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Just turned "Pro" and could use a little help, or guidance

  #1 (permalink)
Merkd1904
Atlanta, Georgia
 
Posts: 94 since May 2021
Thanks Given: 55
Thanks Received: 147

Hello all,


As the title says I just turned into a "professional" futures trader via getting funded at TopStep. And I've gotten off to a rocky start (shocking).


I'm mainly a technical analysis based trader and before i got into futures i was mainly trading index options. I've dabbled in futures before; For instance, I was just learning what was what when COVID hit, and I decided that after such a fast 10% correction and getting my stops ran consistently I was going to run without stops overnight. Surely it had to bounce, right? Account blow up #2.


Fast forward to May of this year and I was having decent success trading the micros via Tastyworks. Having upwards of 1-3k days getting in and out of price action set ups and holding overnight. Up until then the market was relatively volatile, enough for me to find my place.


And then Long story short I think it was either FOMC minutes or a FOMC statement in May that i essentially got caught trying to trade Tastywork's horrible platform and manage multiple positions and one without my stops set and it essentially blew me out (this was in /MNQ, and also the start of the leg we're currently trying to end). Over the next few weeks i tried, as you can imagine, to unsuccessfully retake lost ground until i finally blew up account #3.


Shortly after that i discovered Tradovate, and shortly thereafter that, TopStep.



I honestly hadn't ever heard of the "funded trader" phenomenon before and thought prop firms were some exclusive cool kids club, but i did my research and within a couple days i was enrolled in the 50k account with the 20% off coupon (they got me).



One of the main issues of trading a small account is margin. And TopStep eliminated that hurdle, you just have to hit the profit target and trade 15 days. Right? Right???


Wrong.


I learned VERY quickly that my risk management, money management, and impluse control was non existent.


Let me preface the rest of this by saying i am have an incredible issue with impulsion, overtrading, and (seemingly) an overall lack of self control. This is where i need your help or guidance.


1.5 months, an upgrade the 150k account, and an embarrassing amount of resets later i was funded.


It was a steep and expensive curve learning how to trade within their rules and parameters but i made it through to the otherside.


And i will say this - Honestly i feel like what i learned was invaluable. How to size, be more selective with trades/set ups, and overall a keen understanding/awareness of where i am for the day (mostly) just out of pure fear of the girlfriend saying "did you get reset again?".


So here's where this novel gets relevant to where i'm posting it. I'm going to recap my first few trading days, and request feedback. And i will post every subsequent day i trade also looking for comments or feedback.


Let me start with this: I have traded 5 days and i am currently -3110.88. This was worse, before today i was down over $3600 at one point and the max trailing drawdown is -$4500. It's bad.


I told myself i wouldn't let this get to my head, but obviously it has. I worked so god damned hard to get to where i am and i literally almost squandered it within one business week.


Not to mention i gave up a +2k day yesterday (08/16) to end the day red, and gave up a +$3200 gain to close the 16th only up by $750 after fees.. Not to mention i just stopped out tonight trying to fade this bounce happening in ES and NQ.


My trading style: Is i'm a price action trader and i prefer, and am generally pretty good at fading markets. I know this may seem adolescent but i enjoy the competitive nature to it and have found myself primarily trading NQ, with ES shortly behind, and RTY after that.


I trade a lot of contracts. And i keep a defined (in general) risk limit per trade. What that means is i am risking $105-$150 per trade depending on market conditions. I've found that this keeps me honest in my entries and also is easier for me to track in terms of my loss limits. In a 23 hour period i can take over 300 trades depending on the conditions. And that's my problem. Countless times i've blown a solid 2, 3, 4 or even a 9k gain to end the day substantially less than that, break even, or even negative after fees (like Monday).


I also suffer from the age old problem of revenge trading and overall trading on emotion. Still. I've been doing this for four years now and am still afflicted by it.
There's obviously more to it but i'm going to stop the pain of me journaling my thoughts instead of my trades.


So i've been funded almost three weeks now, with the first day being the ass end of the 5th of August. Out of 18 trades, i won two. And one was a breakeven that filled me to my benefit. I am posting the PDF from Tradovate's performance reporting labeled Aug0521. Every other day will be accompanied by a PDF labeled with the month, date and year. This started my "career" with a hastily accumulated P/L of -$1284.74...

