Hi everyone, and a very warm welcome to the trading blog, in which I cover my quest to become a 6-figure prop firm forex trader. Posts 1-8 of this blog covered my attempt at an FTMO Free Trial, which allows you to trade under FTMO Challenge conditions for two weeks. Post 9 covered my attempt at a 100k My Forex Funds Evaluation. I successfully passed Phase 1 but failed Phase 2. The previous post covered my first few days with a 100k FTMO Challenge.
Funded Trading Blog #11 – 100k FTMO Challenge Part 2
The first week or so was pretty successful, I managed to get 30% of my way towards the profit target. However, the week after that was a total letdown. A series of losses wiped out pretty much all of my profit.
I finished the previous post with a long swing position on crude oil. I closed it with a nice profit, but I wish I had held it longer. It would recovered all of my previous losses. Urgh.
Today is Sunday, so obviously the market is closed. I finished the week with a couple of long positions on GBP/USD. They risk around 2% of the account, and I won’t close them until they are very much in my favor, or until the challenge comes to the end. The account is currently 3% less than the starting balance, so, as things stand, I wouldn’t be eligible for the free retake. So at the moment, I don’t feel like I have anything to lose.
New direction
Nevertheless, it’s still been a useful experience. First of all, I’m going to make some very big changes to my strategy. The first one is that I’m going to focus on typical major and minor forex pairs, and I won’t trade XAU/USD any more. I began this project with the plan to scalp gold on shorter timeframes and to be honest, it’s been a bit of a rollercoaster. Plenty of ups and downs and finishing at exactly the same place I started, or worse. The shorter timeframes require a level of stress tolerance and vigilance that I simply just don’t enjoy. I also admit that patience has never come naturally to me – it’s always been something I’ve had to learn. Scalping gold seems to take advantage of the worst elements of my personality.
There’s also the fact that my working commitments just don’t lend themselves to sitting at a screen for long stretches of time, staring at charts. I start to think that the best trading strategy for me is something on the 4 hour or even the daily chart. Basically, something that I can just “set and forget”.
Trading blog thoughts
Something I have often heard in forex trading is the importance of not giving up. And it’s so true, because of course, the moment you give up is the moment your failure is becomes real. It’s just like how the losses of a losing trade aren’t truly losses until you have closed the position. If your stop loss hasn’t been hit, there’s always the possibility that it could come round in your favor. And something else that’s really exciting is how a few thousand dollars and several months of failure can instantly be reversed by finally landing that prop firm account and making 2-3% a month.
Not having any success sucks, but giving up sucks so much more. The markets will always be there, and in turn, new ideas and opportunities. Roll on the next trading week, and let’s see how my GBP/USD does.