One of Funded Trading Plus‘s successful prop traders explains in detail the trading strategy he uses to pass our funded trading test, win prop trading funding and is currently using to build a significant capital base. Given the consistency we have seen from this trader, we expect this prop trader to earn significant profits with us over the next few years.
This trader is one of the first of the traders we have funded, he is based in the Emirates and it is his wish that we do not publicise their name. He has personally written this piece and we are publishing it unedited as we feel it will help all aspiring prop traders. Please comment below, do you trade like this prop trader? Is there anything in his approach to trading that you could adopt in your trading?
Successful Prop Trading Firm Funded Trader: Passion, Hobby, Discipline, and Consistency
Trading has been my passion and a hobby that I learnt just by chance. It has been quite an amazing experience that I have gained over time using this hobby-cum-skill to earn a living out of my trades. Today, I can boast of having successfully passed some very challenging tasks of passing the prop trading firm’s evaluation stage trading and I can proudly say that I am a funded trader now with Funded Trading Plus.
While it may sound like an overnight journey to success, in reality, it has been a lot of perseverance, thorough research, consistent practice and honing of a skill called trading. A professional prop trader can be a mix of various other skills as well—mind mapping, focused personality, tough discipline etc. being a few of them. We all know that trading is something that needs a lot of discipline and consistency while performing the tasks of taking a trade.
My personal trading plans
I personally take up a trade as a project and try to see it through its final stages to successfully close the trade in profit or breakeven, in case of the price action not supporting my moves. It requires a lot of hard discipline on my part but also it sometimes tests my nerves as it presupposes the psychologically hard mettle that one should be having to execute the trading plan, repeatedly in different instruments and different circumstances.
I am talking about some of the strategies that I adopt and use for scalping as well as for long-term trading. Let me remind you that long-term trading for me is to hold a trade from as long as an hour or so to may be longer than a session (Asia session trades going to Europe sessions or Europe session trades going into US sessions). One specific indicator in this context that I would like to talk about is the use of Stochastic Indicator in prop trading.
Stochastic Indicator Prop Trading for a Living
The Stochastic Indicator has been my bread and butter in order to trade for a living. The parameters that I use is 14-3-3 on a one-minute chart normally for scalping trades and on higher timeframes for establishing the trend. This initiates my trading on a particular session or day. This trading strategy has yielded positive results for me repeatedly, more often than not in getting me happy and positive results.
Of course, I do take all the precautions to ensure that I get out at the slightest hint of a trade going wrong as indicated by the Stochastic Indicator movements. Of course, there could be many trades that I exit, that may have some other considerations (like suddenly going out with a family member or for helping a neighbour during an emergency etc.). However, even when I am on a social responsibility exercise and I have to close or exit a trade at a rather premature stage, I am helped by the Stochastic Indicator in profiting out of almost every other trade that I take. To me, Stochastic is a panacea for all—a short term trader, a day trader. and a swing trader. Prop firms essentially look for traders with a mixed profile who demonstrate their abilities in eventually yielding a positive equity curve.
Few examples of my trading style using the Stochastic Indicator
Here is an example of an entry and exit that I can illustrate with the screenshot of the chart showing two completed trades. The parameters can be seen clearly on the chart below taken from the latest trading platform from Tuesday 11 January 2022 price action. These are actual trades undertaken on my real trading account—the funded trading account from Funded Trading Plus.
Well, the chart that one can see above is an excellent example of a scalp trade that I keep repeating during my trading. This process has never failed me in a scalping trading strategy. There is a need obviously to be cautious on any whipsaw movement in the market during volatile times, but those discretionary aspects need to be cultivated over time.
There are two completed trades during the European session heading into US session in this one-minute chart of CADJPY—a forex instrument which can be volatile in terms of its response to FED Governor’s utterances on a day like today i.e. Tuesday (11 January 2022). It can also be responding to the volatile moves in the crude oil prices at times. So, this kind of a very basic understanding of an instrument is required for any trader trading this instrument. What I normally do is to enter a buy at the value of the stochastic indicator touching 20 or touching upward of 50 to 80 or above for a quick buy. And as soon as it tries to give me a few pips worth my risk appetite, I get out, exiting the trade in profit. Repeating this several times over the day constitutes my trading style.
Similarly, I try to sell if it touches 95-100 on the stochastic indicator. I see it hovering there for a few minutes on the one-minute chart and then I try to take a sell trade and resolve the trade as soon as it touches 80 level or below. As it moves further below the 50 value in the indicator, I see the pressure on the indicator. If it’s rebounding, it can be a potential buy. If it’s not, it can be a sell until it can resolve for closure around 20 or below the value on the indicator. One can see the reward of the second trade, for example. The first trade took a while to resolve but it gave me a good number of pips in real terms. One note of caution though—sometimes despite the moves on the stochastic indicator going up from 20 or sub-20 value to 80 or 80 plus value may not yield any great movement in terms of pips. This may happen if the position is held for a longer period of time. The third trade undertaken in the chart is an example of how I take up a market buy order as soon as I see my Stochastic indicator showing a value close to 20 or sub 20 and you can see the price action is ready to move upward as indicated by the upward moves in the indicator.
