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increase my edge that much because the next trade that I place regardless if I learned a new system or strategy the probability is still the same of me being right or being wrong so I think I got very comfortable with trusting myself and trusting the strategy that I've learned and it's more so about waiting out those periods where my strategy is not working that that might look like me taking a break from the markets or it might look like me trading a very small insignificant size until I I feel like I'm in sync with markets again.
And knowing when you're in sync and in flow with markets, trading becomes very easy.
But when it feels like you're battling the market and it feels like you have to fight the market for every nickel and every dime, those are periods where people tend to do the most damage to their accounts.
Markets, speculation, and risk.
This is the Chat With Traders podcast. Yeah.
Welcome to chat with traders.
Episode 304. This is Tessa, your cohost. And I believe we're entering a new era.
A new breed of traders is emerging, breaking the mold of conventional trading thinking and how money can be made.
Are you one of them?
Speaking of a new breed of traders.
We got one here. We got an exciting episode for you today.
Ian chats with Kyle Ng, also known as Jade Cap, a forex and futures trader and an ICT methodology -based seven -figure trader.
You've probably heard of Jade Cap, maybe seen him interviewed on other shows, but here we roll with Kyle, the chat with traders way.
Kyle may or may not like this, but I just want to call him the king of prop because he holds the world record for having the highest payout, now approximately 4 .5 million in prop firm payouts.
One of them is a single payout of 2 .5 million.
But to me, he has a very relatable background because his success didn't just happen overnight, like most great things don't happen overnight.
night. He's been trading for about 14 years and he went through the pain, losses, and sacrifices and struggles like many traders.
But at the same time, he's not like many traders.
What happened in the recent years though, that really catapulted him to where he is now?
What took him out of the 99 % and into the 1 % category of top traders.
Guys and gals, this is a super inspiring story from Kyle.
And if there's nothing that you can take away from this interview, then I quit.
Ian won't quit, but I'll quit.
Hey, so stick around for my short one -on -one conversation with Kyle towards the end after the interview with some more valuable insights on the online prop trading world.
So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, we are so pleased to present Kyle Ng, also known as Jcap from New York.
Well, Kyle, I'd like to welcome you to Chat with Traders.
Thanks. Thanks for having me on.
Where are you now and where did you grow up?
So I grew up in New York, so a little bit north of New York City, like an hour and a half north of New York City.
People are familiar with the Hudson Valley area.
so I kind of grew up close to West Point that's probably one of the areas that most people understand or know so yeah grew up a small suburb in New York now it's a little bit crazier a lot of people from COVID after COVID moved out of the city so it's kind of a blossoming area but now I'm actually living down in Florida for tax purposes so I have some family back in New York my My wife's family's up there.
So we're back and forth a fair amount.
Okay, great. So let's dive into your background.
What did you learn in school?
And what was the first time you got introduced to the financial markets?
Yeah, so actually, I had kind of a rough go at college.
So I was always a pretty good student.
On a roll, I was the captain of the soccer team.
I kind of went away to college.
I didn't really know what I wanted to do.
So I basically just studied liberal arts, trying to get just whatever degree would put me in the job market.
But I didn't really know what I wanted to do.
And it wasn't until my college career floundered.
My grades were really poor.
I didn't really go to class a whole lot.
I went to a notorious party school.
If you guys are familiar with SUNY Albany, it's just a state school.
But a lot of people just weren't focused on school itself and education.
vacation. Mostly people were trying to go there to party and have a good time.
That's what I did. I kind of went out there, lived the independent student lifestyle, didn't really go to class a whole lot, didn't really find interest in any of the topics that I was learning.
Funnily enough, I was studying business just because I thought it was a decent degree to get.
So I took some macroeconomic classes, some microeconomic classes, but I never really found an interest where I could use some of that information to find a career path.
So long story short, I ended up dropping out, coming back home.
And it was then that one of my closest friends that I've known since kindergarten got me into trading.
So I went over to his place.
He had some charts up.
I believe he was looking at a couple different currencies.
And that's how I got my feet wet with trading.
It was mostly just Forex. And that kind of piqued my interest because I was never a great employee.
So whenever I had a job, I couldn't take orders.
I didn't like listening to authority.
And I was kind of always a rebel.
So it was hard for me to see myself long term in a specific career, specific job working for somebody else.
And trading kind of provided that opportunity where I didn't need to answer to somebody else.
I didn't have to negotiate a salary or anything or a higher rate of pay, a higher wage from them, where I could write my own destiny in the markets.
So that really piqued my interest. So I ended up going back to school at a local college, studied finance, thinking that it would get me on a trading floor or some big firm in the city.
But the problem was I went to a small local school that was mainly known for nursing.
and some other majors.
So I never got the networking opportunity to actually make it onto a trading floor.
I ended up in construction and construction management.
So like financing accounting.
I worked my way up the ladder there and got into high -end residential home construction.
So this whole time, I was trading and trying to learn the markets.
But I really started to get traction after that experience working in high end home building.
Cause it kind of put money in a different perspective for me where I got much more used to managing large numbers and managing percentages and realizing that I didn't need to risk my whole account on one specific trade in order to make a really good living.
I just needed more capital.
So, um, during this time, then you were doing somewhat part -time trading with your friend, and trading foreign currencies?
Not so much with my friend.
I really was more so just solo.
So we would kind of exchange ideas here and there.
But he kind of fell off a little bit, wasn't studying as much as I was.
So I kind of found myself studying on my own and trying to figure it out on my own.
But yeah, mostly part time.
And I was trying to day trade while I was at work.
I got caught working with my charts up at times.
uh so it it was a tough situation to be in because i didn't put enough attention into my career and it kind of made me stagnate for a couple of years so you were more attracted to uh trading than you were um your career that you were engaged in yeah and actually the first couple months that i had spent in construction i had to wake up super early to make it on site because some of the job sites were an hour and a half away.
I had to be there by like seven.
And anybody that works in that industry kind of knows that, you know, they're kind of early to the job site.
A lot of them stay late.
So they were very long hours.
So sometimes it would be like seven to six.
Right. So I didn't really have a whole lot of time to trade and learn.
So I tried to make the best of that specific situation uh -huh and then how were those early experiences uh for you uh trading uh they were pretty pretty bad to be honest um i didn't really know what i was doing a lot of times i was just trying to chase momentum didn't really have a target in mind didn't really have an execution strategy and didn't really have trade management so i didn't really know how to manage my stops appropriately a lot of times i would widen my stop as the market went against me uh thinking that that it would turn around and go my direction just because I think the ego part
of it kind of hindered my growth, where I thought I knew better.
