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Top 5 reasons why I believe I’m able to pull money out of prop shops
1) No superhero trading
I attribute this as the number one reason why I can get a prop account to the withdrawal stage. What do I mean by this? Essentially settling for less. When I trade, I choose nearby targets (e.g. typically a nearby swing high/low) as good places to get out.
I leave a lot on the table. However overall, I tend to lose less.
When I have an account that is no longer being subjected to a trailing drawdown, sometimes I will choose a more ambitious target (usually a VWAP or another level on my 15 minute chart).
However whenever I do this, I am careful to not let my ego run the show, letting it fulfil a stupid need to “be right”. If I see any obvious signs of a reversal coming (e.g. absorption), I have learned it’s better to GTFO.
Worse case, if I wanted that little bit more, I could always get back in. Here are a few examples of where the market turned around when I least expected it.
Reversed at Day 5 VWAP despite how close we were to the session high
(thicker white line)
Reversed literally a few ticks away from the Day 3 VWAP
Reversed a short distance away from Weekly VWAP. It was right there! 🤯
As I’m sure most traders have already experienced for themselves, it costs us more by trying to be right. As has been said so many times, being right and making money are not the same thing.
2) Willingness to write off the day as a loss
It hasn’t happened for a while now, but I am always fully prepared that if I get to a point where I feel like I can’t catch a runner, and I’m skidding my wheels and getting nowhere, I’ll call it a day.
I find this easier to do when trading MNQ/NQ because I know typically, it runs enough that I’ll be able to make up whatever hole I dug in the previous session.
3) Mentally resetting after each session
This one is so important to me. I find it’s absolutely essential to do a mental reset after each trading session.
How you do that is up to you. I have a lot of other interests and hobbies outside of trading. These interests consume my mind so much, that there isn’t much space left to worry about trading.
This helps me reset. It means that I can go into each trading session without the high (made a lot of money) or low (lost money) of the previous session. It ensures that I don’t start trading with any mental baggage.
4) Not seeing the rules as a problem
As I’ve already said a few times “Challenging is not impossible”. The biggest rule people seem most frustrated with is the consistency one.
Although the rule can vary from firm to firm, generally this means that when you come to withdraw your profits, no trading day can be greater than, or equal to, 30% of the total amount you want to withdraw.
The Max Drawdown is another frustrating one. But as someone who has blown out a large cash account, let me tell you that blowing out a prop account is significantly less painful!
Yes, the rules are annoying, but without them, the prop shops wouldn’t make any money and thus, wouldn’t even be available to us.
5) Order Flow
I can trade without it. In fact, I successfully traded naked charts for many years. However, I can’t ignore the fact that looking at order flow does in fact give me a substantial edge. For sure, it helps me keep to the tighter margins that you get with prop accounts.
My biggest success so far has been getting an account to $5,000 withdraw, using an account type that only affords a max drawdown of just $625:
For me and the way that I’ve evolved to trade, this would not have been possible without looking at order flow. Order flow has its issues and is by no means the holy grail. But I can’t argue with the fact that it does help me spot the lower-risk setups. Also just as importantly, it tells me when to GTFO.
Bonus Tip: Not trading all-day
I have so much respect for those who trade all day. For me, although I can have some very good days, I tend to do better when I trade for less than an hour. Somedays I am done in 15 minutes or less.
I believe this is also a contributing factor which enables me to successfully trade prop accounts. I show up when I know the market is likely to be moving well (e.g. during the RTH open or the news) and I see what I can do in that time.
Trading the close can also be a good time to trade. In fact, once I’m a bit more settled into my new home, I’m thinking of picking up some more accounts and doing some trading later in the day.
Cheatsheet
N.B. The following whilst still helpful, is slightly out of date. I am working on updating this. Please my highlighted tweets which show the newer chart layout that I’m using.
Here you go guys, my cheatsheet. There’s no space to cover the chart setup, please see details below:
40 Range Chart (my execution chart)
- 5 EMAs (8, 20, 50, 100 and 200)
- kissorderflow.com (Trapped Trader bars turned on: Max 6, Min 20)
15 min (my Big Picture chart)
- Day 1-5 VWAPS plus Weekly and Monthly VWAP
- Session high and low levels are enough for me, but you can go crazy
Delta Drop Setup
I’ll share what I’m using. I wouldn’t get too hung up on seeing the exact data. Small differences in delta largely do not matter. The same patterns will still be there.
nobstools.com/delta - For Swing Delta
kissorderflow.com - Simplified order flow bars that show me:
Absorption
Trapped Traders
Buy or Sell surges
ninjatrader.com - Platform
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where are you trading your prop accounts? i am struggling between choosing a forex based for NAS100 or traditional futures NQ.. and the once funded data fees.. some charge and some don't..
Number 2 is a weakness for me as I mentioned last week.
APEX 30% Rule: “At the time of withdrawal request, the balance in the account can not consist of more than 30% of profit balance being from one single trading day. This is in place to discourage that type of erratic, windfall, high risk, all in style trading and encourage long term consistency.”
Followed up with: “NOTE: The 30% Rule is NOT a hard and fast rule, blanket across the board. This is meant to combat schemes, get rich quick withdrawal strategies, erratic and lucky windfall trading attempts, and to encourage consistency of following a system.”
And they explain about consistency further.
I completely agree with what you say about “tick trading” too. So does APEX. They call it “flipping” and have 20% rule for it: “Having large trading day / days, then only "flipping" contracts in an attempt to meet the minimum required days to request a withdrawal is prohibited and will result in a denial of payout request until consistency is shown. A trader may not have more than 20% of trading days that could be defined as flipping of any kind. Company is seeking consistent, day to day trading systems, not erratic trading, jumping from system to system, or working the system to reach a payout request date and just flipping contracts or placing a trade " just to show a trade day".”
Great post as always!