Aug0521.pdf

08/07 - The very next day i take 87 trades, 29 winning and 57 losing, to end the day with an $1109.38 gain. Alright, not too shabby right? Back in business, or at least out of the mental trap that comes with being in the hole.

Aug0621.pdf

Alright, this is where it gets ugly. 08/09 -


Ok, so i work full time. I also have a youtube channel where i do daily video technical analysis updates on the indexes. And also run a subscription service. Well, this given week i was launching a new program and had to be in Utah the entire week for training. No big deal, right? I have my laptop. I can trade when i have time.


Wrong.

Aug0921.pdf

Long story shory my impulsive ass (based off of price action the night before) proceeded to trade from my phone on the way to the airport, at the airport on my phone, including the open, in the air from my laptop, in the air from my phone, at the SLC airport from my phone.. I can assume you know how this ends up.



A $2264.11 loss.


Outside of the "you gon learn today" on not trading while in an office or at least comfortable setting my laptop died, the outlet for the seat i was in wasn't working. The internet on the plane was continually cutting out and giving Tradovate what seemed like alcohol withdrawal seizures. It was a nightmare. And all my own fault. This brought me to the knife's edge of the weekly, and daily loss limits, and losing my funded account on the third day.


So, fast forward to this week.


Mind you, at this point i had spoken to TopStep's Risk department and we decided on a plan of essentially allowing me 4 losing contracts. After that it's take a walk for the rest of the day. So, i have a $450 daily loss limit to regulate my dumb ass from this week on.


08/15 - 08/16 - On Sun/Mon i take a total of 82 trades for a.. $104.29 gain. Giving up at one point a $2500 gain.

AUG151621.pdf

08/17 - I had a killer day, taking 118 trades and at one point being past break even and up over $3k on the day just to end the cash session up by... $750.. And with the $450 loss tonight the day is a scratch at a -$246.29.

Aug1721 (2).pdf

This is where i need your help. I'm back under $1500 before liquidation and i'm starting to get into that positive feedback loop of negativity and desperation in my head.


ANYTHING helps. Criticism, kind words, thoughts, prayers, a voodoo doll, tarot cards. Anything.


I'm someone who has been on this "journey" alone and i honestly have no one to turn to for advice. Anything is appreciated.


And on that note Thursday, when my account is unlocked, i'll be posting my resullts until i either lose the account or... till i.. stop trading?





Thanks everyone

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  #2 (permalink)
 
matthew28's Avatar
 matthew28 
United Kingdom
 
Experience: Beginner
Platform: Bookmap
Broker: Stage 5, Rithmic
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You're trading with the TSTrader platform that has an option to show trade entries/exits and a green or red line for whether it was a profitable trade or not. I always screenshot a chart at the end of the day and post it in my journal as it is a very quick visual of what I did. eg. Did I take a number of long trades in consolidation looking for a breakout that didn't happen and price then sold off, so going for breakouts on range days. Or am I trying to fade on a trend day, buying and getting stopped out and then doing the same lower and lower through out the day and completely ignoring or misreading the market behaviour. It might be helpful if you included one of those each day showing your trades, and not just a .pdf trade list, as it would be much easier for people to see patterns in your trades and comment on that.

I would say switch to Micros rather than full size contracts until you can put some green days together and gain some confidence again. The trouble is though you trade a lot of contracts and the extra fees would hit you hard. The ES and NQ being about $3.90 a round turn and the micros $1.22, so three times more expensive (relatively, for the equivalent value). That adds up quickly on a lot of trades.

I would also suggest you are trading too large if you can be up thousands of Dollars in a day and yet regularly end the day with a fraction of that or negative. You are either letting trades turn round on you and don't have a clear exit strategy, or revenge trading from being mentally focused on how much you think you should have that day based on a profit high watermark and trying to make back "your lost money", but losing more.