I thought I could beat the market.
And that was a vicious cycle for many, many years of just depositing a couple thousand dollars into a personal account, trying to obviously replace the salary that I had because I wasn't making a whole lot of money out of college.
I believe I was making about $40 ,000 a year.
And I wanted to take the $5 ,000 account to as much as possible to be able to replace the salary.
And I think I really tripped myself up by, you know, I guess demanding that I could do this full time for a living without really thinking about, you know, how long it was actually going to take me to build up a really good capital base and to be able to trade full time.
So with just $5 ,000 in the account to trade with, did you have, I mean, did your friend or anyone else, um, allude to great profits, um, hundreds of percent per year, uh, that would, um, kind of seduce you into thinking that you could replace your regular full -time job, uh, with an account.
Part of it too, was that there wasn't as much trading information back in 2011 as there is now.
So I was basically just going off of what I was kind of seeing online.
And to be honest, I didn't even really see that many people posting wild profits online.
So I I didn't even really know what to expect and what was reasonable in the markets.
I think a lot of people had mentioned, if you were beating the market, that's pretty decent.
But when I looked at my percentage gains on a small account, I was like, Well, I was doing 20 % a week at times.
But what I didn't realize was that it's not sustainable.
Trying to hit those home runs all the time is just not sustainable.
So a lot of times, I would have a very, very tight stop loss with a really, really big target.
and I would become impatient with the trade and not be able to see those ideas through.
Even though some of them did pan out, I just didn't know how to be patient in a trade.
So I knew how to place trades.
I knew how to size myself appropriately.
But the problem was that I could not stick with an idea for the life of me.
So even though I had a really decent idea, I didn't know how to sit on my hands and be patient and let the market pay me.
because I think a lot of new traders, they probably think that they can enter a trade and it's going to go straight to their target almost every single time.
And the obvious answer is that that's not realistic, right?
Every trade has a different time horizon.
You can't control what the market's going to do.
And that was something that I think took many, many years to actually recognize.
Okay, so then how did your trading and learning process evolve evolve as you continue to work at your career?
So I think when I was, when I was working on my career, initially, uh, I was kind of in that cycle of trying to find new things and trying to learn new things.
And I think it got to a point where I got so fed up with constantly, you know, being on that search for knowledge that I kind of just tried to strip it down as much as possible and realize that the things that I had learned were applicable in the markets.
It just, I needed to to be comfortable with what I had already learned and just come to the market and try and execute that same process and strategy over and over and over again.
I think a lot of traders get bored of their strategies after a while.
They're trying to find something new or find something that adds even more edge to their strategy, even though they might have a really good edge already.
And it's more so about, how do I properly size with that edge?
How do I have better trade management?
Where do I scale profits out?
Or how do I scale into a trade to make this trade pay me more than an initial single position?
So I think at some point, I came to the realization that if I wanted to succeed, I needed something that I could replicate on a week -to -week basis, on a quarter -to -quarter basis, and for a long period of time without getting bored.
And even if I did get bored, I just needed to remind myself that studying new things wasn't necessarily going to add more edge or more probability to the next trade that I take.
So where did you focus your your time?
I mean, when you came to this realization that just studying new things don't necessarily are not necessarily applicable, how did your trading and learning evolve?
And did you stick continue to stick with your construction job?
Yeah, so the way that my trading evolved really was to put more focus on the trade management and the risk management.
Because I noticed that no matter what strategy that I was trading, the biggest edge that I had was learning how to size into trades that were A -plus setups, in my opinion.
And knowing when to do that at the right times was probably the biggest realization.
Because you can't go into the market and expect that there's gonna be really clean conditions.
You're gonna be able to size up as much as possible.
Because if you continuously do that and you don't know when to apply your edge, a lot of times you get burned.
So what I had to differentiate was what were the specific market conditions that I needed to identify in order for me to trade full size and in order for me to scale into positions and run them for a long period of time.
So that was really my focus.
My focus was, how do I manage my stops to cut risk when the trade's not working in my favor?
How do I add into trades when it is working in my favor?
Where do I place my stops to give it enough room so that that I don't get kicked out of the trade before it runs to my target.
And a lot of that really just came from having more patience in general.
So being comfortable with long periods of losing streaks, even though I am analyzing the markets properly, I'm still managing the risk properly.
And then more so it's just about staying alive long enough.
So for when that market does start moving in my direction that I have enough capital that I can put behind a trade and actually make back uh for all the the losing periods or all the stagnant periods which what i think was probably when my equity curve started going parabolic was um trying to stay alive long enough when the market's really choppy and just waiting for that period of time where the market starts breaking out and i can start scaling into trades uh the trades don't really necessarily go against me right away.
And I have very little downside.
And then as far as the construction job, I was still working construction at the time.
And my goal really was to at least make my annual salary from trading compared to my job.
But I didn't really leave my job until I made like two to three X my salary.
So many traders are unfortunately accustomed to seeing one or more accounts blow up before they really start to learn.
Did you blow up any accounts along the way or were you fortunate enough to avoid that common?
No, I did blow up a lot of accounts.
And that was partly because I just had such a short term mindset around the markets, it wasn't necessarily that I couldn't apply my edge.
It's just all the intraday price action was getting me to switch bias.
And I kind of lost sight of a high timeframe idea.
So when I started trying to just slow down on how much analysis I was doing, I actually found myself to do much better.
So when I was working, I didn't have a whole lot of time to study the markets.
And I found that swing trading, I didn't need to make that many decisions.
Because I I noticed that when I tried to overanalyze and tried to micromanage a lot of my positions, I found myself entering and exiting and entering and exiting with the same idea in mind, but I would have a lot of small paper cuts.
So I'd be paying commissions, I would be taking small losses here and there.
They were never full stop loss trades, but I found that if I took five trades, it ended up being basically a full stopout, like a daily stopout or weekly stopout.
So, you know, it mainly came from me reverting to something that was very simple.
I could take two to three trades a week.
I could still focus on my job and actually progress my career.
And I found that my performance was a lot better when I spent less time in front of the screens and less time thinking about the markets.
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Press. When you blew up an account, did you just fund it with savings that you accumulate from your day job?
Yeah, exactly. And the big problem was that, again, I wasn't making a whole lot of money.
So saving up the 5K took me quite a while until I actually started making more of my job.
But oftentimes I would end up blowing my account and then taking time off away from the markets.
It's like there were periods where I blew up an account and didn't trade for two or three months and then came back and felt refreshed.
