at that? How do you sort of observe that and make your calculations accordingly? Or is it just a risk you have to take in terms of, okay, yes, the rules might be similar, but then you're not sure about, you know, achieving certain payout amounts?
Right. It is, it is a little bit of both. I think the most important thing to do is understand how your expected value changes as you move to a live account. Every single prop firm in their help center will tell you exactly when they move you to live, exactly what the rules are on live. So you could simulate that as well. Find out the expected value of that prop firm-specific live account.
Okay.
As well as if you have 5 funded accounts with whatever balance, understand that when you go live, they're removed and they become the live accounts. So any profit that you had there is no longer your profit. So what I do now is mostly optimize my approach around the live accounts. When I first started, it was only optimized for the funded accounts. Because like a year and a half ago, there was basically no risk of ever going live. But now everyone goes live on prop firms. As soon as you make a little bit of money, they're trying to move you live so that everyone can make money. And it's a good thing, but you need to be aware of how your expected value changes and then optimize that as well. Basically, the way I structure my approach to firms that move me to live is I want to only go live when it's going to make me money. So I see the requirements for going live. I know if I go live with this firm, I'm getting a $15,000 expected value account. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to keep my sim-funded balance below $15,000. I'll trade in between $13K and $14K. If I go over $15K, like I run it up to $20K and I get moved live, then I lost $5K in expected value. So I optimize for how I'm getting moved live and the expected value there. So then my approach specifically will only make me money if I go live.
Understood.
There's also a bunch of different firms coming out, like you said, And I definitely love trading with new firms. Um, new firms have very good payout policies because they're trying to compete and get into a very difficult market. If it's a new firm, they also have to pay you out or else their reputation's gone and then they can't grow. So these new firms are actually kind of a little gold mine because they have really good rules and they have to pay you out or else their company's not going to make it. So I like to get into these new little firms and I'll only trade one account at the time.
Okay.
I wouldn't grab 5 eBows, get 5 funded, make $10,000 on all of them just in case, right? I'll start with one, I'll get the payout, reinvest that payout. Now I'm going to run 5 funded accounts and go for max payouts.
Understood. And in terms of the, let's say breaking down the numbers, that $1.5 million, what's the sort of cost to make that sort of amount so far for you?
It's about $400,000.
Really?
Yeah. So it is quite expensive, but I started with about $5,000.
You started with $5,000?
Yep.
Wow.
First month I made $17,000. Second month I believe was another $20,000 and then $40,000 and then $60,000 and then $80,000 and then $100,000. And it unfortunately is getting a little bit lower, so I'm not able to stay above 6 figures every month. It's mostly like $100,000, then $75,000, then $60,000, then $100,000.
Is that because of like sort of the changes in terms of moving to live, et cetera?
Yeah. Expected value's getting a little bit worse because prop firms are increasing their prices. This, this straight up. But it's still very possible to make 6 figures a month, especially if you're new. If you're new to prop firms, they're not going to try and limit you and send you live until you've proven profitability. So if you were to just come onto prop firms today, you could 100% hit a few 6-figure months in a row before eventually it would come down to about $50K, $75K, $100K a month.
And would you say that obviously this is an amazing opportunity, you know, and you've achieved such a great success with the changes. Would you say that your mindset is to develop something for a live account and develop something that you would, whether it's a live account on a firm or just your own personal live account, now that you've achieved these figures for yourself and have this return, is that where your sort of mind goes next?
Yeah, 100%. Prop firms were an excellent way to build a bankroll. I do have a bunch of money in my funded accounts right now. So if I was to stop spending and only go for winning days and just withdraw all of that, I'd probably get about $250K back. Okay. So if I just totally stopped trading prop firms, right now and just only did winning days, I could get about $250K back more. So then that's like $400K spent, $1.75 million in profit, which is a really good amount to start your own live account, obviously, like 7 figures. But my main goal right now is to get to a $5 million net worth and then open a hedge fund. So I want to trade strategies like this and capture inefficiencies in the market on a live account. But with prop firm-specific live accounts, you can take a similar approach where you're optimizing expected value. The reason for that is they're not traditional live accounts. A traditional live account has $10,000 in your balance. You grow it, whatever your payout is, you can take it whenever, just like it's a normal brokerage account. The prop firm-specific live accounts still have a bunch of rules. Thankfully, they do have bonuses, but they have drawdown limits. They have payout limits. They have payout splits, but the bonuses are the best part. So when I move to live, I will optimize for my chance to receive that bonus. A quick little example with Lucid or Tradify. If you make $4,500 on a $150K live, then you get a $4,500 bonus, which is great because if you're essentially start with zero and you have a $4,500 max loss, if you reach plus $4,500, you get an extra $4,500 added to your account. So the expected value there is basically doubled because if you make $4.5K, then you get a $4.5K bonus. So I will optimize for my chance of getting that bonus. And the instant I hit $4.5K in the account, I'm not going to trade it again just because I want to get to that bonus and I want to receive it. If I'm at $4.5K and I'm risking that $4.5K to try and like double it again, get it to $9K, most people think, okay, I'm trading with live capital, I want to grow it. But you need to wait until the bonus hits your account. And the reason for that is if you're at $4.5K worth of account, Mm-hmm. you have a $4.5K bonus that should be coming in in a few weeks once you qualify for it. And you still risk that, you're actually risking $9K to win $4,500 when your account only has $4,500 in it. So there's a few ways to optimize around the prop firm-specific live accounts. That's mostly what I'm doing right now. But in the future, definitely the goal is to run my own hedge fund.
Understood. And would you say that a large part of this in terms of being able to be disciplined, stick to the mechanical edge, is understanding what a mechanical edge actually means? In terms of you've done the data, you know the numbers, and that only by sticking to it and following that process will the— again, as you say, you can't say guaranteed in trading, but this is closer to a guarantee, or at least an understanding. You know how they say, you know, trade statistics, understand your numbers.
