It's not because of apex rules. Been a really volatile day, couldn't get a read on NQ. I have not been able to call it a day then quit, couldn't stop the bleeding.
Might follow up on this journal if / when I reach the same progress. Apex isn't at fault but I can't tell they are legit or not. Sorry
I lost the 5,000 margin which means I did blow up the account. My trailing stop was ~$147,300 and I reached it.
Made 11K total + lost 5K In the real world I'd still be up 6K But who knows ? Might have lost the whole 11K.
No, in the real world you'd be trading micros with 5K in the account not minis because you'd engage in PRM™ and couldn't even enter a mini with 5K at a normal futures broker and this will be a run-on sentence and you would find it easier to stop when you have real money on the line and as you said you actually were up 6K but broke Apex's rule so yes you broke their rule it is their fault and yours.
Prudent Risk Management ? Already blew 2, 5 or 10k, real money account, like I did today. I am just not ready or whatever I believe it's my own fault and not the funding comp. I get your point and everyone do what they want with their money, But today I only blew 115$ (What I paid to Apex) I could trade smaller but I can't trade for peanuts ... Making 50$ per day doesn't interest me. Do I have the fund to backup my desired returns ? Nope ... Not really. That's why I try to get the funds from them. Thanks @Overnight for your support. Wish you the best ! Guess it's Pre-Trade Risk Management
Good morning, Sekiyo, I'm sorry to see you fail your evaluation program, but fortunately it was not a big monetary loss. Since you have a public journal, I assume you're okay with some comments. 1) $5000 is way too big a loss for your account size for any given day. This leads me to think that the main problem here might simply be that you trade with too big leverage, not necessarily poor trading. Since you're trading NQ - I doubt you lost 250 NQ points in one single day, but if you're trading multiple contracts you can quickly lose $5K in this volatility. It only takes 50 points on 5 contracts. Humbly, I think it's usually a good idea to always start out with minimum size and only increase contracts by adding to a winner. Here's an example of how it would look like (green arrows for entries, blue lines is your entry price and purple lines is your average price) a) First long off the Open at 15302,25 with a 25 point stop. Your risk is $500. b) Second entry after a pullback at 15328,50. You average is now 15315,25 (1st purple line) and you can put in a B/E stop on the entire position. c) Third entry at 15388,75. Your average is now 15399,75 (second purple line) and you can choose to trail it tight on that last entry. Let's say you lock in 20 points of profit on 3 contracts at 15359,75 (green line). That's $1200 in your pocket no matter what happens for an initial risk of $500. Let's say you now trail aggressively moving your stop higher following the low of each new bar and get out at 15421,75. That's 82 points on 3 contracts = $4920 gross. Initial risk was only your initial stop ($500). So, effectively an R/R of of almost 1:10. In my humble opinion, and unless you're an expert trader (which I'm not), this is the way to take on more contracts than the minimum and you ensure that you always take your losses on minimum size and your winners on maximum size. This is the essence of cutting your losses short and riding you winners. Also, if you did this, it would take you 10 x stops in a row to lose $5000. Of course, this is Monday morning quarterbacking, but it does work in my experience and I've taken home some really big winners this way myself. It works great in a trending market, but less so when the market's in a range (which might be a good time to sideline anyway). Continuing... Your desire for returns and impatience may very well block your progress. I recognize myself in this. @virtusa once had a very good quote where he said it's better to get rich slowly than to get poor quickly and this is such a good quote. What if you made $50 per day each day since you first started out? What would your account size look like by now? Let's say you can average $100 consistently per day. $7.5 K account and $7.5K per contract and add 1 contract per each new $7.5K in your account. After one year you'll have $120 K in your account. After two years you'll have over $1800 000 K in your account. All this from only $100 per day compounded. Of course, this is a very idealized equity curve, but I'm posting it for illustrative purposes, i.e., what a small daily profit consistently can amount to over time. If you're shooting for daily/weekly homeruns and over-risking every day you may end up never going anywhere. In summary, have a long term perspective and remember that small consistent gains add up over time. Finally, not much is known about your method, but I've had the impression that you change up your stuff a bit too often. In order to reach consistency, I think you need consistency in your approach, i.e., the same charts, the same analysis, etc. If you're always changing it up (new markets, new charts, etc.), it's harder to reach that consistency. Best of luck. PS: I'm still extremely skeptical towards Apex. I may be wrong, but common sense tells me I'm not.