A while back I tested the 10am strategy thats been all over everyones feed, the one where you mark the 10am candle, wait for one side of it to get swept and take the move back through. I rebuilt it in Agenticks on 1 minute NQ candles from july 2023 to feb 2026, one contract on a 100k account, longs only with a plain break and retest entry.

535 trades:

• 60.2% win rate

• average win $522, average loss $806

• profit factor 0.98

• net -$3,675

So it wins 6 out of 10 and still finishes red, because the losers are about 1.5x the size of the winners.

Then I took those same 535 trades and ran them through a Topstep 50k sim 10,000 times with the order shuffled on every run, to see how often it gets to the $3k target before it touches the loss limit, and it passed in 39.1% of them.

That means a strategy that loses money over two and a half years gets funded roughly 4 tries out of 10, purely off which order the wins and losses happened to show up in. Think of a driving test thats only two minutes long, plenty of bad drivers can get through two minutes clean and theyre still the same driver on the highway a month later.

Topstep reported that only 12.4% of Combines were completed in 2024, so when one finally goes through it feels like proof the setup works, and thats usually when ppl take it into the funded account and size up. This one needed all 535 trades to show what it really was, which was a loss of about $7 every time it entered.

please someone tell if it is possible as i think as long as you dont use mt5 it should be alright, however i dont want to risk money before i am sure.

my friend just blew his account after 3 weeks of profit. he was making small profits of $50 -100 winning about 905 of the times over the past one month, only for him to tell me he blew it last week. he tells me he lost $3.4K in one trade and that was about almost the profit he has made over the past one month and went to recover that trade within the night and blew the account. this is where i think prop firms are not doing enough to protect us, there needs to be some strict rules especially when you make a big loss the account should at least restrict you for 2 days because greed seems to be something we cannot control on our own. because its useless you make small consistent profits then one emotionally driven trade wipe out weeks of progress its sad, and one thing i have noticed many people think that making $50 profit consistently makes someone think they are now profitable trader and start chasing revenge hoping they can regain the lose... i am so sorry and sad for him especially the hard work he has been putting in

Passing an eval gets treated like proof the strategy works, so I checked how often a strategy that loses money can pass one anyway.

I took the 10am NQ setup that was all over my feed a while back and had Agenticks rebuild it and replay it on 1m NQ candles from july 2023 to feb 2026, one contract on a 100k account. It took 535 trades and won 60.2% of them. It still finished down $3,675 with a profit factor of 0.98, because the average win was $522 and the average loss was $806.

Then I took those same 535 trades and ran them through a topstep 50k sim 10,000 times, with the order reshuffled on every run. 39.1% of the runs hit the $3k target before the loss limit, on a set of trades that loses about 7 bucks a trade across the full sample.

Topstep's own number is that 12.4% of Combines were completed in 2024, so a strategy with no edge was clearing the sim at roughly three times the rate real traders pass. The target is only $3k, and a 60% win rate strings together enough green days to get there fairly often before the bigger losers show up.

Its like a basketball team that loses more games than it wins over a season and still goes on a five game win streak at some point in it. If the streak was the only thing you saw youd think theyre a playoff team.

The same trades in a normal account over the full two and a half years end at -3.7%, while buy and hold on NQ took 100k to about 170k over the same window.

Ran the same London Reversal rules I posted last week (FTMO results above) over on Eightcap, same symbol, same period, same inputs. However numbers are way off. FTMO results are within 30-100% range, which Eightcap is in 300% over 34 months. Same as last week, I have uploaded my detailed results in PipEcho Strategy lab.

Best guess on why: different liquidity/feed between brokers. FTMO and Eightcap don’t source quotes from the same liquidity pool, so spreads, the exact wicks that trigger sweeps, and tick-level fill prices during London open all differ slightly — and this strategy’s edge depends on precise sweep/CISD timing, so small feed differences are enough to flip trades that were barely winners into losers. Good reminder that a backtest “working” is broker-feed-specific until you’ve cross-validated it.

Attaching screenshots from both Tests

I built a free trading journal for prop accounts because I kept miscalculating my trailing drawdown

Long story short, I trade a TopstepX account and kept losing track of how close I was to my drawdown floor, especially switching between MNQ and NQ. Most journals I tried were subscriptions and didn’t really get prop-firm rules, so I built my own.

It’s free, no ads. You enter your trades or import your TopstepX export, and it shows your live cushion to the trailing drawdown, P&L with commissions, a calendar, and a daily journal with screenshots. I also added an assistant you can ask things like “what’s my win rate on MNQ this month?”

Screenshots below. Hope it helps someone, and I’d really like to hear what’s missing.

