My FTMO journey: trials, trials and maybe more anytime

[IlIlIlIlI]

First: I recommend to everybody thinking about becoming an FTMO funded trader to pass a successful trial first.

After I burned more than 5 trials by violating their rules for the following reasons:
- wrong trade size leading to overtrading
- false interpretation of the Today's permitted loss (which is always delayed and includes open positions)
- keeping high trade sizes after passing the Profit Target

So I made the following decisions for my future trials:
- take the aggressive mode for the trial which has the same rules as a 100k funded account
- use the daily balance of the demo account instead of the "Today's permitted loss"
- always use a stoploss
- try to use a break even stop as soon as possible (or when it seems to make sense)
- use my trailing stop EA (and check whether it is working properly)
- set always a take profit (currently initial 50 pips) which is extended only after setting the break even stop (and pushed only narrower for scalping or level trading)

Until I know how to deal with the following subjects I will keep trading trials only
- trade sizing after passing the requirements (which is also mandatory if you want to make money as a funded trader)
- trade sizing for trades not planned as scalping trades
- trade sizing of a (future) FTMO funded account

So here is the first day of the current trial - only scalping trades were planned by Friday's market moves.

Note: The third trade (buy trade) accidentially happened when I wanted to place the fourth one but the damage was limited.

This demo account is currently the provider/master account for the reactivation of my Darwin ILR.

 

[IlIlIlIlI]

Day 2 did not run in my favor:

I had to stop trading as I nearly hit the daily loss limit.
The recovery trades were only made on my Darwin ILR which should be feeded only by copying the FTMO trades.

But:
I'm still in the game. (It wouldn't be a tragedy if not, I'm experienced with such situations in these trials )

I always tried to recover fully from the early losses. In the result I had too many trades.

It's very hard to trade these indices (NASDAQ, DAX) with narrow SLs (usually 26 pips), for suretoo hard during the US market opening. Faster reaction on market turns would have helped.

Challenge now: stay in the game for the other 8 days and pass all objectives.

 

[trendie]

Why is your minimum trading days set to 5, instead of 10?

PS: Good discipline in recovery and keeping to Daily Loss Limits.

 

[IlIlIlIlI]

Why is your minimum trading days set to 5, instead of 10?

It's the Free Trial: half time and half profit target and will never make a FTMO trader out of me, just training.

 

[IlIlIlIlI]

Day 3 - a DD day again.

I should really think about my setups.
Stop believing and start watching better.

Now I have 7 days to make more than 10k to pass this trial challenge.
Maybe ..

 

[IlIlIlIlI]

As expected I couldn't hold the trading objectives and failed passing the trial.

No I have to wait some days for the next round.

 

[trendie]

As expected I couldn't hold the trading objectives and failed passing the trial.

No I have to wait some days for the next round.
View attachment 302153

Isn't that the problem with trying to trade within time constraints?
You start seeing sub-standard trades because you hear the clock ticking in the background?

One of the pitfalls of trading is trading your account instead of the market.

However, I think you have an aggressive style that, on balance, wins out over time.
But you need the freedom of laxer drawdown rules than FTMO allows.

Look forward to seeing you smash the Profit Targets!

 

[trendie]

While I am in my stream of consciousness, the Challenges and Trials mean you don't have to worry about trading around news.
Personally, I am trading such that I avoid news, so my Challenge is reflective of passing a challenge and onto real accounts.

Are you doing the same? ie, NOT trading around news time?

 

[IlIlIlIlI]

I'm not accustomed to trade with narrow stop loss so I have to play with the sizes.
Preferred style currently is scalping with bigger sizes and risking nearly the max DD in one trade set kicked me out of the max. loss limit this time.
Sizing is my biggest challenge to stay in line with the objectives, but I will continue learning.

Are you doing the same? ie, NOT trading around news time?

As I'm mostly trading NASDAQ, news don't touch my trading.
There are no events defined for NASDAQ until now.
IMO there are also no events for the Dow and other indices.

Sometimes I trade DAX, there is one event defined when I have to take care about news. It appears seldom, but I had seen it once in their news calendar.

The really bad with the news trading rule that it also kicks you out of the funded program if you trade when a stoploss or takeprofit is triggered. So it would be recommended to remove takeprofit and stoploss before news events.
So when you are trading during news releases, there is a high risk to be trapped on the daily loss rule or a trade execution.

They meanwhile accept news trading during the challenge and the verification which means you are training or qualifying with different rules than you run the funded account:

 

[IlIlIlIlI]

New week, new free trial.
Unfortunately I forgot to set the aggressive mode to simulate a 100k (80k EUR) account so I have to pay much more attention to the daily loss.

