If you’re thinking about how to grow a small account quickly, then this article is for you.
I took this small account with a balance of $6137 on 13th Feb and turned it into $9627 in a month. That’s $3490, or 56% profit. For the record, I actually traded only 12 days because I went on holiday in Cyprus during that month and also because February is the shortest month of the year. See the account statement below.
For full transparency – this is not how I trade on large or client owned accounts. This was only to demonstrate what’s possible by applying my professional understanding of the forex market together with my professional strategies.
I took 177 trades total – that’s enough to prove it wasn’t a one-shot gamble. The result achieved is on par with the top performers of the World Cup Trading Championship, which proves that the trading education I provide is second to none.
Now most forex blogs will advise you to get a $100K prop funded account, make 3% a month and that will be your $3K a month. And of course they all get a kickback of your prop challenge fee so that’s why they uniformly advise that.
I’m an independent trader not affiliated with any company so my advice won’t be sexy. The truth is you don’t need a prop firm. You just need to know what you’re doing and use your trading account to the full extent if you want to grow it aggressively.
What most people do nowadays is pay $500 for a $100K prop challenge. It comes with no more than 10% max drawdown rule so you’re in fact aiming just for a $10K account. If you pass the challenge, your trading will be governed by a long list of rules of what you cannot do, with some of those rules being completely subjective (like “no one sided bets” – how can you trade without being one sided at all?). Also, even after you pass the challenge, each profit withdrawal is subject to approval so it may get denied or reduced for any stupid reason from that long list of rules. Knowing all of this, the true value of that account becomes a $5K at best, compared to a regular brokerage account.
Alternatively, if you put that $500 in your brokerage account, grow it aggressively at 50% a month, you’ll reach $5K in 6 months (equivalent of a $100K prop account) and you’ll be much happier because it’s your own account and you can trade it just about however you wish. Yes going the self funded route may take a bit more time initially compared to passing a prop challenge, but if you grow it further compounding will kick in and you’ll eventually be better off with a personal account. Also, prop firms come and disappear much faster than brokerage companies because they’re part of the current gold rush, so in the long term you’re still likely to benefit more going the self-funded route.
Once you have $10K or $100K sitting in your account, you can switch to a more conservative trading approach and use it for income. Alternatively, if you’re more of an entrepreneurial type of person who likes to endlessly re-experience the roller coaster of high growth – you can invest the money you made into passive income generating assets and start with a small trading account again.
Now let’s get to the “how” part. If you’re going to take the self-funded route, my advice is open a small account – the one that you truly wouldn’t mind losing to avoid emotional attachment. It can be 1-5% of your total savings or whatever is comfortable for you. You will need to push your account to the limits, but don’t use the maximum lot size available. You can use just 2-5% of max lot size and that will give you much more freedom to act logically (and I mean max lot size here, it’s not the same as risk per trade).
You’ll also need to change your beliefs. Don’t think in terms of “risk 1% each trade with a max drawdown of 10%”, but rather ask yourself “what can I REALLY achieve with this account if I use my trading knowledge and leverage to the full extent while always pre-defining my risk and action plan before each trade so that the chance of losing that account is minimised”. What if you could forget all the mediocre retail crap you’ve learned so far and really push yourself and finally start behaving like a true trading hero – not a narcissist but a seasoned sailor who’s been through all market conditions, loves a challenge and who can always find a solution to any problem because well, his life depends on that.
And then truly act with the winner’s mindset. You’re here to make significant money, often. Put that strange “losing is OK” mindset aside. In this case, it’s mostly not OK. Do all you can to come out of any situation in profit and make sure each of your trading day is green and you end it flat so that you can sleep peacefully, regenerate overnight and come back fresh the next morning. However, even with the winner’s mindset you still need to respect the market. There will be times when you will have an occasional red day or you will have to leave your trade running overnight, because the market died out and you simply can’t do anything anymore. But if you know what you’re doing you’ll be green 90%+ of days and that will help building your confidence and belief in your ability to be a consistent and grounded winner. Beliefs are very important when trading this way because you’re aiming for extraordinary, like a true Olympian contender. If you have conventional beliefs you cannot be an Olympian contender.
If you’re asking if you should trade with prop firms at all, my answer is yes, why not. Have as many options as possible, it won’t hurt. You can be trading multiple accounts in different styles and that will make your job as a trader more interesting. It will also boost your learning process because each account will give you unique lessons and then those learnings can be applied to other accounts as well. You’ll also feel less attachment to any single account and that will help with emotions and logical decision making. So I’m not against prop firms, but just wanted to shed some light on the self-funded route in this article as it seems that this route became very unpopular these days.
Also I have to mention that none of what I discussed before would be possible without Robert Taylor, who was a legendary forex trader and I was honoured to be his mentee. I was recently re-reading the archived chat messages between me and Rob and I was amazed to see there were thousands of messages exchanged between us from 2021 to 2024 when he passed away. I had completely forgotten how much we talked and that he was actually a much more relentless mentor than I thought he was – always willing to help, wishing me all the best and truly caring like a father. Rob, you’ll be remembered forever.
I am a living proof that Rob was one of the best forex traders in the world and that his training course was No. 1 on planet Earth. If you want to learn to trade like Rob did, I’m your best choice nowadays because I was trained and mentored 1-on-1 by him and I continue to trade in the same way up to this day.
So if you feel ready to finally leave the 95% losing crowd and become part of the top 5% winners group, see my training and mentoring offer.
Thanks for reading and have a beautiful weekend.