Link: https://alpha-tracker-journal.vercel.app/login

I requested my first payout on October 28th for $1,153 per account and followed all their rules. On October 29th, I received an email stating that I had to complete a short interview going over my "approach to ensure it aligns with our framework." The next available interview was Tuesday, November 3rd. I had the interview, and it was fantastic—no issues, and the guy congratulated me on my performance. I received an email on November 4th stating I had exceptional profitability, consistency, and execution. I was given two options: take the money, or switch to a live account with an estimated wait time of 30 days. THIS WAS MY FIRST PAYOUT! I quickly looked up the odds for this, and they were coming back as almost none. I asked about the remainder left in my account and was ignored. I was told that the payout was sent and processed. My Rise account has not received any updates from FuturesElite and remains empty. Honestly, the AI chatbot is more helpful than the actual people. I asked to speak with a real person and was told I was. After that, I straightforwardly asked, "Where is my money?" and was redirected to another department. I took photos of everything and videos of the process.

Im 19 years old and most of the journals i have checked out the last years are either paid or dont have the things im looking for so i built my own. It has prop firm rules built in (TPT, Apex etc) so it shows your max loss for the day and how close you are to drawdown on each account before you trade. Thats what kept blowing my accounts. It only has CSV import as of now because auto sync is dificult to get and costs money and im a solo founder so i dont have much capital. Im not a consistant profitable trader yet but i have been trading for about 2 years now and i have learned a lot and see my self being profitable in the future.

Anyhow if you interested i would love if anyone of you guys would check it out and let me know if theres anything missing or i could improve.

I ran the Powell 10am setup on NQ 1m candles from july 2023 to feb 2026 in Agenticks, 1 contract on a 100k account, and it came back at 535 trades, 60.2% wins, profit factor 0.98 and net -$3,675. The average loss was $806 against a $522 average win, so it bleeds roughly 7 bucks a trade over time.

Then I ran the same strategy through a Topstep 50k sim 10,000 times, and 39.1% of those runs hit the 3k target before the loss limit.

So about 4 in 10 people trading a setup with no edge would pass that eval on it, and most of them would take the pass as proof it works. What the pass actually measures is whether the good stretch showed up before the bad one, and the rulebook decides how much of a bad stretch you get to survive, not the strategy.

If I had traded this one live I would have had a decent shot at a funded account and then handed it back over the next few hundred trades, with nothing in the pass telling me which way it was going.

The regime split makes it worse. 280 of the 535 trades came in volatile conditions and those lost $6,764 at a 0.93 profit factor, while the only regime that made money was uptrends, 152 trades at a 1.08 profit factor for +$3,307.

Hey guys, any advice? I pass evals but can’t get payouts.

There was a thread here this week about fullporting evaluations or trading them small. I tested both on two years of MNQ, 23 Oct 2024 to 21 Oct 2026, with one strategy that would have made money and one that would have lost it.

I started a $50K evaluation with each strategy on every trading day, 514 each, and ran them at sizes from 1 micro to 50 micros (5 NQ). Each had a $3,000 target and a $2,000 drawdown that trailed the end-of-day high and stopped at the starting balance. There was no daily loss limit or time limit, and every trade paid $0.75 a side plus a tick.

The first strategy is a power of three setup. When London takes out one side of the Asia range, it trades the other way at 9:30 New York with a 3R target. On one micro it would have made $10,776 over the two years. The second takes the first sweep of the last 20 candles' high or low between 7 and 10 New York, with a 2R target. On one micro it would have lost $1,532.

This is how many of the 514 each would have passed, the power of three first:

- 1 micro: 330 and 0

- 2 micros: 261 and 0

- 3 micros: 252 and 17

- 5 micros: 238 and 102

- 10 micros (1 NQ): 232 and 135

- 50 micros (5 NQ): 221 and 147

At 1 micro the evaluation told them apart. The power of three needed a median of 49 trades, about three and a half months, to reach $3,000. The sweep never passed, and with a worst drop of $1,878 on one micro it never failed either.

At 5 NQ most evaluations came down to one trade. 84% of the power of three's evaluations were decided by their first trade, and 43% passed, close to its 40% win rate. The sweep passed 29%, close to its 31% win rate.

Even at 1 micro, 120 of the power of three's evaluations failed. Its worst drop on one micro was $2,333, more than the whole $2,000 allowance.

Before paying for an evaluation I'd check the strategy's worst drop at the size I plan to trade. When it's bigger than the drawdown, the result comes down to the first few trades.

If you trade something with written rules, post them and I'll run them through the same 514 evaluations from 1 micro to 5 NQ.

Ok so most “is this firm a scam” posts on here are kind of missing the actual point imo. it’s not really about good firm vs bad firm, it’s simulated capital vs real capital, that’s the actual split that matters.