Yeah.
That's essentially what you're doing when you're trading mechanically. And it may be a bit of a leap or change in mindset that a lot of traders probably have to do. Like, have you always traded this way, or did you trade more discretionary before?
I have always traded with the statistically optimal prop firm approach. The strategy has pretty much been the same for 16 months. When I first started out, I was kind of messing around with the strategy, but the risk to reward, how much you risk per trade, what your profit target is per trade, that must be statistically optimal, or you're not maximizing your potential on the prop firms.
Understood. Well, now we're going to go over actual trade examples from the charts, right? Let's take a break for a minute there, guys, because a quick word from our official platform sponsor, NinjaTrader. If you've been following along on this channel, you know how much time we spend breaking down charts and market structure, and NinjaTrader is an award-winning futures trading platform built for exactly that. You get advanced charting, depth of market tools, and market replay so you can work through historical sessions and practice in a fully simulated environment, all without risking real money. Here's how to get started. If you're new to the platform, use the link in the description below to download NinjaTrader and explore it in the simulator. You get 2 full weeks for free to test everything out. And if you're already trading prop, choose NinjaTrader as your platform at checkout It's the best platform for the job. So go check it out and let's get back to the episode.
All right. So there is no news this week. So I'm going to go over Tuesday, July 14th, and then Wednesday the 15th, because those were the red folder days of last week. This was CPI. This is 8:30 AM red folder news. Like I said earlier, it's priced in. So this right here is the price before news. Obviously green candle means it started here and ended up there. So this is going to be the fair price going forward. Now, in terms of the entry, of course, every entry is going to be short, just back towards this fair price here.
Mm-hmm.
Now, what I'll do is I'll wait for a displacement candle or a break of structure. Now we can analyze them one by one. First, this is not a displacement candle. 2 qualifications needed: the body must be larger and it must close below the wick. This one, only the body is larger, so no displacement here. Then we do get a break of structure right here. This is obviously structure because it is a wick lower than the 2 candles next to it.
Okay.
From there, break of structure, and my target is going to be all the way back down here towards the fair price.
When you say the wick side of things, is that with the understanding that on the lower timeframe? Yeah, because normally structure for people, you know, the, if you will, the conventional way or how people observe it is they observe it like lower lows, lower highs, et cetera. Right. And then that being a break here below the previous low. So is it just taking the mindset of without having to go into the seconds, etc., that that would in this essence be low, lower high, and then that broke?
Yep.
And then obviously the next candle obviously trying to break and then it's broken through.
Yeah, exactly. So I'll just use these little intra, intra candle structures. Like normally structure obviously stands out a lot more and the more it stands out, the stronger it is.
Gotcha.
I just would use these because it's going to give me a pretty easy entry. And it's just something I can mechanically say the instant it closes below this, what I classify structure, then I'm just going to short. Gotcha. There's no thinking, is it going to go down? I don't know. I'm just going to enter. So having speed and having kind of an aggressive approach is very good.
And what would you need to do in terms of execution? Are you executing off a phone? You got to trade on TradingView? Like what's going to allow you to have that speed?
I've just traded on this computer for all 18 months. Really? Yeah, I have a desktop. I have TradingView and Forex Factory open and I have all my prop firms on this computer. I've just always done it. Didn't really want to switch away. But one important thing that I will add for the entries is you can look down here at the bottom right. You can see the clock. Right now it's 11:40 and then 50. As soon as this hits 51, then you're noticing like it's the next second. So as soon as it's going to hit 60 and then 61, like the next minute, you know that the candle closed. So I'm just watching the clock and then boom, next minute I check over here to see if it closed, then enter. So it's like split second. Did it close below? Yes or no? So just very easy, aggressive entry style that I take.
So in terms of this one, stop loss goes above the structure, I guess?
There's actually a few different options for the stop loss. Okay. Basically optimize for your take profit first. Okay. On a prop firm environment. So I'm seeing 170, 167 points in my favor. Now what I'm going to do is I'm looking at my dashboard. which is just coded to tell me the optimal risk for all of my accounts. And it's going to say you need 150 points on this one, 200 on this one, 175 on this one. This is closest to 175. So my profit target is just going to be 175 points. After it hits fair price, it's essentially random.
Okay.
But in this case, it's close enough to my take profit where I don't really have a problem letting it run for an extra 7 or 8 points.
Gotcha.
Now the stop loss, on the other hand, is going to be essentially random. It's going to be static, but again, optimized based on the prop firm. Because if my profit target down here is 175 and it's telling me to use 1 contract or whatever, so it's gonna make me exactly 3,500 or whatever with 1 contract, then the stop loss, if my account is telling me to risk 500, then it's going to be at that amount of points. It's gonna be at 25 points. If—
Okay.
With 1 contract, because my profit target's what I'm really optimizing for. Like it's just going to be $3,600 for this specific account based on the expected value of it.
Okay.
Then the stop loss is just going to be whatever the reciprocal of the take profit is basically. So it's going to be completely random, I guess, in a way where the take profit is more important.
That's interesting. Very interesting. Because obviously, you know, a lot of people would take the opposite mindset with it. So focusing on the stop loss and normally The conventional rule being, you know, an invalidation point.
Right.
So this kind of goes against that in the sense that you're focused on the take profit and then optimizing that, so which then will then dictate the stop loss accordingly for the dollar amount.
Right, exactly. 'Cause there's a bias. My bias is all the way reverting down towards a fair price.
Do you ever find though with that methodology that price could take you out?
Yeah.
And still the whole bias and everything still be intact?
100%. But thankfully I have 45 accounts and I'm ready to enter again. Okay.
Okay.