Reading various trading books on professional traders and it is easy to reach a conclusion summed up in "What I learned losing a million dollars" by Paul and Moynihan. Professional traders all trade differently and their methodology isn't the same except that managing risk is their main priority.
In Topstep Step1 and Step2 you can swing for the fences and trade hard as you are aiming for a profit target and can just reset if it goes badly. But you can't hold on to a funded account trading like that.
I would slow down, reduce size and focus on trading well and making small profits. Small profits add up and then with confidence and a healthy account balance size can increase. Trading too large straight out of the gate just means you can almost certainly blowup straight away and just ingrain bad trading habits.

And lastly, I really wouldn't trade off your phone. The fact that there is a Tradovate App is a great backup if your main platform computer goes down, or you have a broadband issue, as you have a mobile backup to go flat (or if a swing trader to get alerts and manage stops or positions as a trade plays out). But thinking you can just open the platform anytime you have a spare 15 minutes, and make a profit is unlikely to end well for most people.
Also, speaking just for myself, instant access off my phone 23hours a day to the markets would be far too close to addictive gambling for me and I think that is a slippery slope that I could potentially find becoming a very serious problem, very quickly, very easily.

Just my 2 cents. Good luck anyway.

You do not win as a trader, you just get to play again the next day. If that game doesn’t appeal to you then you should not trade. Gary Norden
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  #3 (permalink)
 
bobwest's Avatar
 bobwest 
Western Florida
Site Moderator
 
Experience: Advanced
Platform: Sierra Chart
Trading: ES, YM
Frequency: Several times daily
Duration: Minutes
Posts: 8,162 since Jan 2013
Thanks Given: 57,343
Thanks Received: 26,267


Hi @Merkd1904,

I'll comment in a second, after I have fixed the thread title.

You may not have realized it, but the original thread title came across in futures.io as: "Just turned "Pro" and could use a little help, or guidance"

I think all that "amp amp quot" stuff came from composing the post in some other text editor and pasting it into the futures.io editor -- it probably came in with some formatting strings in the text that the futures.io editor here didn't recognize.

Not your fault, but just as an FYI, it is better not to do this.

Also, it's hard to read your text with the enormous spaces left between paragraphs, which possibly has the same source.

I'll comment on the post itself in a moment.

Bob.

------------------

Edit: Also, I just noticed all those pdf attachments. Very few people are going to open these attachments to read them. It is way better to just paste an image into your text if you have something visual to show.

If the image has been copied to the clipboard, you can just use Ctl-V to paste where you want it to go in your post and it will go there. If it's in an image file, you can attach it via the big blue box to the left of the new-post editing window that says "Attach."

But, in the Chrome browser, to read your pdf's I would have to tell Chrome to download them and select a location on my hard drive, and then click on the downloaded file to open it. You can see the problem, I expect.

When one door closes, another opens.
-- Cervantes, Don Quixote
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  #4 (permalink)
 
bobwest's Avatar
 bobwest 
Western Florida
Site Moderator
 
Experience: Advanced
Platform: Sierra Chart
Trading: ES, YM
Frequency: Several times daily
Duration: Minutes
Posts: 8,162 since Jan 2013
Thanks Given: 57,343
Thanks Received: 26,267

OK, hello @Merkd1904 again.

First, let me tell you not to be too hard on yourself. Much of what you wrote could have been written by many traders starting out, as well as many who started out a while ago and still do some of those things. It's part of the territory. And dealing with them is too.

I do go along with everything @matthew28 said. I'll add a little, but he did hit the high points.

I would say you are trading too much size. I would say that you are probably making too many trades (without seeing a chart with the trades I can't be sure, and, as I said, I'm not opening your pdf's. ) I know, and you know, that you are trading emotionally, probably in terms of both "positive" and "negative" emotions, which I will get into in a second. I know, and you know, that you are not controlling your losses.

So, what to do?

On the emotion thing, which you referenced in different ways a couple of times (impulse trading, revenge trading and so on) -- it is impossible to live and breathe without having emotions, but it is essential to also not let yourself go nuts emotionally while trading. You can do a lot of things, such as drive your car, work at a normal job, conduct business, and never feel the need to go off the rails. Trading does in fact offer many, many opportunities to go temporarily off your rocker. It is a very good idea to pass them up. (I'm not saying this as someone who has never gone off the deep end. All traders do.) There is also the trap of what are normally positive states, such as confidence and elation when you do well. They will sink you just as fast.

