u/Kasraborhan

Happy 4th everyone 😂

Big disclaimer before anyone runs with this: this is how I pass challenges, and it only works if you're truly seasoned and you actually know your edge. If you're still finding your setup, this is the fast track to blowing evals. Read it, but be honest with yourself about where you're at.

For me, passing a funded is not a grind. It's 1-2 A+ setups at max size and I'm done. That's the whole approach. I'm not sitting there taking 30 small trades over three weeks trying to inch toward a target. I wait for the setup I have the most data on, the one I'd bet my own money on without blinking, size into it properly, and let it do the work. One or two of those and the challenge is passed. I usually take these setups with 2-4 minis risked on a single trade.

The reason this works for me and not for most people is I've already put in the years. I know exactly what my A+ looks like, I know what it feels like when it's NOT there, and I have the discipline to sit on my hands until it shows up.

I also mostly trade a breakout strategy (15min ORB) to pass these evals due to it being a breakout trade and sometimes having minimal pull back or drawdown, allowing me to size heavy and pass.

The other honest piece: I treat evals as a business cost. I've got capital set aside specifically for challenge fees, and I usually pass anywhere from the first to the third attempt. So if I fail one, it's not emotional, it's just the cost of doing business. I know the payout on a funded account dwarfs what I spend on evals over time, so the math always works in my favor. That mindset only makes sense once you're consistent though. If you're not profitable yet, you're not investing in evals, you're just paying to lose faster.

So the real takeaway isn't "take 1-2 trades and you're done." It's this: the challenge is easy once your edge is proven and your discipline is built. Everything before that point is the actual work, and no shortcut on the eval fixes it. Get consistent first. Then this approach becomes almost boring.

Also one more tip: I usually tend to size in just a little heavier on my first trade on the fundeds and build a bit of a small cushion and then for the coming trades just size a bit less, I usually trade with 1-3 micros on the fundeds (50k Zero accounts)

If you're at that stage and thinking about running one, that's exactly how I'd attack it. Questions in the comments, happy to get specific 👇

Also, HAPPY 4TH OF JULY.

Two weeks ago I was sitting in a $1,500 drawdown. That was $750 on each of my two Alpha Zero funded accounts, both copy traded together, both bleeding at the same time. Nothing kills your confidence faster than watching the same red number hit twice.

Today those same two accounts are up around $900 each and I'm one solid day away from a payout on both. I want to walk through exactly how I dug out, because it wasn't some new indicator or a magic setup. It was the opposite.

The first thing I did was stop hunting. When you're down, the instinct is to take more trades to make it back faster. That's what put me in the hole in the first place. So I locked my rules down hard: max 2 micro contracts, max 2 trades a day, risk fixed between $300 and $600 per trade no matter how good the setup looked. Same risk every time.

Then I cut my playbook down to basically two models. IRL → ERL and the 15-minute Opening Range Breakout. That's it. Everything else got ignored.

Here are the two trades this week that turned it around.

Trade 1 — IRL → ERL (ICT 2022 model)

Going into New York, Asia had already flushed its sell-side liquidity and price tapped -1 SD before aggressively reclaiming. That reclaim left a clean 15-minute HTF Fair Value Gap, and that gap was my entry. I wasn't interested in chasing the impulse. I waited for price to retrace into the imbalance, bought the FVG, and targeted the next Draw on Liquidity at +1 SD for a clean 1R. Banked +$310 with almost no drawdown on the position.

Trade 2 — 15-minute ORB

This one wasn't A+ textbook and I'll be honest about it. Pre-market actually offered the cleaner short after price got extremely extended and swept multiple pools of buy-side liquidity, but I missed it. Instead of forcing another short, I sat on my hands. Once price reclaimed, held above the 4H Fair Value Gap, and shifted my higher timeframe bias back to bullish, the whole picture changed. The ORB confirmed continuation, there was a clean Draw on Liquidity sitting overhead, and I took the long for just over 1R (about 1.2R off a slightly better entry). Another +$233.

The actual lesson

The single biggest jump in my trading came from getting really good at two models instead of being average at twenty.