But then I didn't address some of the issues that caused me to blow up the first time and I was basically just treating it like a casino. So every time, each time I blew up an account, I took some time off.
I thought I had learned something from that experience.
But then when I started placing risk again, I found myself oversizing, over leveraging kind of falling into the same pitfalls that i think most traders do and i did that for many many years uh it would have been much better if i could i could have identified my weaknesses up front because i think a lot of people don't recognize that they can have bad habits and those bad habits can actually pay them so if they're making money in the markets but they have bad habits now all of a sudden they have this negative feedback loop where they think that their bad habits are actually rewarding them, but in the long
term, it actually hurts them.
So why do you think that it's common for traders to not learn quickly from their early bad habits?
Is it, I mean, what, what's a trigger on that?
Do they need to lose more money to, to learn from the bad habits or what?
I think so. I think, I think at least all the traders that I know that have made it and have become successfully profitable, you know, full -time traders have gone through those periods where they have that gut -wrenching pain of blowing up an account or breaking all the rules.
And at some point, they get tired of doing that.
And I don't really know too many traders.
Maybe there's a couple that come to mind that haven't gone through that cycle.
But I think many traders go through that cycle of maybe hitting rock bottom them and they come to the realization that it's either feast or famine.
They have to address the issues that are really holding them back.
They have to take this seriously because I think too many traders don't take the market seriously and they don't respect the risk enough.
So a lot of times they end up running in place or they end up over leveraging, blowing their accounts, and then they just end up leaving the space entirely and they stop pursuing the trading career um so tell us about your next chapter uh you did this for a number of years until until when kind of what was the next pivot point for you um so the biggest thing was i started getting more and more responsibilities at my job and realized that i had less and less time on my hands and if i really wanted to leave that career behind because it wasn't something that i saw myself doing long term that i really really
needed to address uh the poor things that were keeping me back, which was over -trading, over -leveraging, and holding on to trades too long or cutting them too early, things like that.
So it really became a process of trust. I needed to trust my systems. I needed to trust the knowledge that I gained in the markets.
And I needed to trust long enough that if I followed those same processes and routines, that I would become a profitable trader and having more of a long -term mindset.
set. So I gave myself roughly three or four years from when I went on that breaking point.
So I hit a breaking point.
I said, if I don't fix my problems and my issues, I'm never going to become a full -time trader.
But I'm going to give myself at least five years to become a full -time trader.
So what does that look like?
What are the goals that I need to accomplish week to week, day to day, month to month in order for me to put myself in a position where I could go full -time in three to five years and that really came from slowing down my thought process not trying to be in the market every single day and not thinking that the next trade is going to be the home run trade I think hitting base hits and actually just building your confidence and making sure that that equity curve is not volatile and I know a lot of listeners out there probably they don't take a look enough at their their stats and they don't take
a look enough at their journal to understand that there are periods of time where a lot of work, a lot of positive work, they might have two or three weeks of profits can be destroyed in one day.
And it's about being vigilant towards your process and making sure that you're never going to go off the deep end, break all your rules, break your risk management approach, because you can destroy a lot of work in a very short period of time.
time. So were you content then to just trade your capital the entire time?
And were you building up your capital at a rate that gave you confidence that eventually you would be able to quit your job?
No, I don't think so.
And I think for a lot of people out there, it's very hard for them to build their own capital.
Because to be honest, everybody has bills, especially if you're a little bit older, you have people to take care of, maybe you have children, you have a significant significant other.
You have mortgage payment or rent payment.
You've got groceries.
You have a lot of financial pressures, car payment.
It's very hard to be able to set aside disposable income to build up a personal account, especially when the narrative is mainly to just sock money away in your 401k or a company plan for retirement.
So typically what most people do is when they they start making more and more money, they put more and more of their paycheck away for retirement, which I never really believed in.
I always thought that I could earn more on that money and be able to access it sooner than the retirement age.
So I think that was a benefit for me was I was able to save a lot more money because I wasn't putting it aside for a retirement.
I was mainly putting it into trading.
And then I stumbled upon prop firms. And I think that really springboarded my capital.
If I didn't find prop firms, I don't think that I would be able to go full -time.
Just because the rate of return that is reasonable year over year, on top of any deposits that you would make into an account, it would take a very long time to be able to have the size of account to replace a six -figure income, which is what I had worked up towards before leaving.
leaving. So I think a lot of traders, they should not go full -time trading as soon as they think.
For me, I had saved up roughly two to three years of expenses before I even decided to go full -time.
And I had made two times my salary.
So I definitely had a long -term vision of when I was going to leave my job.
But even when that time comes, I think a lot of people hesitate because they think think about the risks of looting, I guess, diving into the deep end of full -time trading.
But the reality is that if you've built up a skill set, you can always go find another job.
And it's about being comfortable with the risks that you're taking, giving yourself enough of an opportunity to approach this full -time without having the pressure of paying your bills.
Okay, so if you can set aside two to three years of expenses, now there really is no pressure for you to make it in trading.
Uh -huh. So, okay. So you mentioned prop firm.
Um, some people, when they think of a prop firm, they think of you sitting next to a guy on your left and the guy on the right, uh, looking at screens and then passing, uh, tips and trades and getting education.
Is it that kind of prop firm or is, um, is there another type?
Oh, it's really the re the online retail problems. Um, because I had tried to apply to these brick and mortar firms. This was before any of these online prop firms that come about like ftmo or um apex so the biggest thing for me was i didn't really know if these online prop firms were going to pay out but i was willing to take the risk because looking at the opportunity it was about a thousand dollars to get two hundred thousand dollars in capital even though technically it wasn't two hundred thousand dollars they give you about twenty thousand dollars in drawdown and i saw other people posting
payout certificates so So I thought it was worth the risk.
It was $1 ,000. If they didn't end up paying me out, it wasn't a big deal.
But if they could, it automatically gave me a springboard of capital that I didn't technically have. So if you pass the challenge and you get funded, technically with a $400 ,000 FTMO account, you really had about $40 ,000 in drawdown limit.
And the way that I looked at it was, was, you know, if it costs me two to $4 ,000 to get funded, that's much easier to do than trying to get my capital to a point where it's 40, $50 ,000.
Uh -huh. Um, so when you, when you and others put on trades, uh, at these, uh, funding prop firms, do they, do they take that position also?
I mean, are you actually investing their capital in that position?
Uh, or how does it work exactly?
No, as far as I'm aware, they're all simulated accounts.
That's just from what I know about the industry.
And what I know is that a lot of these fees that are paid out to traders are registration and evaluation fees from the failed traders.
