I shouldn't have taken the trades that I took when I lost. I broke my rules. I have high % when I don't break my rules. That's how I got to 1800.00 on day 1. Two things went wrong:

1.) Didn't follow rules for entry
2.) Totally disregarded the trailing drawdown.

After I make a large profit thats when it becomes critical to take smaller risk because the drawdown is essentially near the starting balance. It's what makes this challenge more difficult than say an earn2trade. This challenge is about consistency. Ive been trading sim for a while and that is my strength. If I see an area of strong support or resistance I will get in a large size if it fits my rules, but once I make a larger sum, its crucial at that point to trade with smaller size due to the trailing drawdown. When I get funded, they force you to scale up to protect account from blowing out quicker. I still will keep the trailing drawdown balance in the forefront of my mind and build account up with enough buffer over the starting balance to be able to trade 6 contracts with lower risk. I appreciate your advice.

Careful with OneUp & TST. The trailing DD over there is based on your high watermark (based on intraday peak)!
I did not know what that meant, until I hit 2200 profit and lost 1250++ over the next 3 days - got DQ though I was still technically in profit! (2200 - 1250 is still profit).

Another trial attempt I took, I went to around 2k, then lost around 900 I think... then failed to TP when +40 cos I was aiming for a big swing, and price retraced and I was DQ though my entry was still in profit.

Had enough of that high watermark nonsense. I see earn2trade does not have this restriction, which is why I am giving it a go (a good friend recommended it to me too)

GLTU

Thanks. I am doing earn2trade simultaneously. I'm gonna give it another go around with oneup and see what happens. I like earn2trade's fixed drawdown. Definitely better. I just don't like not knowing what you will get with your funded account. With oneup, I like how it's a definitive amount. and the profit split is fixed at 80/20.

"When I get funded, they force you to scale up to protect account from blowing out quicker."

Hi oneuptrader,



Thank you for sharing your journey so far. I had a question about your quote above. What exactly do you mean by "they force you to scale up"? I assumed you meant scaling up to a higher number of contracts per trade but this would increase your risk and increase your probability of blowing up your account, wouldn't it? Thank you.

Oh, for earn2trade it is pretty simple.
If you got 1:4 R:R you will even get a refund of your Gauntlet fees and I believe the 80/20 will also be assured And yes it is much easier there - all you have to do is ensure you don't drop below 22,500 balance.

For OneUp I had high hopes for them but last year (or was it the year before? can't recall) when I was doing it, there was serious rithmic server error so everyone doing combine lost. They could not manually remove the losses, so they resetted all our accounts to 0 profit/loss. It was all good, until you realise I had only 3 days or so to combine end... and how the heck do you earn 2.5k profit again in 3 days? So I renewed, then ran into the high watermark problem (and realised I misinterpreted the FAQ meaning of drawdown).

Anw, nothing against them - they have good customer service and are def better than TST imo. Good luck with oneup too then

Better be safe than sorry, there is no need to trade the maximum contract size since you only need to make 3K, so why take the risk.

Yes i got funded once with OneUp but i lost the account by mistake.

How do you lose an account by mistake? I don't get it?

I forgot to remove a stop order and it turned out to be triggered right before the close, i didn't notice untill the next day and since overnights where not allowed i lost the account.

Very unlucky.