Hi everyone, and a warm welcome to chapter 10 of the trading blog, which covers my journey to become a 6-figure prop firm forex trader. The first 8 chapters of this series covered my attempt at the FTMO Free Trial, which allows you test your trading against FTMO Challenge conditions completely free of charge. Chapter 9 covered my attempt at the My Forex Funds challenge. I passed Phase 1 but failed Phase 2, which was extremely frustrating. This time, I’ll be attempting the FTMO 100k Challenge.
Trading Blog #10 – A Real FTMO Challenge
After failing the MFF Evaluation, the obvious question is why I have decided to take the FTMO Challenge instead. Surely it would make more sense to take advantage of the discounted reset with MFF, right?
While that may be a good point, I’m thinking of the long game here. If this FTMO Challenge is successful, I plan to use the profits from it to pay for other 6-figure challenges with other prop firms. At the time of writing, My Forex Funds is currently offering a $300,000 evaluation. While both MFF and FTMO maximum capital allocation can be obtained in just two challenges, FTMO max capital is 400k, whereas MFF is 600k. Therefore, it makes more sense to go with My Forex Funds at this relatively early stage of my prop firm portfolio development.
How it’s going
I started trading a week ago, and managed to build the account up to just over $103,000, which is obviously a 3% gain and 30% of the profit target. I was more than happy with a 0.5% gain per day, and come Sunday evening (August 14th), I could hardly wait for the market to open.
However, few things can grind your gears as well as forex trading, and come the end of the morning, I sorely wished I hadn’t done any trading. I have been sticking to a strategy of risking just 0.5% or so of the initial account balance, and only risking more than that once the account is at least 2% up. However, a series of losses on XAUUSD completely wiped out almost all of my gains for the previous week, and put me back to just above 100k.
Looking back at this day, I probably don’t have anyone to blame but myself. On a technical basis, gold looked OK for going long, but absolutely not on a fundamental basis, which I overlooked. Sluggish economic data from China boosted the US dollar as a safe haven, and the bears took over.
Annoying, but that’s just how forex trading can be. You can’t have a rainbow without the rain, and unfortunately in trading, sometimes the rain is a monsoon.
Oh well. Onwards and upwards.
The following day
Today, Tuesday 16th, my short on gold failed However, I saw a golden opportunity on crude oil. Risking 2%, I took a short position for a 1:3 risk-to-reward.
The trade kissed my stop loss before smashing through my profit point. At its lowest point, it effectively reached a 1:7 RR, and this one trade alone would’ve hit the profit target for this FTMO Challenge.
I know that losses are part of the game, but I’d be lying if I said that the last 48 hours haven’t been immensely frustrating. I currently have another crude oil position open with a 1:10 RR, and if it is successful, it will hit the profit target.
If it doesn’t, my goal will be to hit a profit target of 5% within the last 2-3 days in order to get the 14-day extension. I’d then have two extra calendar weeks to hit 10% and pass. In any case, my goal will always be to finish the challenge in profit in order to get the free repeat.
Trading blog final thoughts
I start to resent having to make 10% of the original account balance within a month, because realistically speaking, with a 6-figure account, I myself would be perfectly happy with just a 2.5% monthly profit. On a 300k account, that would be $7,500. Heck, even just a 1% trade per month would be incredible. I know it can be done.
I reckon I’ll get back to you all once my position on crude oil has closed. Take care.