Trading with half size to stay in line with the objectives easier.
Starting with an unnecessary loss, as I could have closed it with a 2 digit profit before I went to bed.

Shorting DAX in the morning (closed on the TP in less than 6 minutes) and closing my NASDAQ long trade before the US market opened as I couldn't watch it at the market opening and didn't want to start with nearly 2k losses.

 

[IlIlIlIlI]

Second day made losses and I failed to hold the loss limits.
As I wanted to trade the aggressive mode, I try to hold the limits of the aggressive mode (100k account, doubled trading objectives) now without support of the FTMO statistics.

 

[trendie]

Well, that was a wilder ride than mine!
US100 seemed rangey during the morning/afternoon, then drifted up in the tail end of the day.
Hope you give it another go.

 

[IlIlIlIlI]

Well, that was a wilder ride than mine!
US100 seemed rangey during the morning/afternoon, then drifted up in the tail end of the day.
Hope you give it another go.

I was looking only for sell trades because the sellers were unvisible during the market opening on Monday.
That was wrong.

 

[IlIlIlIlI]

As today is the end of the month, the quarter and half of this year, I'm very cautious and expect everything in any direction as marketmakers, investment banks and institutional investors have to write their balances for the 3 or 6 month period with the data of today.
What I didn't and don't expexct today: reliable chart signals.
Some European banks are allowed to run their balance earlier (DAX at 17:30 Frankfurt time, 18:30 MT4 time ), but American companies usually close their balance books when the US stock markets are closing.

I recovered my FTMO account today with two relevant positions, split on several trades:
- the first 2 trades were not part of the recovery. They were closed by my self-written intraday trailing stop EA immediately because I failed to restart MT4 today. If I have time I will try to remove that bug to avoid the necessarity of this workaround.
- going long with a lunch trade on DAX expecting they will try to take yesterdays low during lunch time.
- going short on NASDAQ before the US opening and I was stopped out in profit.
- repeating the short trade on NASDAQ, adding a few cascading positions with small take profit and closing all before the US markets were open 30 minutes (could be news release time).

 

[trendie]

Good recovery.

 

[IlIlIlIlI]

Today I demolished the account completely.
Thinking about stopping to trade on days like today when I start with a series of losses.
Wasn't able to get a recovery as most profitable trades were stopped out on the trailing stop.

 

[IlIlIlIlI]

After the account left unchanged for a couple of days, I traded today and got the reduced prfit target. I doubled my sl limit to 52 pips and was looking for more precise entries.
The loss limits were violated on July 1st, so that account has no value for training for the challenge.
But maybe I get the targeted profit goal of 4k before the trial runs out.

I'm thinking about NOT trading on days when the markets run in a chaotic direction where it can't be profitable with my setups.
Edit:
To say it in other words, now I'm looking for a better structure when to trade and the criteria to find out to identify it early.

Edit:
Today I traded less than 1 hour with tp and trailing stops so the time I spent in front of the computer for trading was even less.

 

[trendie]

Balancing the downside with breathing room for the upside, and broker targets is the challenge.

Looks like you got a good performance there, today.
But, how do you decide if the day is chaotic or not?
If its any help, I am finding the 8-am-11am is tradedable, and around 1pm- 4 / 5pm is good.
Anything else is rangey.

Somewhere, there is an answer to this conundrum.

 

[IlIlIlIlI]

Balancing the downside with breathing room for the upside, and broker targets is the challenge.

Looks like you got a good performance there, today.
But, how do you decide if the day is chaotic or not?
If its any help, I am finding the 8-am-11am is tradedable, and around 1pm- 4 / 5pm is good.
Anything else is rangey.

Somewhere, there is an answer to this conundrum.

I agree with your trading hours, between 11 am and 1 pm usually only scalping works , often against the previous market direction.
How to decide if the day is chaotic or not is the challenge. One idea is to try it and stop trading after the first one or two losing trades in a row, but I'm not sure whether that works.
Since the US markets are open today, US100 (NASDAQ) is ranging between 14556 and 14672 (FTMO prices). That's enough for profitable trading, but with smaller ranges it's harder (for me) as I don't know whether the market will break out of that range later.

 

[IlIlIlIlI]

Finally I got the profit target of aggressive mode.
I continued trading yesterday and overnight to get it.
The trial period is running out on Sunday.

A new trial will be started beginning of next week with a regular 80k EUR account. I'm thinking about taking the swing trading account with the reduced leverage to get rid of the restrictions for news releases and overnight/weekend trading. Unfortunately that is not shown in the comparison.