Every entry in the direction of my bias, win or lose. So this would just be the first and kind of the only entry in terms of the reversion towards the pre-news price. But there's also a bunch of entries within this move down that I could layer in on more funded accounts or evaluations. Here's a really good example. There's a bunch of structure here, 1, 2, 3, 4 wicks that have not broken this level. So it's outstanding structure. And this candle, very strong break of structure, obviously. And then this one here, it's giving me 94 points. Okay. With this trade. So this one seems like it'd be fine to go for 100 because I have some that need 75, some that need 100.
Okay.
Usually it's like split up by 25 points. Just, I guess that's how the optimization turned out. But this one's going in for 100 and then the stop loss is going to be exactly whatever the account says. The most common stop losses that I end up seeing from my optimization is 25 points. Yeah. 37.5. 50 and 75. So a few different options. But again, you have to optimize it for your specific account. So stop loss is just going to be what it's going to be. I don't really mind if I lose here. It totally could have been possible I had a 50-point stop. Totally could have been possible I had a 25-point stop. I don't really remember and it doesn't really matter. All that matters is I traded according to my bias.
Okay.
Then as it continues farther down, up and down, up and down, you have outstanding structure here which gets wicked but not broken. So I would not take a trade here.
In terms of that trade, would that be on a different account to the first trade?
Yeah. Okay. Yep. So every trade is on a different account. They're all getting layered in short because I want to capitalize on the bias.
Do you have to put a system in place for you to manage, to make sure that you don't accidentally put a second trade on the same account?
Yep. So I use Tradovate because I'm able to open literally 10 Tradovate tabs. And I just start on one prop firm, start sending them all short, go to the next one, Sending more short, as long as the bias is short, obviously. But another thing you can do is take evaluations. So as these 2 funded trades are still running short, you can take an evaluation trade here. And the reason for that is it's still a break of structure, so it's a strong entry.
Yeah.
But if I felt I had too much exposure to this trade where I had like a funded account— exactly, I'd already seen a very nice reversion for 100 or so points. I might think I don't really want to short the bottom on more funded accounts because I am getting a bias. I'm getting an edge, but this one is way more of an edge because I've entered way higher. So it's more points in my favor. So maybe I'm getting a little concerned. I have too many funded short right now. It's a little bit too much exposure. So I'm going to send evals in and evaluations. Like I said earlier, it's going to be 38.25. So pretty much at least half of my trades would be 38.25.
Interesting.
And the other half obviously would be the funded accounts going as close to fair price as the risk on the account says. So This one would be 38 points for evaluation. It loses, but whatever. Then here comes 9:30. Now this is a really important one.
But does it lose or does it—
does that one win?
It ends up taking profit and then—
Yeah, I didn't even notice. I guess that one won. But here comes 9:30, which is very important. Now if you mark this out and say this is my fair price because it's 9:30, unfortunately you're going to be wrong. And the reason for this is because when the market opened, the volume came in and it's going to move to a fair price, which is the pre-news price. So it instantly comes down and taps the pre-news price. If for some reason it opened up in like maybe like a continuation of the news, if the news was so green, like more green than the forecast, Yeah. then the open would be fair. So if it continued up, I'd only revert to the open instead of the pre-news. But Okay. When trading news, the news price is stronger than the open, especially when it opens and comes right back down to it, because there's an influx of volume here and it's able to get towards that fair price. From here, I would delete this one, no longer look at the open at all. I'd only look to trade to the pre-news price. Now, in terms of the entries, you're not going to get much unfunded here just because it's really close to it.
Yep.
So the only thing you can really do is take displacement candle entries towards the fair price. I don't have any funded accounts that need 33 points. Mostly it's going to be larger. Sometimes I do, maybe 25 points, but this looks like a great example of an evaluation trade. It's giving 38 points or so in your favor. So it seems pretty strong for a 38.25 eval trade. After that, I would continue to revert towards this price here. There's nothing that has convinced me that fair price is anywhere else.
Mm-hmm.
I would need a huge volume spike in one direction. Like if there's, there's a good amount of consolidation here and consolidation is usually what I confirm to be a fair price.
So would you say that consolidation almost might even be the fact that you had your 9:30 price and then you had your news price and we were just trapped in between?
100%. So what I'm going to do is just, I'm going to stick to my bias as strongly as possible, trade towards my bias of the pre-news price down here. But if it broke structure up, see this like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 wicks or whatever.
Yeah.
It's just not breaking back up. If it broke structure up, then I would adjust fair price to right here, which is the most recent consolidation. But it breaks down right here, breaks this structure. Another nice eval trade for 38 points back towards the pre-news price. There's also a few other entries in here. This seems like another good one. I believe I took just these 3 entries on this day. But it's only 10 a.m., and I've already won a bunch shorting back to the pre-news price. But the pre-news price is still fair, so I'm going to trade back towards it from the other side. I'm just trying to get through as many accounts as I can every single day. Now, this is not an entry. None of these are displacement candles, okay? Because none of them are closing above the wick. Even if it did close above the wick, I wouldn't take it because it would already be back at the fair price. Yes. This one is a displacement candle though. This one's not because it didn't close above the wick, but this one clearly closes above all 3 of these wicks and the body is much larger. So another nice trade. This one's giving 65 points, so it could be possibility take it unfunded for 50 points. If I have a funded, then it's 50, maybe 75. I tend to go lower if it's like in the middle of 2.
Yeah.
Because as soon as it gets back towards this fair price right here, it's essentially random. So I don't really want to be exposed to that. So 50 would probably be a little bit better than a 75 Do you ever take both on an evaluation and a funded, or do you, you know, hard rule one account per trade? I try and do one account at a time. Sometimes I will copy trade, like in this first trade, I would copy trade that just because it's such a strong setup. It's the break of structure, which is the stronger of the two, and it's right after news.
And yes, such— it's almost the peak high.