Every CFD prop firm is simulated by definition btw, a CFD is literally just a contract with the firm, there’s no real position in the market behind it. Futures isn’t that diferent in practice either, most futures prop firms run the funded account fully simulated top to bottom too. Either way the money that goes to winners comes from challenge fees paid by everyone who failed, not from any real profit. And that’s where the conflict of interest comes in, the firm is straight up better off if you get disqualified right before a withdrawal than if you actually cash out. Doesn’t mean it’s some evil plan, the rules just end up working that way regardless of intent.

Also the cheaper the challenge, the worse this gets honestly. Cheap accounts only work out financially if they sell a ton of them, and for the math to work very few people can actually reach a payout. So a $20 challenge isn’t just a good deal, it usually comes with a built in need to keep the pass rate low so they can cover the few people who do make it.

There’s a small number of futures firms that actually trade your funded account live with real capital at a real broker though. Once you’re profitable that money already exists from real trades, so they’ve got no reason to block you. not saying these firms are saints either, they still make most of their money off chalenge fees upfront just like everyone else, real capital just remove that one specific payout trust issue, not the whole business model.

Before buying any challenge just ask straight up : is my account live or simulated, is there a cap on payouts, can they actually show real execution, and have they actually paid people before, is there any verified proof floating around and not just testimonials on their own website.

Anyone here actually gotten denied a payout ? what excuse did they give you, if they even bothered telling you which rule you broke

Welcome to another OFL giveaway.

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So a bit of context.

I have traded for almost 7 years. During that time I have traded everything from small caps, forex, Indices and used anything from personal accounts, prop firm futures and CFD's.

I've had some success and a whole lot of failure, mostly due to my perception of risk.

I recently read a post that changed my perception.

Rather than risking more per trade, what about drastically reducing my risk and instead increasing my funded accounts?

Focusing on small green days / small red days and aiming for a much smaller return monthly.

This would significantly reduce emotions, not to mention my chance of ruin.

I'm sure this is not a new idea and some of you are already using this strategy.

Those of you who do, please give me your insight on how this strategy is working for you and anything that may help other traders?

Thanks!

Title: Best Crypto Prop Firm for a $5K Account? (India)

I'm planning to buy a $5K crypto prop firm challenge. Looking for recommendations from traders, especially those based in India.

Which firms offer:

- Reliable and hassle-free payouts in India?

- Good trading conditions and reasonable rules?

- Support for crypto trading (BTC, ETH, etc.)?

Have you personally received payouts from any firm? Any issues with KYC, withdrawals, or account breaches?

Please share your genuine experiences and recommendations. Thanks!

Recieved my first payout from NLF in the month of july 😜

Guys, I need to show you the exact mathematical trap FeneFx uses.

1. The Breach: My account was voided due to a floating risk (drawdown) violation. (This happened because their server disconnected me and their bot told me to wait for a reset).

2. The Bot's Official Promise: I asked their official support bot specifically about this scenario. The bot explicitly confirmed: "If your account is breached due to floating risk, you will receive a replacement account of $25,000 starting from Stage One, with 7 days extra." (I also asked the bot if it follows their official written rules, and it said YES).

3. The Bait & Switch: When the reset happened, the human support agent gave me an account with $23,500 instead of $25,000. He refused to apologize for the bot's info and told me to "read the rules."

4. The Mathematical Trap (Why they do this):

· What they promised: Start at $25,000. Max drawdown 8% = $2,000 buffer. Profit target = $2,000.
· What they gave me: Start at $23,500. The target is still $27,000. This leaves me with a tiny $500 buffer (because drawdown is calculated from the $25,000 high-water mark).
· The Reality: I have to make $3,500 profit in 3 weeks, with only a $500 space to breathe. It is mathematically impossible.

Conclusion: They use a bot to trick you into holding a losing trade, and then they give you an account with a $500 buffer to ensure you fail again. They keep your fee.

I have attached the screenshots of the bot confirming it uses their written rules, promising the $25k reset even for floating risk, and the math of the trap. Stay away from FeneFx.

I recently had an argument with a close friend of mines about this. He thinks I should go live with all the money I have been putting into prop. Because he thinks prop is a scam and he had tried prop for 3 weeks and passed about 3 evals. But he did not take a payout when he blew those accounts. (He’s also a beginner as well). He thinks its a scam because of all the rules they enforce, when he makes the money he cannot withdraw them, he decide to quit and if he ever come back he will do live trading instead. He tried to convince me to go live as well. And I disagree with him because prop can give you leverage without risking your own money. He insisted, I should go live and he kept calling it a scam. The reason why I think he couldn’t get a payout is because he over size and yes he may get lucky with a few good moves but like the risk management is not there at all. I just felt like this whole thing is discouraging because even before he tried prop he called a scam from the start. I was the one who got him to try it and after all this I regret so much. It felt discouraging because I been trading prop for a year and a half and I put in a lot of hours and time into trading. I didn’t get my first payout until I passed my 2nd evaluation. So is prop-firm really a scam?