So the traders that don't pass the evaluation, their fee goes to the firm, and then that firm takes the fee that the traders fail with, and then they pay out the profitable traders.
It's not an A -book model where typically a brick and mortar prop firm, they're putting you on the book.
You're trading their capital.
I don't think any of these online retail prop firms are actually giving you capital.
It's more of a simulated game environment where it's more so a competition against the other traders.
How did that go at the funding prop firms?
What did Did you trade and kind of what were your strategies and what?
So it was mainly currencies.
So when the Ukraine war broke out, I was mainly short on the euro for probably a year and a half.
And that's kind of how I really got my start as far as a professional career with trading.
So I was mainly short on the euro, did quite well, roughly 2x my salary.
And then it was at that point where I decided to end up leaving my job behind because at the time, more and more firms were opening up and I was able to add more and more capital to my trading book.
So you diversified among different types of funding firms, is that right?
Yes, exactly. And that was a big thing for me was delaying gratification.
I could have gone out and bought myself a new car or done something else with the money, but I invested into the industry.
I invested into more challenges with with new firms that were coming out.
And I was able to work my way up to about...
I think at the peak with Forex prop firms was about $3 .5 to $4 million in capital.
So at the time, I was able to risk a quarter percent or half percent and make my salary in a week.
Oh, wow. I think the biggest thing with trading prop firms is you should be able to diversify your risk because there were firms that went under.
There were firms that owed me money money from some of my performance fees that I never got.
And I think the biggest thing was being able to spread my risk out because I knew that there was no guarantee at the end.
So I could trade as good as I wanted.
But if the firm goes under, my money is tied up there.
But I always looked at it from a risk reward standpoint.
If I lost my signup fee, it wasn't a big deal.
It was like $1 ,000 to $2 ,000.
The first couple payouts that I got, Scott, I reinvested a lot of that to build out that capital base and to invest in more and more firms. That way, when I did that, I was able to reduce my risk of ruin because I lowered the percent risk that I was taking across each account.
So initially, when I was only trading with one firm, I was taking 1 % to 2 % risk per trade.
When I started getting more and more firms, I started dialing it back.
So I started risking 0 .25 % or 0 .5%.
That way, the drawdown periods weren't as steep.
The upside wasn't as big, but I was making more money than ever.
In one of your videos that I saw earlier, you mentioned that, quote, the real money is made with processes.
Can you share with us what does a process for you look like and what's involved in it?
So for me, everything really starts with my weekly prep.
A lot of times I'll sit down Sunday night.
I'll look at the economic calendar.
So I use Forex Factory just because there's some other news sources that have way too many events on the calendar.
And I think that Forex Factory kind of dials into the most important ones.
So I'll follow all the news releases as far as euro, pound, dollar, mostly the dollar index. And what I try and do is I try and predict what are the days that are going to be the most volatile and which day is going to, I guess, put me in the right position to follow a weekly trading idea.
So that might come on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday.
So anytime there's an FOMC rate announcement, I'm typically sidelined until Wednesday, Thursday, until after the news release.
Because I want to think like the big players do.
I don't think that many institutional players are trying to position themselves ahead of these specific news releases.
So I want the market to kind of digest the news.
I want to see some direction.
And I'm trying to position myself within that weekly timeframe frame with that, with the big money.
So I can obviously capitalize on where I think the market is going to go for that week.
And then day to day, basically every morning I come to the desk and make sure that I'm in the right mindset.
So a lot of times it's a 15 minute meditation in the morning before my trading session.
And I just want to make sure that I'm following the plan that I outlined either the day before or the week before.
Uh -huh. So you mentioned, uh, talking, reading the news and following what's going on in the markets.
Is that to just avoid those days like the FOMC days?
Or is it are you trying to gain fundamental knowledge that will help you in your trading?
Or are you or are you just strictly a technical trader?
It's a little bit of both.
I would say I'm 80 % technical, 20 % fundamental.
So a lot of times, I'm not looking at the actual numbers that are coming out for the releases.
More so, it's understanding when the markets are going to be volatile, when the volatility is going to pick up, and how traders are going to get trapped ahead of the volatility news event, and how I can position myself afterwards.
So a lot of times, there's a large manipulation move that's going to occur either early in the week or later in the week.
And I'm trying to position myself in an area where many of the retail traders are getting trapped.
So if I have a bullish thesis, I'm expecting the market to trade lower, maybe ahead of a news release, like an FOMC event to start the week.
That way I could position myself at a discount and eventually hold that position if it is going to go higher.
So a lot of times it's more so understanding what days I want to be active and what days to avoid.
So did you come to all of this kind of by yourself over the years or did you get involved in any kind of um you know trading groups or uh methodologies yeah so i'm an ict trader but a lot of it came from just experience i think if you trade enough fmc events uh you know fmc weeks if you trade enough nfp weeks you're kind of gonna you're you will eventually recognize patterns throughout those weeks so fmc a lot of times mondays and tuesdays are very choppy and sideways waiting for that news release.
And then we have a nice trend after the meeting going into Thursday and Friday.
And if you trade enough of those weeks, you'll understand what days are low probability days.
So if it's leading up to an FOMC rate announcement, typically Mondays and Tuesdays, I try not to do anything.
Either I trade very small, or I don't trade at all.
And that's that's really, it really does come down to experience and reps in the market and knowing how those weeks pan out.
So what does ICT mean and what were some of the things that you've learned from that approach?
So it's a gentleman named Michael Huddleston and it's just short for inner circle trader.
And the biggest thing that I could say with his methodology is spotting liquidity in the market and inefficiencies.
So whenever there are major levels that are being ran out, I always try and look at it.
So let's say if we have an old high or an old low and we take out either one of them, what I'm looking for is to see how many traders are getting trapped or if they're actually trapping them below those old lows.
So if I see them running out an old low, it could be a previous monthly low or previous yearly low, low, some major level like that, and then they close back above the low.
So if the market closes back above the low, I have a very strong indication that there are too many, the trade is too crowded on the short side.
And what typically happens is it's a mean reversion trade, where many traders, many retail traders are trying to chase that market lower.
But what happens is all the liquidity is pulled up below those old lows.
And the way that I try and process that is that a lot of smart money is trying to step into the market and buy those short positions, to position themselves long, as long as the overall narrative and the context and sentiment of the market is poised to go higher or lower.
Uh -huh. And how do you, how does one measure the pooled liquidity at different levels?
Is there a particular software or indicators that that will show you clearly like, okay, 5 ,200 traders are trapped with this amount of size position at these particular price levels.
How do you measure that?
So in the futures market, you can likely do that because there's a centralized data feed.