Yeah, it just— it stopped going up. It broke structure down. So I'm really excited to revert that to the pre-news price. Another thing, an optimization that people could do— here's probably a good example of it actually— is using some sort of an ATR. And that would be for your, your stop loss perspective. But of course, keeping it static. So if I'm doing 25 and 38, With one contract of NQ futures. This is -500 plus 760. If I wanted to keep the same static, which you should do on the eval, always do the same static, whatever works best for your strategy, then you can— if, if for some reason I was going to enter here, it's just a nice displacement candle. So this is kind of an entry that I'd see. This one's giving me 76 points in my favor.
Yeah.
If you double this, And double this. Now you have a 50-point stop loss and a 76-point take profit. But what you should do is cut your contracts in half. So instead of using one contract, now you're using 5 micros. Yeah. And it's going to be the same dollar amount remains exactly the same dollar amount is the most important thing to do on prop firms because it's optimal. So this is a slight little optimization people could do. Obviously a little discretionary, but the reason why I like doing trades like this sometimes is I can take this entry here and then I see there's structure here. So if it breaks structure here, I could layer in another trade, just get in here off this break of structure. This one's giving 60 points, so I'd probably just go for 38 here. So now I'm in 2 evaluation trades short, a little bit of different entries, but the same bias, different risk exposure because one stop loss all the way up here, the other is pretty close.
So interesting.
A little bit of optimization can allow you to get more accounts in. I used to do that, but now that I have so many accounts, that little 1% optimization that I can find in a few different places isn't really worth it.
Okay.
All I want to do is 38.25 and get through as many accounts as I physically can. So I get through one here, it breaks structure again, displaces here, I'd get another one in there. I'd get as many accounts as possible in the direction of my bias. And like I said earlier, the only time where you would try to do a different One of the actual 76, like when you should actually do 76 instead of 25, or when I'll do it, is on the opening candle when it's more than 25 points. This opening candle is 43 points. And I guess we didn't even go over this continuation, but it is a continuation. The opening candle was red and we even thought the fair price was down here. So it's kind of a continuation and reversion in one, which makes it a really strong trade.
Mm-hmm.
Probably one that I'd take unfunded. Usually evaluations are— continuations are only for evaluations. But I'd kind of classify this as both because the fair price is down here, so it's kind of a reversion in itself. Then it seems to have hit 11 AM right here. There's no entries to take on this move up because there's no displacement candles, but that was the CPI day last week. Very strong reversion multiple times, even went farther down, reverted, went back up, reverted. So really nice day there. Now I'll go to Wednesday for PPI. All right, here is PPI. So like I said with CPI, you can take continuations of the news if you're getting in here. I don't really like to do it. It's sort of an aggressive tactic to pass evaluations quickly, but I sort of stay away from that mostly. Now all I'm going to do is try to revert towards the pre-news price and again stop after 3 losses. So let's look through to see what sort of entries there are. This one is not a displacement because it didn't close below the wick. Yeah, same with this, same with this. But then we get a break of structure. This one would be my first entry short. Stop loss seems like it'd be about 25 just because there's not too many points in your favor, but probably something like 50-point take profit, 25 stop loss. After that though, there is no displacement here. The reason for that is a displacement also has to displace a candle of the opposite color.
Okay.
You can't really displace a red candle because it's still going down. And unfortunately nothing displaces this candle 'cause the bottom's all the way down here. So no entry there. Same, no displacement here, didn't close below the wick. Same here. Then we get the first displacement right there.
Yep.
That seems like a pretty strong entry. The stop loss is what it's going to be. I don't really do less than 25 points. I don't think ever in the New York session. Actually, I guess I could say never. Never, never less than 25 points in the New York session. And then 104 points in my favor seems pretty strong to send for about 100 points if I have a specific account that needs that. This was a displacement entry, which is fine to take unfunded, but it is a bit weaker. So ideally you would wait for this entry here, which is just a break of structure.
Mm-hmm.
Right there, structure gets broken. Pretty much same trade all the way back down towards the pre-news price. With the market open though, Didn't really give the best entries this day. It kind of chopped around wicks every single direction. No real displacement to the downside until this candle here. Yeah, first displacement candle down. Definitely just going to short back towards the pre-news price. Unfortunately, I lost this one. I was going for 38.25 and then barely stopped me out before unfortunately going to take profit in one candle. So couldn't even re-enter really. I try not to enter mid-candle. I'll wait until the close. It's just more confirmation. After that though, it does drop even farther down. So I will trade back towards this price here instead of trading back towards the open, just like the previous day. I'm only trading back towards the pre-news price because when it opened, it came down to the pre-news price. On non-news days, the open is going to be fair most of the time, like 95% of the time. But just on these news days, which news reversions are the strongest of the trades, so I'm showing them. Um, this pre-news price is going to be fair. Now, definitely could just buy all the way back up towards it. So in terms of the entries, pretty much same thing as the other. There's a nice displacement candle. Same thing with a take profit. I'd probably go for about 75 if I have an account that needs that. And then stop loss honestly just is what it is based on the account optimization. Could be 37.5, could be 50, could be 25. Um, I don't really care what the, the price action is doing in terms of stop loss. I'm just trying to enter as many positions in my favor as possible. That one loses, but then you get a nice break of structure. So this one is the stronger entry, and this is the one that ended up winning. Interesting thing here, about 76 points. So you can do those 5 micros and do a 50-point stop, which gets it below that low. Probably more likely to win just because, uh, the stop loss is much larger, so you're able to realize more of your bias.
Mhm.
But again, 76 points in your favor. And as this one's going up, I could layer in more evaluations on its way up through more displacement or break of structure. So this one would go for 38 or something like that with a 25-point stop loss. After that though, uh, it dumps all the way down here for whatever reason. I bought here off displacement, trying to get it all the way back up to the previous price, but lost for the first time. Then this is not displacement because it's not displacing the red candle.
