Before you read on, let me just tell you I've heard the objections of "learn on a demo account" and "don't jump into prop firms" thrown around plenty of times. If this is all you have to say, it's falling on deaf ears. As I never risk more than I am willing to lose, and I put in the effort to learn from controlled financial loss, and fix my bad trading habits by means of analysing my trades, performance, and emotional/psychological behaviour through reflective journaling, loss is just part of the learning process for me. I don't need the training wheels of a paper account because I'm not foolish enough to crash my proverbial bicycle into an oncoming truck - the worst that could happen is I fall over, graze my knees, put up with the pain of antiseptic on the wound, and use my fall as an example of what not to do. I will cover my approach to risk management in a future post because I think the way I go about it mathematically is pretty cool and I haven't heard of anyone else doing it this way - It kind of turns the traditional risk/reward system on its head. I've been trading live since May 1st 2025. I had dabbled in paper trading but as you can see, I am stubborn in my conviction that I must learn with real funds. Demo accounts don't offer the same emotional weight that is involved in the trading process and seeing PnL go up or down. However, I don't even have that much funding, so I decided that I will take the plunge and attempt prop firm evaluations. To me, this is quite ideal as there is still something very real to lose, but it is never more than the cost of the evaluation (and my potential profits) which poses no harm to my financial status. I don't have the attitude of "I failed the eval, I just need to try again", which would effectively blow account after account like a gambling addict. Rather, I'm much more inclined to put pen to paper and my nose into books, journal as much as I can about what I've done wrong, and use this to formulate alternative attitudes and behaviour which may help me avoid repeating similar and related errors. Most of my journaling is handwritten and I see no need to share most of it as it mostly deals with my own way of thinking. I write a lot in my notebook, so I don't want to bore you all with pages and pages of me me me. For this reason, I aim to use this thread to share insights gained and reflections that may be applicable to other traders, and also to share occasional trading experience for the sake of third-party review ie: constructive criticism on my poor performance lol.
Let me guess ... if the Reward to Risk is 1 to 1 (1/2) then you bet n * 1/2 2 to 1 (1/3) then you bet n * 1/3 1 to 2 (2/3) then you bet n * 2/3 Where n is your target % reward. I've seen that in a sport betting book.
That's a whole lot of rambling. Get to the point...what do you trade, timeframe, style, reasoning, etc ....you're likely to fail though. Most people do. Many guys randomly discover trading through social media or an ad....and think to themselves....this is my big break, my calling...my life will change...I can feel it You can certainly make money in the market, but it won't happen by skimming a trading book from 2004 through the weekend or spending a week going through a trading course. Wolves and Sheep this industry is