Whereas Forex, I didn't have that data.
I'm sure you could probably find some of it out there, but a lot of Forex brokers do not provide that data.
So mostly it was just based off of market reaction.
action. So if I was at the desk and I saw that we had taken an old low, it's more so how much activity is going on below that old low.
If we take it out and the bid ask is not really moving around a whole lot, I already know that there's not a lot of activity.
So part of it is really just feel and instinct and watching a market react at a specific level.
That is the biggest tell for me.
So I'm not really using a bookmap or level 2 or anything like that.
Although if if I did kind of look into that data, I wouldn't be surprised to see some of the character characteristics that I'm looking for take place.
We have a lot of absorbed orders below and low, you know, sellers are kind of drying up.
That's kind of what I'm looking for, but it's not necessarily from a data standpoint.
Uh -huh. So, uh, when it gets down into those levels, are you intently watching the, uh, kind of tick by tick or, um, indicators that would give you a qualitative feeling of what's going on at that level?
Does it really take a lot of your time at those key levels and you're really concentrating?
No. Usually when it hits those key levels and I want to see a reaction, it happens very quickly and it also happens around specific news events.
If we take out a high time frame level but there's really not a news event going on and there isn't a strong reaction from that level, oftentimes I'm just waiting for more information.
So when my high timeframe levels get hit, I'm very closely watching to see how we trade at those levels.
If we don't get a strong reaction right away, I'm mainly just sidelined waiting for more information until the markets become obvious.
So my biggest trades really do come from high timeframe, obvious plays.
So when the Euro started rolling over after the Ukraine war broke out, that was a very strong trend that I could just stay on top of and continuously try and position myself short throughout multiple months and throughout multiple years of it trending lower.
But a lot of those trades don't come around very often.
And I think a lot of new traders probably get caught up in the idea that you can be in the markets every single day.
There's going to be a high probability trade every single day.
When really there isn't, I'm waiting for the scenarios that create larger macro trends that I can trade inside of, even if I am trading intraday or intraweak.
So you mentioned intuition.
How much of your success would you attribute to your intuition?
I would say a lot of it.
I've been saved by me.
Just I've been saved a lot by being in a trade and just having a gut instinct to exit.
I don't have a reason why I exit.
I didn't exit mechanically.
But a lot of times, some of my best trades, I'll exit at the top, at the high or the low of the day.
And I don't really have any reason behind it.
It's more of a time of day factor.
So if we're kind of rolling into lunch or the afternoon session and the market isn't really moving a whole lot, I'll typically just exit the trade.
not having really a technical reason behind it, but more of a gut feel.
But at times it's also hurt me at times the discretion has also hurt me.
But I live and die by that.
I think my, my edge really is discretionary and I really rely on the experiences that I've had in the market, which is over 14 years now.
So given the high number of traders who fail some say, you know, 80, 90 % or thereabouts is that because do you, do you believe that many traders, they just simply don't have the intuition or were never able to cultivate it?
Is that a big factor?
I think it's partly intuition, but I also think it's part of understanding context.
I think a lot of traders try and learn a strategy and think that they can apply that strategy in any market condition.
So whenever their trade signal shows up, they're taking a trade.
But what I found was the best traders and speaking for myself, we know when not to trade.
So even if we see a setup, we know when to pass on that specific trade because other factors are not lining up.
The markets might be out of sync.
So I do a lot of intermarket analysis between bonds, currencies, commodities, and other markets.
So I'm looking at many different assets.
And when there's desynced conditions where some currencies are doing one thing, the yields are doing another thing, and I can't make any sense of it, those are the conditions where I'm typically just waiting it out.
And I think a lot of traders don't know how to do that properly.
So they don't know how to identify when they should be sitting still.
Every trader talks about it.
Cash is a position, not trading is a position, but I think the best traders know exactly when to do that versus the amateurs that don't.
Is that just because of years in front of the screen?
green um what why do good traders know when to sit out what have they learned that many other traders uh haven't um it could be something as simple as technical um there might be certain things that they just can't see that the more experienced trader does see because a lot of experienced traders have a why a very large toolbox of tools that they can dig into and actually apply their analysis on the markets, whereas the amateur trader only understands a couple of different things.
If they only understand a Fibonacci retracement, well, maybe they're missing context behind another idea.
If it was as simple as learning one tool in the market and applying that and becoming profitable, I think a lot more traders would be in that 20 % category.
But the real problem is that traders that struggle in the markets, they just don't have enough in their toolbox to really rely on to understand the full narrative behind why a market is moving.
Also in one of your videos, you mentioned about needing to know when to put your foot on the gas and when to take it off.
So what, what do you look for, uh, in the setup in the trade that encourages you to, to put your foot on the gas and add more to your position?
Really? It's an anticipation of a breakout or consolidation.
Uh, I think a lot of traders don't know when a market is going to start consolidating and they don't know when it's it's going to leave a consolidation.
So I think really, I'd lost so much money in specific conditions that I know after a very volatile period that markets typically go through a very choppy period.
And it really does come down to knowing when the market is possibly going to slow down.
I don't really have, I would say, a definitive way of determining that.
I just Just kind of understand, well, maybe if I watch the VIX, if the VIX spikes abnormally high, I know that there's going to be a period where the VIX kind of mean reverts to what's normal.
And when that happens, typically markets go sideways.
And knowing when the market is ready to break out and become volatile is also another key piece of it.
It's having that anticipation that, all right, maybe we have a catalyst that's going to be pushing this market out of this range.
And then we're finally going to get some clean trending price action.
Now, there are traders that have strategies for both conditions.
But I typically tend to rely on one because I don't like switching my strategies and switching the way that I trade depending on the market condition.
I want to come to the markets and apply my edge in the same manner that I know that works.
But maybe I just need to remain patient for a couple of days or a couple of weeks until it becomes very, very clear for me.
So what have you learned specifically through the ICT program that you didn't learn before that has made a difference in your trading?
I would say session -based liquidity.
So understanding the Asian range, understanding the overnight session or London session, and understanding volatility during the New York session.
So a lot of times, if we take out the Asian range or London lows, I'm usually trying to go the opposite direction because I know there's a lot of traders that are probably jumping on board with a short position and I can buy their short position and position myself as long as I have a high time for my deal that is going to go the opposite direction.
And mainly, I think the biggest thing with ICT was he packaged it all in a way where everything that you possibly need to know from psychology to technicals to macro, he packaged it all together.
I don't believe he necessarily invented a lot of these things, which he says he has.
But yeah, the methodology for me is just sound because he's hit every single point.