Yeah.
Then entered here off break of structure. Eventually lost this one as well. And then I was done for the day because it hit 11 AM right here. So unfortunately, 2 losses to end off the session, but pretty good reversion here. And then of course, very good reversion of the news. So again, just getting the bias in.
Even though you're trading mechanically, do you find yourself just being human at times? Like, let's say this session in particular, had some wins, had a few losses, finished with losses. Do you ever find yourself frustrated or feeling heightened in any way? Or do you, are you, you know, at this point, has it become more of a part of the process and you just kind of continue to move on?
Yeah, at this point it's honestly just part of the process. But when I first started, it was definitely getting at me more and more if I was losing. The good thing about trading this many accounts and taking one trade at a time, all with a bias, is on average you're gonna be making money. Basically the reason why a bias is so good on prop firms is because you're utilizing the whole loss limit. Even if you only risk a fourth or a half, if you do it across multiple accounts through a bunch of different entries like here, here, here, and here, then you're essentially getting exposure to the entire max loss that they give you. So with a bias, more often than not, combining up all the money across all of your accounts, at the end of the day, you're going to be up.
Mm-hmm.
Plus you're only risking the valuation fees. So your bank account is really gonna be up as soon as you get the payout. So sort of just looking forward towards those payouts and then understanding losses are 100% part of the game. And nothing you can do to avoid them, but the numbers lie in your favor as long as you have an optimal approach.
And would you say, is there a bare minimum that you would think is best in terms of starting this approach? As you said, like you started with $5,000, you said, like, is that optimum or is there a particular number that you think, hey, if you don't have this, this is probably not the right approach until you do?
Yeah, I was definitely thankful to start with $5K. I just made my money playing poker at the casino, so I was very thankful. have a larger bankroll, that means my risk of ruin was very small. But if you're taking an approach like this, where it is a little bit high risk, high reward, that's kind of the only way to make money in prop firms. Low risk, low reward is not going to get you anywhere. You have to utilize the prop firm capital that they're giving you. So in my opinion, high risk, high reward is the way to go, but you need to calculate your risk of ruin and you want it to be below 5%. Ideally, it's below 0.5%, but obviously you need a larger bankroll. But The way you can calculate your risk of ruin is take your pass rate, maybe it's like 33% or 30%, take your payout rate, meaning your chance of getting a payout on the funded account, multiply these 2 together, and then you'll know, okay, so if I buy an eval, I have a 0.09% chance of getting a payout, which means if I buy an eval, I have a 91% chance of getting nothing. But remember, even with these rates, it lies in your favor because you're spending $100 And then 9 times out of 10, you lose $100. So you lose $900, but that time you win and you do get that payout, it's likely going to be about $2,000 or more.
Okay.
Because you still have expected value in your account after taking a payout. So net, you're making a bunch of money, but per eval, it's a 91% chance to make nothing. So basically do 0.91 to the power of 10. If you have $1,000 in your bank account, that will get you 10 evaluations. So That would be your chance of losing everything.
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What is up, Chart Fanatics? Coming to you live with some live market trading after we finished up that whiteboard session. Excited to get into it. I am trading on Tuesday, August 25th, so let's see what we can do today. Here we have the chart. Haven't had any positions yet on my funded accounts. There was one continuation just off the second candle from open, which is a pretty nice win, but I'm only here to show you funded accounts, which is the most important part. So still waiting on a funded setup. Market has barely moved, it's just been reverting around fair price. But as I'm recording this, we are getting a nice move up, so we'll be looking for funded account shorts back down towards what I think to be fair. So definitely excited for that. The reason why I think this blue line here is fair is this is the chunk of consolidation right before the market opened. Now I know market opened down here, but When it opened, it went straight up to this consolidation and then even farther beyond. So open not likely to be fair, most likely this consolidation here. So I am going to be looking for a short reversion back to this consolidation/fair price. All right, in the first position, just wanted to get in a little bit early. Uh, we had a nice wick rejecting longs. Basically it broke structure long, but it did not continue farther up. So we'll just be looking for shorts back down to the open right now. A bit of an early entry, but ideally this account would be winning $3,000. Unfortunately it is a little bit too close to the open, so I have to get in early to get as close to my $3,000 target as possible. So it's looking like $2,520 as the profit target on this trade. Of course, it would be fine to let it run for 3,000. Actually, I'll just be letting it run for 3,210. Just checked my dashboard and 3,210 is the exact profit target that this account wants to win. And it's got at least 80% of that in its pursuit down towards what I think to be fair. So that should be fine. Basically what I mean is like, if I want to target a 100-point win, Then I need at least 80 points in my favor to take that trade. If I only have like 40 points to fair price, there's no way I should let a trade run for 100. 80%, 75% if I'm getting a little bit greedy, is sort of the mark that I continuously go off of. So we are in shorts, just going to hold it all the way down for 3210 because that's what my account needs to win. All right, I will be entering on a second account here just because we're getting more confirmation, another wick rejecting longs. And looks like it's about to displace this green candle. That's a little bit 50/50, but strong enough for me to be taking another position. I guess, I guess this one's bugged, but still just taking shorts. This account has a different target. Let me check. This one needs $1,500. So we'll be letting this one run for $1,505. Not sure why this is saying that here, but I guess you can see the profit down here. All right, so just hit profit targets on the $1,500 funded trade. And then let's see about the $3,200. I can get it. There we go. So 2 funded trades in, first reversion of the day. Perfect setup so far. Now I'm just going to chill a little bit. Needed to move away from fair price so I could take another reversion. But that is 2 accounts down. And got a few more to do. Also, the