The only things I'm consistently looking for now are:

• ICT 2022 IRL → ERL (liquidity sweep → displacement → HTF FVG → continuation)
• 15-minute Opening Range Breakout
• Higher timeframe liquidity and Draw on Liquidity
• Weekly and daily bias set before I even think about an entry
• Fixed risk and fixed targets instead of trying to catch every point

The other half of it is review. I spend almost as much time journaling as I do trading. Every session gets logged, replayed, and compared against past executions. That's honestly where most of the growth came from. Once you've got enough data, patterns start jumping out that you'd never catch mid-trade.

These were copy traded across my 2 Alpha Zero funded accounts and my personal cash account. If everything holds, I'm one clean day from another payout on both funded accounts. Next month the plan is to scale back up to five funded accounts and run this exact same process across all of them on copy trade.

If you want to start your own run at a funded account, links are below.

🔹 Alpha Capital Group → CLICK HERE

🔹 Alpha Futures → CLICK HERE

This week has been a reminder that I don't need ten different models to make money. I'm already sitting at +$545 x3 accounts ($1,635 total) after only two trading days, and I wrapped up June at roughly +$2.6k x3 accounts by repeating the same two setups over and over: the ICT 2022 IRL → ERL model and the 15-minute Opening Range Breakout.

The first trade came from the IRL → ERL model. Going into New York, Asia had already flushed its sell-side liquidity and price tapped -1 SD before aggressively reclaiming. That reclaim created a clean 15-minute HTF Fair Value Gap, which became my entry. I wasn't interested in chasing the impulse. I waited for price to retrace into the imbalance, bought the FVG, and targeted the next Draw on Liquidity (+1 SD) for a clean 1R. That trade banked +$310 x3 accounts with almost no drawdown.

The second trade today came from my 15-minute ORB, although I wouldn't call it an A+ textbook setup. Pre-market actually offered the cleaner short after price became extremely extended and swept multiple pools of buy-side liquidity, but I missed that move. Instead of forcing another short, I stayed patient. Once price reclaimed, held above the 4H Fair Value Gap, and shifted my higher timeframe bias back to bullish, the setup completely changed. The ORB confirmed the continuation, there was a clean Draw on Liquidity sitting overhead, and I took the long for just over 1R (about 1.2R thanks to a slightly better entry), banking another +$233 x3 accounts.

A lot of newer traders think the edge is finding more setups. My experience has honestly been the opposite. The biggest improvement in my trading came from getting really good at two models instead of being average at twenty.

The only things I'm consistently looking for are:

• ICT 2022 IRL → ERL (liquidity sweep → displacement → HTF FVG → continuation)
• 15-minute Opening Range Breakout
• Higher timeframe liquidity and Draw on Liquidity
• Weekly and daily bias before I even think about entries
• Fixed risk and fixed targets instead of trying to catch every point

I also spend almost as much time reviewing trades as I do taking them. Every session gets journaled, replayed, and compared against previous executions. That's honestly where most of the improvement has come from. Once you have enough data, patterns start jumping out that you never notice while you're in a live trade.

These trades were copy traded across 2 Alpha Zero funded accounts and my personal cash account, and assuming everything goes well, I'm now one solid day away from another payout. The goal next month is getting back to five funded accounts and scaling this exact process across all of them.

Curious what everyone else is relying on right now. Are you primarily trading the ICT 2022 model, ORBs, Silver Bullet, or something completely different?

I copy traded this across 2 Alpha Zero funded accounts and my personal cash account, and it came from the same setup I've been leaning on for months: the ICT 2022 Model (IRL → ERL). It was only a 1R trade, but that's intentional. I don't try to catch every point. I want the highest probability expansion, get paid, and move on.

The higher timeframe gave the story before New York even opened. We had already swept multiple pools of sell-side liquidity last week, so my expectation was expansion higher. Overnight, price flushed Asia SSL, tapped -1 SD, reclaimed aggressively, and created a clean 15-minute HTF Fair Value Gap. That displacement is what matters. Without displacement, I'm not interested.