He's hit risk management.
He's hit how to pyramid into trades.
Pretty much everything that you'd possibly need to become a successful trader is all there.
It's just about getting the reps with each one of those things that takes a very long time.
So the way that I look at the trading skillset, you have all these different branches of skills that you need to learn.
And I think that's why it's so difficult for retail traders to make it is because we have to be the analyst. We have to be the risk manager.
We have to be the guy that studies macro.
And all those things take a very long time to understand.
I listened in a video where I heard Michael Huddleston, the creator of the ICT, say quote the outcome is already predetermined because the central bank created the algorithm have you heard anything about that or have any comments yeah so my opinion on that is uh i guess i don't really have an opinion towards it i think a lot of people make claims about the market but my biggest thing is that i've learned to just give up control of the markets to me it doesn't really matter if it's ran by an algorithm or not.
I'm trying to just take advantage of price discrepancies and inefficiencies.
And at the end of the day, the market can be a very simple thing if you break it down and understand, okay, we only have three things the market's going to do.
It's either going to go up, down, or sideways.
And how do I position myself properly on the right side of the market?
And how do I mitigate the risk if I'm wrong?
So I think a lot of traders, they don't think about the downside first. They think about the upside, the potential of a specific trade.
But if you can learn to manage the downside and your equity curve, there really is only one direction that your equity curve is going to point.
It's going to be upwards or sideways.
And that's the result that you're looking for.
You're looking for a flatline equity curve when you're not doing well.
So when you're on a cold streak and you're losing, you're taking consecutive losses, knowing how to size down is very important because you want to protect your capital for when When the, when your trades are actually working in your favor and when they're not working in your favor, you just know that you're going through a period that your edge isn't present.
So that to me is, you know, I think a major turning point in my trading career.
Have you ever had a situation where you have your system set up and you have your processes already, but yet you suffer a drawdown over a period of time.
And at some point, have you ever thought, well, I need to reinvent myself because this drawdown is lasting longer and it's more severe than my anticipation and there's something wrong, so I need to change something?
Yeah, and that was the period that I went through for probably 10 years.
Whenever I went through a drawdown period, I thought I needed to change things.
But now I'm very comfortable with my processes and strategies, and I know that me searching for new things isn't going to provide better market conditions.
It's not going to increase my edge that much because the next trade that I place, regardless if I learned a new system or strategy, the probability is still the same of me being right or being wrong.
So I think I got very comfortable with trusting myself and trusting the strategy that I've learned.
And it's more so about waiting out those periods where my strategy is not working.
That might look like me taking a break from the markets Or it might look like me trading a very small, insignificant size until I feel like I'm in sync with markets again.
And knowing when you're in sync and in flow with markets, trading becomes very easy.
But when it feels like you're battling the market and it feels like you have to fight the market for every nickel and every dime, those are periods where people tend to do the most damage to their accounts.
have you applied your strategies to anything outside of foreign currencies like equities futures um yeah futures um the the biggest transition that i had to go through was switching from forex to futures though because the market hours are a little bit different it's a lot more intraday volatility whereas forex the volatility is much more gradual so i think For any new trader, the Forex markets can be really good for them to learn because it takes a very long time for some specific trades to pan out as long as you're not going to micromanage the positions.
With intraday, with indices at least and futures, there's a lot of volatility that comes in between 9 .30 and 11 a .m. And typically, a lot of times by lunchtime, the markets slow down until the p .m. session, like an hour before the close.
So the biggest thing that I had to learn was the market hours are way different.
So I couldn't take the same trading window that I typically did in FX and assume that I was going to work in index markets.
The overnight session is way different.
A lot of times, I don't want to hold a position overnight.
I just want to be in and out.
And that was something that I had to learn was the futures markets are great for intraday traders, not so much for swing traders, unless you're just going to have a long -term portfolio of dollar cost averaging and building up a long -term portfolio.
Is there such a thing as having a market that's so hyper -competitive and so efficient that it makes it difficult for new players to enter?
If you look at FX, there's not nearly as many foreign currency possibilities as there are equities to trade in the financial markets.
Couldn't one say that there would be more opportunities in the equities market because of increased likelihood of inefficiencies.
Yeah. And I honestly feel like I should have made that transition sooner in my career.
But Forex was the only thing that I knew at the time.
Now that I'm trading in futures, I'm recognizing that there's a lot more R multiple to be had.
I'm able to get tighter stops in.
The markets are moving much faster than FX.
And I'm just finding that my overall profit factor is a lot higher in futures than it is in currencies.
Because currencies are not meant to be extremely volatile unless you're trading an odd currency like the Russian ruble or something when that was going on.
But I would say, yeah, a lot of traders can possibly find greater edge in index markets.
But you can also do a lot more damage because the markets are moving.
There's so much more whiplash.
And with currencies, you can have a decent stop and it might not go to your stop loss for hours because it's kind of just moving in a sideways pattern.
So there are pros and cons to each market.
And I mentioned FX because it's a lot slower.
The trades take a lot longer to pan out.
But it also helps you with building discipline and holding your trades, which a lot of people don't have. I guess coming up in the Forex market gave me an edge in the futures markets I'm able to hold trades for longer.
So trading all these different assets, I think understanding the characteristics of how they move, how you should be position sized, seasonality, it helps you as a trader to graduate to the next level.
Because you don't want to just be a one trick pony that can only focus on one setup in one market condition.
You want to be a well -rounded trader that can trade in any market condition that can understand the market conditions that we're in know when to sit on the sidelines know when to put your foot on the gas and trade aggressively because that's how you stick that's how you stick around long term you don't want to just have a flash in the pan success because you figured one thing out and now you're lacking in all these other areas so if you could go back in time and advise your younger self just give your younger self one piece of advice to help your trading what what would you choose I would say
proper position sizing and having patience with the trade.
I think the biggest problem with my failure was that I was oversized and I didn't give enough room for the trade to work.
So I would often see a lot of my initial ideas pan out, but because I was in and out and in and out, by the time that trade ran to my target, I was completely already out of the trade.
I had already lost too much capital, too much mental capital behind the trade as well.
So I didn't want to go in for the 10th time with the same idea.
When really, if I just placed one trade, the initial idea and just left it alone, I would have been much better off.
So being more hands off of my trades, letting the market do its thing, really changed my trading for the better.
So if I had to go back and provide some advice for my younger self, it's really just to slow Slow things down, take a couple of trades each week.
That way you can learn from the trades because I don't think anybody can learn from taking 30, 40, 50 trades a week.
And then you're going into journal all those trades and then trying to learn from each one of those situations.