one that won $1,500, I will be trading it again. Uh, $1,500 was just the first profit target of that account, uh, for today. The reason why is if I go back to it, you see the trade was pretty much from here to here. Like I said, I like to have 80%. Technically, it needs a larger profit target on the day, just according to my dashboard, which is, which is optimized for that. It needs a larger profit target on the day, but I couldn't send it for like 100 points all the way short. Because as soon as price gets below fair price, its bias is going to be back towards it, and I don't want to be trading away from the bias for too long. I'll let it go for like, like I said, about 80%. So this blue line here would be 80% if my full take profit's 100%, if that makes sense. That is the most that I'll be willing to, or the least I'll be willing to give away. So very nice trades there. Layered in this one here just because there was a wick that failed to break, uh, failed to displace long, basically. Um, obviously you can have 2 short confluences, you can have actual displacements, and you can have failures to go long. Uh, the reason why it's not like too technical is because there's a bias, um, and with a bias the entry doesn't matter as much. Anyways, just going to wait for another move away and then I'll be looking for more reversions on this account number 3 that I had just taken a win on. Account number 1, which I took a continuation win on and I forgot to record, so Sorry about that. Account number 2, which we took the big win on. I'm done for today. And then account number 4. So 4 funded coming in today. We're gonna work on all of them, see if we can get them all up into a good amount of profit, but definitely need to wait for a move away. All right, I'm looking for longs back to the open. We just had a huge wick rejecting shorts, failing to break structure. Now I just need a green candle to print and that will be enough for me to get in. It is pretty close. So not going to have too large of a profit target, but thankfully it's going to drop down farther. So we'll get another opportunity here once it moves away a little bit farther. So we have a larger profit target on our funded, which is always more fun. But it did technically just break structure short. So I think it might be a little while until we see our long position opportunity. I would not be taking this green candle even though it is a little bit looking like a displacement, just because it did break structure short, which is the opposite of what I want to see if I want to go long. All right, I'll be taking another position long right now. Huge wick rejecting shorts to us, as you can probably tell. Um, anyways, we'll just be trading this one back up to the open. First one unfortunately lost because of whatever the hell that is. This one then is going to go for a little bit more profit because obviously we just lost some money. But second attempt, final attempt for the day most likely, because if I lose, then it will be essentially breaking structure short and then it's just going to drift likely all the way back down towards 6 PM. So I will just be done. But good start to the day. Hopefully we get a nice end to the day right now with this trade. All right, just broke structure short and stopped me out. That is it for today. So quick little summary, we had continuation long on open, which I forgot to record. Uh, this one won me $1,200. Then first attempt at reversion, wick rejecting longs, half a displacement candle was enough for me to get in on funded. This one was $3,200. Then another wick rejecting longs, I think I got in on this candle, something like this, for another trade for $1,500. And then unfortunately Bad way to end it, but that's just how it goes. Two more attempts at longs. First one off double displacement. This one also tried to be off double displacement. Got in a little early. If I didn't get in here, I would have gotten in here and then lost anyway. So it's fine. Just trying to revert to the open, but it is not going to be reverting today. Two losses is fine because it's minus two k ish. I think the account lost at two k. I don't know why it's so low, but minus two k plus five point seven. Or something like that. So net up on the day. Also good when I lose a funded because I only lost the evals that it cost me to get there. So kind of only lost like $300 or $400 here because the evals got like 33% pass rate. So pretty cheap to take these losses, which is why I'm just so aggressive with them. As long as you're getting amount of points in your favor that you need. And these ones are all going to be realized in payouts pretty soon. I just need to get a few more winning days, but the expected value is there. So pretty strong day today, few wins, few losses, but I'll take it. So we'll be on to the next day. What is up, Chart Fanatics? This is day 2 of live trading. Today you can see on my accounts I have 3 new funded accounts to trade with Bluesky. They're in the buffer phase, so basically funded accounts. And then over here, FXify, I have 2 funded accounts to trade. I've got different size accounts, $150Ks here and some $50Ks here. I'm going to be looking for a $1,000 profit on these 3 to end the day, and then these 2 is going to be $6,000. So obviously very large difference in that optimal profit target for these different accounts. So we'll see how we can get through those. The continuation I'm going to be taking on Blue Sky accounts. Got a nice 25-point trade here if I use 2 contracts. It'll make me thousands. Just gonna wait for the close of the candle just to confirm it does actually break structure, and then, uh, we'll be in for 25-point take profit. Um, I definitely need to wait for the close of the candle. All right, in continuation shorts. Bit of a bad fill, but nothing you can really do about it. Obviously lots of volume at the market open. Um, barely broke structure, but nonetheless it counts. It broke this and it broke this, so it's going for a 25-point profit target. We'll see how this one plays out, but feels like a pretty standard trade. The opening candle wasn't too biased, they're pretty large wicks on both sides, but opening 1-second was red, higher time frame bias is short, opening candle was red, broke structure, um, a little bit weak displacement. Okay, TP got edged, but I don't care. A little bit of a weak displacement, but no way I'm not taking this, right? Uh, so we'll let this one play out. All right, there's take profit. We'll be entering another one as soon as this candle displaces. I can just use a limit actually. Just looking for it to go below. The previous close, and I'll just take another continuation short. I usually limit my continuations to the first five minutes, so we'll let this one play. There is no real displacement for it to revert, so I'm basically short biased until proven otherwise with displacement or break of structure long, in which case then I would flip and then start going long. And just these short account positions, no, no huge account positions yet. If we get 2 green candles, it's enough for me to classify as displacement. So