Unfortunately, the way to stop is pretty much just to stop. You can help yourself by keeping what you have at risk smaller, which gets back to reducing your size, the number of contracts you use. Also, probably taking fewer trades. I don't know anything about your trading method, other than it clearly sometimes works for you, and sometimes not. I would look first, and always, at the two paired elements of risk management (keep positions small) and loss control (kill losses before they become large.)

On the position size front, traders often want to go larger because, naturally, they can make more. But in your shoes, I think you should put making more profit behind learning how to trade in a more consistent, controlled way, and simply give up the dream of high profits for a while. Dream of doing good, steady trades that work out, and keep your emotions quieter by keeping the trade size smaller.

How small? One contract is a good idea. Or a micro. But anything where the risk of loss and the thrill of winning become non-issues for you, because the amount at stake is too small for you to care, and it's only something you do for the sake of learning the craft. Use more, slowly, when you've learned more.

I could go on, but you get my drift.

Good luck

Bob.

When one door closes, another opens.
-- Cervantes, Don Quixote
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  #5 (permalink)
bobwilliamstn21
nashville, tn
 
Posts: 3 since Aug 2021
Thanks Given: 1
Thanks Received: 6

If I can help. you are overtrading. Have you tried TopStep coaching?

I did and learned a completely different way of trading. Risk management has to be at the core of every trade. You talk a lot about $$$$. Successful trading is about preparation and process. $$$$ comes with preparation and process but never stays without it.

You have to stop trading so much. Scale back, and look for only entering with 2:1 R/R. Notice I did not provide any $$$$ amount.

If you have read this far, you have likely seen the dollar signs, but glossed over the rest. Honestly, unless you take the time to build a plan, stick to the plan, and utilize the TopStep tools for measuring success, you will struggle.

I speak from experience about this as I am a TopStep trader as well.

When I have losing days, it's a byproduct of measuring my success by $$$$ through overtrading.

When I'm successful, it's a byproduct of preparation and process. I don't even look at my P&L on those days until I've traded my max wins, loses, or overall trade count. When I do look I am usually pleasantly surprised.

Finally, I do not take a single trade without journaling and I am a day trader.

To stop overtrading I learned along the way to give yourself 1, 1 lot trade for 2:1 R/R the day, win or lose. After 10 ten days move to 2, 1 lot trades for 2:1 R/R. After another 10 days, move to 3,1 lot trades for 2:1 R/R.

At the end of the period, you will create a sustainable habit while forcing yourself to understand the market, and not click the mouse.

I'm hoping this helped. A few books I've read to help with this include:

Mind Over Markets: Power Trading with Market Generated Information, Updated Edition 2nd Edition - Thanks to TopStep Coaching

and ...Brain Hacks For Traders, by Harvey Walsh

Good luck out there.

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  #6 (permalink)
Merkd1904
Atlanta, Georgia
 
Posts: 94 since May 2021
Thanks Given: 55
Thanks Received: 147


bobwilliamstn21 View Post
If I can help. you are overtrading. Have you tried TopStep coaching?

I did and learned a completely different way of trading. Risk management has to be at the core of every trade. You talk a lot about $$$$. Successful trading is about preparation and process. $$$$ comes with preparation and process but never stays without it.

You have to stop trading so much. Scale back, and look for only entering with 2:1 R/R. Notice I did not provide any $$$$ amount.

If you have read this far, you have likely seen the dollar signs, but glossed over the rest. Honestly, unless you take the time to build a plan, stick to the plan, and utilize the TopStep tools for measuring success, you will struggle.

I speak from experience about this as I am a TopStep trader as well.

When I have losing days, it's a byproduct of measuring my success by $$$$ through overtrading.

When I'm successful, it's a byproduct of preparation and process. I don't even look at my P&L on those days until I've traded my max wins, loses, or overall trade count. When I do look I am usually pleasantly surprised.

Finally, I do not take a single trade without journaling and I am a day trader.

To stop overtrading I learned along the way to give yourself 1, 1 lot trade for 2:1 R/R the day, win or lose. After 10 ten days move to 2, 1 lot trades for 2:1 R/R. After another 10 days, move to 3,1 lot trades for 2:1 R/R.