It's very difficult to do.
What I try to do is slow down, take one to two or three trades a week and really pick it apart and understand what I was doing wrong with those trades.
Because if you can do that properly, then you can maybe think about trading more frequently.
But until you fix the biggest problems that are holding you back, you're not really going to see progress.
importance. Thank you.
Now back to the chat with our guest. Great.
So to wrap things up, what do you struggle with most as a trader?
For me, I don't think I struggle with too many things nowadays.
I think the biggest struggle still is mental.
So even if I have a really great edge, there's still periods throughout the year, and I would say at least one to two months out of the year where nothing I do is right.
I couldn't by when.
But it's more so about having that vigilance and staying with the process and knowing when to just take my foot off the gas, get out of my trading office and do something productive, whether that's working out or reading a book or doing something that's just unrelated to markets.
Because a lot of times, when I find myself in that tilt pattern, if you want to call it that, it's very hard to step away from the markets.
And I know a lot of viewers out there probably have this issue where they go on autopilot.
And after they take a loss, they just sit at the screens and click the mouse.
And that doesn't really end in the results that they want.
Is that when revenge trading kicks in?
Yeah, absolutely. When I get married to a certain idea, I think that my idea is correct, but I don't know how to cut myself off.
And a lot of times, if I try and go back into the market, I get burned again.
There are very few times where I get stopped out, I enter and it works out in my favor.
So I'm better off eating the stop loss because my initial trade, I already have the stop loss at a place where my trade is invalidated.
So it doesn't make any sense for me to go back in the market unless something really stands out to me, but oftentimes I get burned by it.
So knowing when to just step away from the screens and wait wait for another opportunity is a really big thing.
And traders need to understand that there's always going to be another opportunity, whether the market is at $10 ,000 tomorrow, index markets.
Whatever price that index market is, you're going to be able to find an opportunity that's going to pay you an asymmetrical risk award. Whether we have to wait for a news catalyst for that to happen, whatever the case is, there's always going to be another opportunity where you can place an asymmetric bet with the right position size and still have a good trade.
Well, Kyle, thanks for coming on and chat with traders.
Appreciate it. Yeah.
How can our listeners get in touch with you?
Yeah. So they can follow me on Twitter, jadecap underscore jadecap on YouTube and then jadecap official on Instagram.
Great. Thanks for coming on the show.
Appreciate it, Ian.
obviously the funding type of prop firms are everywhere now and from what i have researched on you you've held the world record for holding the largest payout from trading with prop firms and that is amazing and i want to know if you're still trading with any prop firms so currently at the moment i'm not i'm taking a little bit of a hiatus from the proper space space because after I got the payout, they started changing some of the rules.
But I am thinking about testing some other prop firms. I just think the risk to reward opportunity is so great with some of them that even if I'm not treating them as my main thing, it's always a good idea for me to have a little bit of skin in the game.
Because a lot of times, the ROI is really, really amazing.
If I don't have to fail any challenges and I can pass on the first go, the ROI essentially becomes a 20x of my initial capital.
So as long as they're around and as long as the rules are somewhat decent, I know a lot of the firms have very, very vague rules, which I've ran into issues before.
So I'm very careful about who I use now.
I'm always looking for an opportunity to trade some of those firms. but yeah, it's not really in my, um, review right now.
Yeah. Um, well, it's really inspiring still and many traders are going that route.
The reality is maybe only 1 % can do what you do, even with, uh, the advantages of, uh, trading with the prop firms capital.
Well, it's not really like you said, you mentioned earlier, it's, it's simulated, uh, a simulated account, account, but still, to me, money is money.
If you can pull payouts from whether it's a simulated account or a real account, you're still making money, right?
Yeah. To me, the hardest part about these prop firms is a lot of traders just don't have the skillset required to pass the prop firm and then to get to the funded stage and then to get a payout.
A lot of traders trip themselves up by, I guess, putting too much pressure when they get the funded account.
And for me, I had almost a decade of experience before I even touched a prop firm account, which I think is what separates me from a lot of the traders that are using these platforms. And a lot of the traders that I know that use these platforms profitably, they have many, many years of experience before they even get into the game.
So for a newer trader, it can definitely be detrimental because it could possibly stem bad habits.
Another thing is a lot of these firms accept credit cards.
So there are users that are going into lots of credit debt to pay for these evaluation fees without the skill set.
And they're kind of treating it like a casino. So there are downsides to the industry.
Yeah, I'm definitely well aware of that.
But I also know that if you took those traders and asked them to open up a personal account, they would probably blow those accounts as well.
So I always try and preach to my entire audience is that you need to build a skill set first before you can think about scaling up.
Because if you can't trade properly a small account, you're never going to be able to trade a large one.
Yeah, I think that's a really good message for traders to hear.
Yeah, because that's what I was going to say is that, you know, even though there are these benefits of trading with these type of prop firms, you know, many traders still fail with them.
And like you mentioned, you had many years of experience before even getting to this, to the point of trading with these prop firms for the capital.
How about for those who don't have that much time, they don't have 10 years, maybe they start in their, you know, sixties, fifties and sixties, or maybe they just don't want to like, what is the, maybe the top two advice that you might have for traders who don't have that much time to have that experience.
But their only way is to trade with these prop firms and going through these challenges.
It's hard to say. For me personally, I didn't really...
I guess there's two ways they can approach the prop firm accounts.
They could trade them extremely aggressively because it's kind of like a broken slot machine and try and get a payout.
but they obviously have to know what they're doing to try and hit the big payouts or they trade extremely conservatively.
So when I had a lot of capital and when I was trading with a lot of firms, I was trading extremely conservatively because I had the capital base.
But as firms tightened down with the regulations and I started losing funding, I started trading more aggressively at some of the other ones.
So I think for somebody that's really trying to make a really good living living out of the prop firm space, they kind of have to trade more aggressively than they typically would in a personal account.
But then there comes issues with, is the firm going to pay me out if they think I'm gambling or if they think I'm taking advantage of the rules, things like that.
So it's very important that every user understands the rules of each firm because each firm has different rules.
And you have to kind of play by their rules.
So reading through all the terms and conditions is extremely important because I've seen way way too many traders break rules, say that they didn't break a rule and then they get denied a payout.
So yeah, the biggest thing is understanding the product that they're using and understanding the risks that come with it.
Because at the end of the day, the payouts aren't guaranteed.
When I was running up the Apex account, I didn't know if they were going to pay me the full amount.
But that wasn't really my focus.
The focus is really to just make good trades at the end of the day.