I would start looking for longs. It is kind of hard obviously to displace this one huge red candle, but if we get 2 green ones in a row, it's a little bit more confirmation, but of course still holding shorts. Risking about a 1 to 1 because if this candle were to turn green, then it would be above this one, which is why my stop is above that one. Stop losses don't really matter on prop firms. It's all the same EV. The profit target is where the EV is generated or lost. So that's why I care a lot more about those specifically. We'll see what happens with this trade though. It might be a longer one. The initial volume seems to have died out a little bit. First trade was great though. Just As usual continuation. So if this one loses, then I will be entering on account number 567, which is my long biased account. But of course, we'll hold. We'll wait. See what ends up happening with this one. Seems to have hit its short resistance. Okay, so I'm longing now. It is mid candle, so bit of an aggressive entry as well. But Clearly shorts are getting rejected by this huge red candle. So I'm long biased back up towards the open. Got a nice 2-contract trade for about, or exactly 25 points. Because the open is here, possible fair price. There's a few. Obviously the bias is long, so that's why I'm in longs. For now, I'm just thinking it's near the open. Possibility it's all the way up here, but lots of consolidation at this level throughout the night. Would definitely be interesting to consider. Uh, it's also where Asian session opened. I am on PST right now, which is why you see the PST times. But yeah, just gonna hold longs for now back to the open and we'll see. Could obviously layer in more accounts here on this candle. We'd wait for a little more confirmation, then I'll get in with number 542 as well. All right, this one specifically needs a larger win obviously because it just lost $1,000 on the first trade. All right, so first account hit take profit. Second account, I'm holding for 50 points. Um, the target was 25. I lost basically 25 points on the first trade, so now I need 50 points. So I'm just holding this one up to the consolidation above the open. Always possible the open is fair. Usually at 25 after, there is sometimes a volume spike which creates an unfair move. So instead of having the open price as fair, I'm looking more towards that. Uh, 24 after candle, which is just what it looks like today. Obviously you can see the 25 after candle has a pretty large volume. Uh, anyway, it's just gonna hold once it takes here. Once it takes the 24 candle, I could go break even. Yeah, it seems fine to go break even now because if it dumps, since opening candle was red, there is a slight short bias, at least for me. So when it wicks, what could be fair? Now I'm just wanting like less exposure to that position. So that's why I'm breakeven. But anyways, definitely a good trade to hold. Definitely not ex— like I personally am not going to exit early. See, I thought fair price at 24 and it just wicked it. People would definitely consider having their profit target at fair price. But it is much more valuable to have a specific profit target based on the prop firm environment. So. Not based on what the market is showing you. It is much better to have those static ones like I talked about in the previous live video, even though obviously based on what the chart is showing, it would have been nice to get out there. But no, much, much better, much higher EV to have your profit targets set out for the prop environment specifically, which is why I'm going to hold this one. But definitely breakeven is, is a good opportunity because again, it's essentially random in my opinion once it wicks what I think to be fair, which as you can see it did. So Let's hope the randomization is in our favor. Still generating positive EV though, because it is the firm's drawdown that I'm trading with and, uh, profit targets optimal. So, all right, started up the recording again. It's like 1 point from take profit. Didn't want to jinx it, but figured might as well capture it. Um, so still just in the same position. Had a nice displacement long. Okay, they filled 1 out of the 2 contracts. Oh man. So you got a little while, maybe longer to wait because it just filled one out of the two. Anyways, just gonna hold. This is a 1 to 2 trade, 1 to 2R, by the way. Um, so we'll give it some more time. All right, there we go. So Blue Sky is done for today. These 3 accounts down here, well, they're supposed to win $1,000. I guess that fills, but nonetheless, $1,000 was profit target on these. They're not evals, they're like, it's a buffer phase where you got to make some money on the buffer before going to funded accounts. So it's technically funded account expected value. So pretty good of $3K to start. Now hopefully we get another nice move away because I do have these accounts here. With these accounts here, I'm probably going to be targeting, I'll just target this area here. As fair just because on its way up it consolidated here for a little bit. It could obviously be like here, but I'll extend it a little bit just because when I'm looking to short— oh man, it's gonna be a long trade, 100-point trade. I could obviously size up and get a 50-point trade, like I could just double the contracts. So we'll see exactly what market gives. Might have to be back to you guys in a while because it's going to take a while to move away from, from fair for a reversion. All right, I'm in a 6-contract short on Funded. Uh, the reason why is I have $6,000 profit target, and with 50 points, that would be 6 contracts. So that's the reason for that. Just trading a 1-to-1 here. Um, just thinking reversion is more likely than longs, and I just had a limit 50 points away from fair price just to make it a pretty easy entry. So we'll see exactly what happens with this one. It is very aggressive, I will admit. Plus or minus $6,000 is quite aggressive, but the expected value is definitely there. So I'm in shorts quite early. Just my limit order got tagged. Unfortunately, the candle didn't actually displace. So a bit of a weak entry. Could obviously get out breakeven and wait, but it sort of— long sort of gave up. Now just looking for shorts back to the open. All right, getting a nice displacement short. So I will get back to you guys when this trade finishes. I'm definitely not going to be altering anything mid-trade. I'm just going to be holding all the way back to the open. No breakevens because I think fair is at the open, so obviously not gonna really go breakeven. So we'll just let it play out. I'll let you know what happens. All right, we're back. Been holding for a little while, but Trade is looking good. It never broke structure up, so there was no reason for me to exit. Had a nice break of structure short. I considered sending the other account in, but, uh, okay, okay. I considered sending the other account in, but, uh, it would have been a little bit too close. I would have needed to use like 10 contracts, which is probably a little bit too aggressive. Um, anyways, why is that twice happening now?
Oh man.