The model is simple:

• Sweep External Range Liquidity (ERL).
• Wait for aggressive displacement.
• Let a 15/30m OR even 1-4HR HTF FVG (IRL) form.
• Enter on the retracement into the imbalance.
• Target the next Draw on Liquidity (DOL) or a fixed R target.

This trade tapped the FVG almost perfectly with virtually zero drawdown, then expanded straight through my 1R target. Price eventually continued past the DOL and pushed toward +2 SD, but I have no problem leaving that on the table. Consistently taking the first expansion has done far more for my equity curve than trying to predict the entire move.

I've also attached my journal stats because one winning trade means nothing without context.

Current numbers:

• Personal account: +$2.38k this month x 3
• 3 accounts copy traded on this setup
• 42.86% trade win rate
• 1.44 Profit Factor
• 1.92 average R multiple
• Maximum 2 trades per day (most days it's one or none)

One thing worth mentioning: the journal shows more trades than I actually day trade because some positions are long-term investment holdings, not intraday trades. My day trading is almost entirely focused on the 15-minute ORB and this ICT 2022 IRL → ERL model.

Curious how everyone else trades the 2022 model. Do you enter on the reclaim into the HTF FVG, or are you taking the liquidity sweep itself?

I spent almost two years looking for the "perfect setup."

My stats aren't anything that would impress Twitter gurus either.

75 trades.

48% win rate.

1.48 profit factor.

Most people would look at a 48% win rate and assume you're losing money. The reality is you don't need to win all the time if your risk management and expectancy are solid. That's the part most traders never calculate.

The first thing that jumped out at me was the day of the week.

I always thought every session was a fresh start, but I was wrong. Tuesday and Thursday consistently produced my best results. Fridays were where I gave the most back, because my strategy simply didn't perform as well in those conditions.

Instead of forcing five trading days every week, I started leaning into the days where my edge actually showed up.

That alone made a noticeable difference.

The next thing was direction.

I was treating longs and shorts like they deserved equal attention, but the numbers told a different story.

My long trades were winning just over 52% of the time and produced more than $9,000 in profit.

My shorts only won 33% of the time.

Nothing was technically "wrong" with the short setup, but it clearly wasn't producing at the same level. Now I'm much more selective with shorts and far more aggressive when the long side lines up with my higher timeframe bias.

Probably the biggest lesson came from average win versus average loss.

My average winner was around $288.

My average loser was around $179.

That's the only reason a sub-50% win rate still made money.

The second I started holding losers because I "knew" price would come back, I completely destroyed the expectancy of the system. My biggest losing trade was almost $1,000. One stubborn trade erased the work of multiple good sessions.

One thing I've noticed after reviewing hundreds of trades is that most traders know the setups they like, but they don't know the setups that actually pay them. Those are usually two completely different things.

Before changing your strategy again, pull your own stats.

Break them down by day of the week.

By session.

By long versus short.

By setup.

By time of day.

By R multiple.

I think most people would be surprised how obvious the answers become once the emotions are removed and the data starts doing the talking.

Absolutely beautiful A+ Forever Model short this morning that banked me $550 x 2 Alpha Zero accounts.

The setup actually started during Asia. ES swept the Asia buyside liquidity while NQ failed to do the same, creating a clean bearish SMT divergence right at a liquidity sweep. Whenever I see one index take liquidity and the other fail to confirm, that immediately gets my attention because it often signals that the move is running out of steam.

After the sweep, price displaced lower and left behind a clean 15-minute iFVG/FVG. There were definitely more aggressive entries available on the 1-minute and 5-minute charts, but I've learned the hard way that forcing early entries usually costs me money. I stayed patient and waited for the higher timeframe setup to come to me.

The retracement back into the 15-minute imbalance gave the entry, followed by a clean CISD confirming the shift in order flow. At that point, all the pieces of the model were lined up and the draw on liquidity was obvious.

The target was straightforward. Asia sellside liquidity was sitting below price and acting as the draw on liquidity. About 15 minutes after NY opened, price delivered perfectly into that objective.