So if the user can consistently do that, try not to put so much pressure on when they're going to get a payout or how much the payout is going to be because all those factors or external factors that is probably going to alter how they approach markets.
Yeah. And one thing I got from your interview with Ian is knowing when not to trade.
I think that is like the key because that can save you a lot.
And I will remember that For when I'm going through these challenges, these prop challenges, because I actually like them a lot.
I feel like, yeah, I'm OK with their rules.
I think it's actually good.
You know, to me, I'm treating it like a business.
It's just like, OK, know their rules and treat this like a business.
So, yeah, for me, actually, I don't think I mentioned this, but I think the prop space actually made me a better trader because it actually forced guidelines like safety bumpers, so to speak.
whereas in a personal account, nobody was really stopping me from risking 10 % of my account on a specific trade or 20 % or 30%.
So I think it built really good habits in that sense.
And I believe a lot of these firms are marked as like education platforms, which in my opinion, they are.
If you don't learn from the mistakes that you're making, you're gonna continue blowing the accounts.
So are you implementing, these rules helped you when you were trading the prop firms. did you borrow a lot of those rules into your own personal account yeah exactly because I understood how to how to protect my capital as I went into the drawdown because just watching the equity curve as it gets close to the to the stopout level building that skill set and understanding I need to size back and I need to like wait for the right setups I think that definitely helped me out as a trader previously I didn't have that I didn't know how to stop the bleeding.
So when my equity curve started pointing downwards, it started getting sharper and sharper because I started risking more, I started trading more to try and get out of the hole.
And knowing how to flatline the equity curve as it starts pointing down was extremely important for me.
So adding that skill set to my toolbox was very beneficial.
And I don't think I would have done that without having the prop firms. Yeah.
Oh, that's really good to hear.
So without the platforms, you think you would not be where you are now?
I don't think so. I think I would have kept trying to fund a personal account and kept trying to turn 10 to 20K account into hundreds of thousands.
I just don't. I think some traders can do it, but I look at those traders as being kind of unicorns.
Like I know it can be done, but it's a very slow, arduous process, especially when you're doing well in a career.
You kind of want to fast forward or fast track your retirement, which is a lot of what traders are trying to do nowadays.
If they're unhappy working for somebody else, they are trying to fast track retirement or find a way to provide for their family that isn't just a typical work week.
Because I know in America, at least, the work weeks are getting longer and longer.
When I left my job, I think I was working upwards of 70 hours, maybe.
Oh my goodness. Yeah.
Yeah. One final kind of weird question.
Well, so now that let's just say more people go through these funding type of prop firms and, you know, and they discover they treat it more like a business and they know how to game the system.
system, well, I wouldn't say game the system, but they know how to play by the rules and then they just do better than kind of traditional retail traders before.
How are these problems going to last?
Because if let's just say more and more are going to, you know, deserve payouts, they get, you know, they earn their payouts because if their business model is based on, on that of other traders failing, but if you get more, a higher percentage of traders passing, asking what's going to happen, you think?
Yeah. So that's a very interesting question that's been discussed in the industry already, is you have a certain amount of users on your platform.
Well, at some point, a lot of these people are going to fail so many challenges that at some point, they're going to find a way to either trade profitably and hit them for a really big payout.
And I think that's typically where we saw a lot of CFD firms go under, where possibly there's some traders that eventually figured it out, their performance really skyrocketed.
And then now all of a sudden, this company has a ton of payout liability.
It's a very hard question to answer.
Yeah. But I think traders are slowly getting better on these platforms. And it's going to be interesting to see how the firms operate.
I already know that some of them have implemented rules.
Like even a couple of years ago, a lot of these firms were much easier to trade with.
They didn't have as many rules around news or around scaling in, things like that.
So yeah, I don't know.
I don't know any of the firms that have another stream of revenue other than challenge fees.
So I don't know any firm that's a booking traders and getting revenue from their best traders.
So it's going to be interesting to see where this industry goes in the next couple of years.
Yeah. Unless they change their business model completely.
Right. Yeah. But I also think that there's more and more people that are coming into the space.
So I think the retail trading space is growing at a pretty fair rate.
And I think it's only going to get bigger.
So that depends. If they bring on enough people to their platforms, they can keep the revenue stream going.
And as long as they don't run into any regulatory issues, which could also be another problem, they might run into regulatory issues where the SEC or something says that this business model does not work.
It's illegal. You can't we're kind of back to square one.
I would hope that's not the case because I think these firms do provide a lot of opportunity for people that don't have the capital.
And even if they did have the capital, because I know of a couple people that are already wealthy, but they're taking advantage of the prop firms because of the leverage.
I think the leverage opportunity that you get for a small amount of money, you can't find it anywhere else really.
So even if they do have a lot of money, and they have their own personal accounts on the side.
It only makes sense to try some of these prop firms and throw a couple thousand dollars in there because at the end of the day, if you can trade them profitably and receive a very large payout from Apex, even if it's just one payout for a course of three months, if you have 20 accounts, even the 50k accounts are giving you a $40 ,000 payout.
So for a lot of people, even if they invest 5k to 10k into those challenges and they somehow come away with $40 ,000, it's still a great opportunity for most people.
Yeah, it beats opening a restaurant, that's for sure.
And I would argue that it beats trading your personal account as well.
Because for even me, I'm trading with an actual prop from out of Chicago now.
And if I can scale the way that I think I can scale with them, it almost makes the personal account redundant.
Like I don't need to take my own personal risk risk because when i do it negatively impacts my net worth right my my liquid my my cash reserve so to speak so i think as long as traders can trade with other people's money and have their risk uh their risk mitigated so with pro firms you know there's a capped downside with personal accounts there's no cap downside right i mean money into that account and it It could keep bleeding and all your funds can pretty much evaporate inside of the personal account.
So there are pros and cons to both.
But I think as long as these retail props are around, I essentially don't see the reason why people need to trade a personal account.
And that's probably why you see a lot of major brokers try and open up their own prop accounts.
So like Oanda has their own.
ThinkMarkets has their own.
I would not be surprised to see more and more institutional level brokers open up some of these, you know, evaluation proper models.
That would be awesome.
They are losing business to that whole industry.
Yeah. I mean, just like what you said, I mean, from a business perspective, from a business mindset, why would you want to change your personal account when you have all these opportunities, right?
This is the best time, I think.
Yeah, likewise. Hey, thanks for listening again.
And as a quick follow -up, I have decided to go the online prop firm route for many reasons.
And if you want to follow my prop evaluation journey, feel free to visit me on tessadao .com.
T -E -S -S -A -D -A -O dot com.
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