Successful skills as a Prop Trading Firm Trader
The key to success in prop trading firms (for example, the Funded Trading Plus evaluation stage trading) is to ensure that a trader exhibits the trading skills in terms of a consistently trading strategy that results in profit most of the time it is activated. So, this strategy, while it keeps on yielding profitable trades one after the other, also boosts the Prop firm investor’s confidence in the trader leading them to conclude that this trader can take the ship successfully to the shore. There could be a shipwreck if you do it once in a while with any other strategy, but it may not match the favorable win: lose ratio in a stochastic indicator strategy in a funded trading program scenario. Furthermore, in the context where prop trading firms are sometimes interested in you to take more trades for you to reach a particular target, my scalping trading strategy with the help of a Stochastic indicator can be a great help. After all, prop trading firms don’t trust the trader over one trade giving the trader the eventual target, their confidence level of the proprietary trading firms increases as the traders show consistently successful trades yielding an upward trend of equity.
Stochastic indicator for scalping or day trading
I believe that the Stochastic indicator can be a game-changer in the funded trading program’s success rate for the newbie as well as experienced traders who may use it for a style of trading that they choose. I, for one, have found this extremely successful in passing the evaluation stage of the trading, and even after getting real money in a funded trading set-up, I have been getting my accounts being doubled almost in a month as I keep generating good profits. Funded Trading Plus have been a real prop trading firm in that context where they see the potential in the trader right away and they keep encouraging traders with more dividends like offering them up to 90 percent of their profit and doubling the account size at the convenience of the traders who pass their not so strict and regimented rules and regulations for prop trading. The fact that Stochastic can help you trade well and make money in different settings and instruments can be established through my trading examples of gold.
You can see the screenshot of the XAUUSD instrument through a mobile latest trading platform which is very clearly showing me exiting a trade as soon as I see the indicator value touching an upper value of 95 or so and then dipping down. These kinds of numerous trades help you eat the elephant, bite-by-bite. One trade might look like a drop in the ocean but that is where the trading psychology comes in. You not only get the necessary confidence as it boosts your morale up to take another trade, but it also fulfills the criteria expected by the prop trading firms where the more you trade consistently, the better it is for people to trust your trading style as it shows that consistently you are able to make money.
Mobile Prop Trading
These days the retail traders have been changing the pattern of trading vis-à-vis the institutional traders. While the forex market is a 5 trillion-dollar market, the entire space of trading on the go has been nurtured by a class of tech-savvy smartphone-flinging retail traders who trade on their mobile platforms. While prop firm trading, especially Funded Trading Plus, doesn’t put any restrictions on the use of platforms of mobile or desktop version, this class of gen next traders mostly find themselves more comfortable trading on the mobile itself. With the advanced version of the platforms, one can find trading, with the help of the Stochastic indicator, can be a real game changer. Here is one more screenshot on the same instrument on a mobile platform and one can easily see the result below of a scalping trade worth 110 pips or a dollar and ten cents on a standard lot or whatever the trader’s risk management profile suggests. This can be done while you are jogging, hitting the gym or in the calm and quiet corner of a beach sunbathing. These are actual scalping trades which let a trader stand in great stead as the trades are resolved manually in a few minutes. You can see very clearly how the exit is right at the time when the downward moves pick up and where can you get the hint from? The stochastics indicator is there to suggest that.
I have been successfully conducting these types of trades and I don’t consider myself simply lucky. Rather, I can be seen patiently following a stochastic pattern scientifically and I do it again and again without getting bored with it. The fact is that every time a trader follows these rules, profits are banked at a short interval, there is an adrenalin surge boosting the trader’s confidence. The more you do it, the better it is for the eventual equity surge which should be the goal of a successful professional trader.
Cautionary notes on Stochastic Indicator and my strategy:
I would however caution the trading community and the traders following my strategy that one must avoid a recency bias while taking trades. However hard you try to replicate these trades, there could be times when you may not get the same results as you desire. Be on your toes, remain focused and most important of all, cut your losses in time in case some positions move against you. Remember, drawdowns are meant to cover these kinds of situations when things may move against you. Be in control of the drawdown and you can be a pro trader in the making. One of the disclaimers that I would rather put on record regarding the use of Stochastic indicator is that it can be very fruitful and profitable in more than 90% of the time, especially when the market is trading in a range. I personally try to see the broader trend on a higher timeframe and then trade on the lower timeframe using stochastic to scalp or day trade.
Why Funded Trading Plus?
Funded Trading Plus has been the frontrunner in the game of providing opportunities to serious traders who can benefit from the range of funded account options for traders seeking to become successful prop firm traders. While there are plenty of prop trading firms in this space as can be seen in their mushroom growth of late, this company (FT+) has an evident edge over others. I have experimented with trying to take several evaluation stage trading with different prop trading firms and I can vouch for the sincerity and simplicity of the FT+ platform and we can see its rules are simply meant for the traders to succeed. Without any malice towards other prop trading firms and their offerings, I must say with my own experience that most of them turn out to be companies that are keen on seeing the traders fail. This tacit desire for the traders to fail is never an agenda on the surface of it but there are plenty of hidden and not so hidden fine print rules which ensure that the traders are bound to fail as those prop trading firms make a business out of the traders’ weaknesses. For example, some of the soft rules which FT+ tries to ignore may land you up in the trouble of paid resetting of the account in any other prop trading firm. FT+, therefore, has come up with a very neat division of hard and soft rules and the hard rules are the rules which make you a genuine pro trader in the end. They are genuinely interested in the learning curve of a pro trader. I am really privileged to have landed on the platform of Funded Trading Plus and had the opportunity to have gone ahead with their evaluation stage trading program. I can proudly say that I have successfully achieved a funded account. Further, I must implore funded program traders who are keenly interested in a fair deal may find, after their own due diligence, a genuine prop trading firm in funded trading plus and must try their luck out there for a success that awaits them.
Next Steps
Please comment below, have you built your trading strategy around the Stochastic Indicator? Is there a different indicator you use?
Read: How this trader passed $100,000 funded trading test in 2 hours!