Anyways, just gonna let it run. I was hoping I could catch it on camera, but now I got to commentate a little bit longer. We'll see. Um, just standard reversion trade. Um, I saw 50 points in my favor and I knew 50 points, 6 contracts at $6,000, which is just the profit target for my account. Um, if it had gone up 100 points, then I would use 3 contracts because 3 contracts, 100 points, $6,000. So it's all about the profit targets on the account. And then of course you want the profit target to be as close to fair price as possible so you can adjust your contracts in that regard. But Again, profit target is the most important part of all of this. Now actually could be an opportunity to go break even just because it wicked, essentially wicked what I think to be fair, which is my take profit. But okay, another one contract filled. Um, I guess I could go break even, but it's probably not gonna— okay, there, it's not gonna matter. All right, so that is 1, 2, 3 of these smaller ones done, and then one larger one done. Up $9K. Um, could have layered in another one here. Probably should have. Uh, $6K is like a lot though. Like $6,000 plus or minus is kind of a lot, even for me. Uh, so one account at a time is probably a little bit better to reduce variance. I'm just gonna wait for another move away and then obviously another reversion. So I will be back to you guys when we see another move away and then another entry on this account here. Whether it's 50 points for 6 contracts or 100 points for 3, just because I need to win $6K. All right, there is news coming out at 7 AM PST, so 10 EST. The dude is speaking, so, uh, probably not going to be taking any trades at 10 AM afterwards, or 7 my time, obviously afterwards. And it seems a little bit too close to fair price, so probably just done for the session. 4 for 4 on our accounts, $6K. 1-1-1. So up $9K, 4 for 4. Pretty good result today. Obviously reversions played out once, twice. Continuation played out once. Second continuation lost, but reversion made it back. So I guess 4 for 5, whatever you want to call it. So anyways, done for today. Here were the trades from the other days because I recorded— the previous session was on Tuesday and then this one's on Friday. So I figured, uh, I can show you guys what happened on Wednesday. And Thursday as well. I was waiting for a really trendy day. I wanted to find a trendy day because those are obviously worse for mean reversion. I wanted to find a trendy day. But anyways, here's Wednesday. Wednesday I couldn't live for you guys because I was live trading for my students. But anyways, we have pre-news price here at 8:30 AM EST that creates an unfair move away. And then on the open, I'm just buying mid-candle because the opening 1-second was green. You can see there's no wick here, so it opened up And you can just take a very nice funded trade or e-bounce, whatever you want, back to the open. After that, consolidating here at pre-news price. News is priced in, so just looking for reversions back to the pre-news price. Maybe you catch something here. If not, definitely catch something in here. Great displacement here, so just trading back towards there, and then it jumps all the way back down here. Displacement here, break of structure here, whatever you want to enter on, all seems great. So, uh, we'll Wednesday was a pretty good day, just reverting to the pre-news price. Again, it's priced in. This move is unfair, so just looking for a reversion on open. Could also definitely get in reversions here, like it's, it's fine. Just make sure you're break-even when market opens. Consolidation at the pre-news price, just confirming that it would be fair. Slight reversion here, slight reversion here, great reversion here. Now Thursday was another decent day, lots of reversions on Thursday. Here's the open. Continuation trade loss. It is what it is. But then you get a nice break of structure back to the open here. Nice displacement reversion here. Nice displacement reversion here. I took one, two losses in here, and then I took another trade here which lost. Here another one lost. And then where was it? Final ones was one, two, three, four, five that won. So ended net very positive on this day. I usually don't go past 11 a.m. EST. Unless I haven't finished trading the majority of my accounts. This was a day I hadn't done a lot because it was like 1, 2, 3 losses. And like you saw earlier in this trade today, when I lost, I took another one just because I like my accounts to either be at profit target or gone. So I'll take multiple trades on them throughout the day. So when I take 1, 2, 3, 3 or 4 losses in here, then I'm obviously going to take more trades because my accounts are down, but they're not done yet. So if you lose, like, you need to win that back plus more. Kind of a weird mentality, right? But It's what works for me. I just like speed on prop firms. So caught this entire reversion. I was hoping today would be a trendy day so I could show you how I trade reversions in trend, but unfortunately it was not. So this whole week, tried to give it a good try for the live recording, no trends. And the dude's speaking now, so probably going to be done. But hope you enjoyed the video. Definitely was happy to talk with Riz about my strategy, talk with you guys about the strategy. So show us on live. Most important thing you should take away from this and any of my content is that focus more on the prop firm rules. Like you probably saw with my profit targets being like static versus what the market is showing. It'd be a little bit more discretionary if it's based on what the market's showing, targeting the exact area, stop loss of a specific place, a lot more static for the prop firm specific environment. But thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one.
So important really, you know, off the back of this entire episode is knowing your numbers.
Yeah.
Regardless of whether you're using this strategy or not, that really is a fundamental thing that every trader should have, an understanding of their numbers. And therefore, you know, when people complain about psychology or even their discipline and so on, really having that understanding of numbers, it doesn't fix things straight away, but it definitely helps to really trust your system. And in this particular case, you have to really understand your numbers and trust your numbers. to follow a mechanical system in the first place, but then also to understand, you know, the model that you're trading these prop firms with, and to be able to then, you know, bankroll accordingly.
Yep.
And know what that looks like, you know, the reality of that process.
Yeah.
JJ, it's been an absolute pleasure. You know, I'm sure it's very eye-opening for the people at home as well. Probably the first time that they're getting a real deep insight into the, you know, full process and the data behind it all. And I thank you for breaking it all down and then being so transparent as well in terms of your journey as well. And well, everyone at home, drop a comment with your biggest takeaway from this episode. You know, something very different, but as we said at the very beginning, a prop firm money-making machine if done correctly. And that's something we want to really highlight at the end of this is to, you know, really don't just look at the numbers that we talked about in terms of payouts or payout amounts or, you know, in the time that it's been done. More so understand exactly what JJ went through, which is the numbers of You know, your expected value, understanding the numbers in terms of, you know, the exact ones we just broke down right now in terms of your, you know, win rate and pass rate and so on. Those are the things that you have to do the work on, you know. Links for JJ will be in the description below, so make sure you check those out as well. Other episodes are on screen right now. Make sure you hit like, make sure you subscribe, and until next time everyone, this has been Chauffeur Naggs. Take care.
Bye.