At the end of the period, you will create a sustainable habit while forcing yourself to understand the market, and not click the mouse.

I'm hoping this helped. A few books I've read to help with this include:

Mind Over Markets: Power Trading with Market Generated Information, Updated Edition 2nd Edition - Thanks to TopStep Coaching

and ...Brain Hacks For Traders, by Harvey Walsh

Good luck out there.


Every trade i enter has at least a 2:1 R/R. On average 3:1.

And TopStep is not offering coaching at the moment.

I’ve spoke with Dan and Mick a couple times but overall it’s just superficial advice.

And although i understand your approach and thought process at the end of the day $$$$$ loses you the account. Also, $$$$$ is the reason you trade. Tell me i’m wrong.

You are correct in your analysis in that i’m overtrading. I know this. The question is how to stop. I am utilizing the Topstep tools but still feel isolated.

And your point about trading a plan - the problem is that that’s ambiguous. I have elaborate thesis’s about the broader market but “trading your plan” almost runs counterintuitive to price action trading. If my plan is to buy or sell a specific level, but the market takes out either way or ranges for the day, i’m going to adapt and trade according to the opportunities given to me by the market.

If you can, elaborate on a trading plan of yours? So i can get a feel for how other people are utilizing theirs?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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  #7 (permalink)
Merkd1904
Atlanta, Georgia
 
Posts: 94 since May 2021
Thanks Given: 55
Thanks Received: 147


matthew28 View Post
You're trading with the TSTrader platform that has an option to show trade entries/exits and a green or red line for whether it was a profitable trade or not. I always screenshot a chart at the end of the day and post it in my journal as it is a very quick visual of what I did. eg. Did I take a number of long trades in consolidation looking for a breakout that didn't happen and price then sold off, so going for breakouts on range days. Or am I trying to fade on a trend day, buying and getting stopped out and then doing the same lower and lower through out the day and completely ignoring or misreading the market behaviour. It might be helpful if you included one of those each day showing your trades, and not just a .pdf trade list, as it would be much easier for people to see patterns in your trades and comment on that.

I would say switch to Micros rather than full size contracts until you can put some green days together and gain some confidence again. The trouble is though you trade a lot of contracts and the extra fees would hit you hard. The ES and NQ being about $3.90 a round turn and the micros $1.22, so three times more expensive (relatively, for the equivalent value). That adds up quickly on a lot of trades.

I would also suggest you are trading too large if you can be up thousands of Dollars in a day and yet regularly end the day with a fraction of that or negative. You are either letting trades turn round on you and don't have a clear exit strategy, or revenge trading from being mentally focused on how much you think you should have that day based on a profit high watermark and trying to make back "your lost money", but losing more.

Reading various trading books on professional traders and it is easy to reach a conclusion summed up in "What I learned losing a million dollars" by Paul and Moynihan. Professional traders all trade differently and their methodology isn't the same except that managing risk is their main priority.
In Topstep Step1 and Step2 you can swing for the fences and trade hard as you are aiming for a profit target and can just reset if it goes badly. But you can't hold on to a funded account trading like that.
I would slow down, reduce size and focus on trading well and making small profits. Small profits add up and then with confidence and a healthy account balance size can increase. Trading too large straight out of the gate just means you can almost certainly blowup straight away and just ingrain bad trading habits.

And lastly, I really wouldn't trade off your phone. The fact that there is a Tradovate App is a great backup if your main platform computer goes down, or you have a broadband issue, as you have a mobile backup to go flat (or if a swing trader to get alerts and manage stops or positions as a trade plays out). But thinking you can just open the platform anytime you have a spare 15 minutes, and make a profit is unlikely to end well for most people.
Also, speaking just for myself, instant access off my phone 23hours a day to the markets would be far too close to addictive gambling for me and I think that is a slippery slope that I could potentially find becoming a very serious problem, very quickly, very easily.

Just my 2 cents. Good luck anyway.


To your first point about the show fills via Tradovate/TStrader that’s a great idea, i’m trading the sim account today and will post the charts later this evening.

As for the micros that’s one of the main setbacks are the commissions and fees, especially via Topstep.

As for my position size the MOST i’ll have on at a time is 3 contracts. The most in one position is two. In general i have about a 30-40% win rate and about a 2.8:1 R/R. It’s just the fact that i won’t walk away after taking x amount of losing trades in a row and it turns into a positive feedback loop after that trying to get back to where i was p/l wise as you eluded to.

As for exit strategies i either have a level, chosen via s/r, volume profile, or a measured move. in general i don’t touch the trade once i’m in it.

As for the rest of your advice i appreciate it. It’s sound, and as for trading off my phone.. i know better. And i know i know better. It’s just the FOMO and impulse that get me sometimes. 99.8% of the time i am trading from my office or home.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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  #8 (permalink)
bobwilliamstn21
nashville, tn
 
Posts: 3 since Aug 2021
Thanks Given: 1
Thanks Received: 6

Are you familiar with Market Profile? The plan I use is above. The books I provided are also very helpful for all of the above.

Just trying to help, but the plan to stop counting the dollars is the first step I took in overcoming overtrading and really tried to understand the markets. My interest is in them more than the money. I see that as a by-product of understanding the market structure, weakness, and opportunity.

If you read Mind over Markets you will be blown away with the aspect of understanding the markets. I hope that helps.

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  #9 (permalink)
Merkd1904
Atlanta, Georgia
 
Posts: 94 since May 2021
Thanks Given: 55
Thanks Received: 147


bobwest View Post
Hi @Merkd1904,

I'll comment in a second, after I have fixed the thread title.

You may not have realized it, but the original thread title came across in futures.io as: "Just turned "Pro" and could use a little help, or guidance"

I think all that "amp amp quot" stuff came from composing the post in some other text editor and pasting it into the futures.io editor -- it probably came in with some formatting strings in the text that the futures.io editor here didn't recognize.

Not your fault, but just as an FYI, it is better not to do this.

Also, it's hard to read your text with the enormous spaces left between paragraphs, which possibly has the same source.

I'll comment on the post itself in a moment.

Bob.

------------------

Edit: Also, I just noticed all those pdf attachments. Very few people are going to open these attachments to read them. It is way better to just paste an image into your text if you have something visual to show.

If the image has been copied to the clipboard, you can just use Ctl-V to paste where you want it to go in your post and it will go there. If it's in an image file, you can attach it via the big blue box to the left of the new-post editing window that says "Attach."

But, in the Chrome browser, to read your pdf's I would have to tell Chrome to download them and select a location on my hard drive, and then click on the downloaded file to open it. You can see the problem, I expect.


Hey Bob,

Thanks for the replies. I’ll get to the second one here in a bit, and i appreciate both.

Firstly i drafted the post on desktop and then edited via mobile on the tapatalk app. That’s the only reason i can think or that it had a weird conversion.

As for the PDF’s. I was not aware you can paste images directly into the posts itself.

Edit: i just noticed the embed widget in that blue box, that's what i was using to attach the files. Since they're PDF's unfortunately they can not be pasted. But, in Chrome you can right click and oepn the PDF in a new tab. Therefor eliminating having to download some random guys trade report.

Thanks again!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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  #10 (permalink)
 
Salao's Avatar
 Salao 
Los Angeles CA
Market Wizard
 
Experience: Beginner
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Broker: Tradestation
Trading: GC/MGC, MCL, MES
Posts: 1,250 since Jun 2017
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The risk parameters of the TST combines (or similar) are soooo difficult, and I don't think there is much tolerance there for even a moderate degree of variance. For me personally, this made it difficult to maintain good psychology over the course of a combine. To use a crude analogy, I always find it easier to execute without a gun to my head. I found it difficult to size up, even a little bit, without it affecting my psychology negatively. I was able to make it to the second step, but unlike you, I couldn't crack the second step. To re-iterate @bobwest's post, I believe he is spot on, I have since continued my development in the micros where I can work on execution, sizing, psychology in a more productive way.

But, for what it's worth...There is a trader, who journals on FIO daily, that seems to do pretty well with his funded account. (I don't want to call him out by name, because I don't really know him. .) He uses regressive position sizing with the micros after a few losses to keep him in the game. He otherwise has a set of rules that he follows pretty closely, is very serious about risk control, and has really good emotional awareness.

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