I took my standard 1R and got out. Could I have held longer? Absolutely. NQ continued dropping for hundreds of points afterward. But part of my edge is understanding that I don't need the entire move. I just need my piece of it.

One of the biggest lessons I've learned over the last couple of years is that consistency comes from repeating the same process over and over again.

Anyone else trade SMT, CISD, or the Forever Model? Curious how you guys are identifying your higher probability entries.

This was one of those trades where the market basically laid out the entire roadmap before NY even opened.

The setup started during Asia. ES ran the Asia buyside liquidity while NQ failed to take the corresponding high. That immediately created a bearish SMT divergence after a liquidity sweep, which was the first thing that got my attention. Whenever one index is taking liquidity and the other isn't confirming, I'm paying attention because that's often where reversals begin.

After the sweep, we got aggressive displacement lower and left behind a clean 15-minute iFVG/FVG. There were entries available on the 1-minute and 5-minute charts, but I personally prefer letting the higher timeframe setup develop and coming back into the 15-minute imbalance. It keeps me out of a lot of unnecessary chop and usually gives me a cleaner invalidation level.

As price retraced back into the FVG, we got a CISD confirming the shift in order flow. At that point everything was lining up:

• Asia BSL sweep on ES
• Bearish SMT between ES and NQ
• 15-minute iFVG/FVG formed after displacement
• CISD confirming the move lower
• Asia SSL acting as the draw on liquidity

Once the retracement completed, it was simply a matter of letting the setup play out.

The interesting part is that my target wasn't some huge runner. I took my normal 1R and got out. Price ended up continuing much lower afterward and left hundreds of points on the table, but that's never bothered me. My goal is to consistently extract my piece from the market and move on.

Looking back at the chart, what stands out is how many concepts aligned at the same time. Most traders see a single FVG and immediately want to trade it. What made this setup high probability wasn't the FVG itself. It was the liquidity sweep, SMT, displacement, CISD, and clear draw on liquidity all lining up in the same direction.

That's usually where my best trades come from, and just for context, I only took this with 2 micros!

Curious how everyone else would have executed this. Would you have taken the 1-minute entry, the 5-minute entry, or waited for the 15-minute retracement?

Also, if anyone wants a full chart-by-chart breakdown of the trade and the thought process behind it, let me know in the comments and I'll put together a detailed video walkthrough.

When I started I did everything backwards. Bought the books, bought a course, blew accounts, rage-quit twice and came back. If I could hand my younger self a list, this would be it.

1) The classic trading books are mostly a waste of your time

I own the whole stack. The big technical analysis textbook, the bar-by-bar price action one, the volume books, all of it. Here's the truth nobody selling a course will say out loud. Those books make you feel productive while teaching you almost nothing you can use when price is actually moving and your money's on the line. You finish 400 pages and you still freeze in real time. They turned me into a guy who could explain every candlestick pattern and still couldn't hold a winner. The market doesn't care that you can name a three-bar reversal. Knowledge isn't skill, and trading is a skill. You build it through reps and review, not reading.

2) The books that actually helped were about my own head

The ones that changed things weren't really trading books. Best Loser Wins by Tom Hougaard, The Psychology of Money, The Compound Effect. They hit because the problem was never my charts, it was me. Fear of taking the loss, needing to be right, the revenge trade after a red day, boredom trades when nothing's there. That's what blows accounts, not a bad indicator. The only technical ones I'd actually defend are Bellafiore's books because they're about building one repeatable setup and grinding it, which is the whole game.

3) A good charting platform is non-negotiable, get it day one

You don't need fourteen subscriptions and a paid Discord. You need clean charts, the ability to mark your levels, alerts so you're not chained to the screen, and a replay feature so you can backtest your setup over and over without risking a dollar. That replay function alone is worth more than every book in point one combined. I learned my entire model by replaying the same hour of the day hundreds of times until I could read it cold. Free tier gets you going. Don't overcomplicate the tool stack early.

4) A journaling habit is what separates the pros from the gamblers

This is where most people quit because it's the boring part. If you're not tracking your trades you're guessing, full stop. Whether you use a dedicated tool or a spreadsheet, the point is the same: it forces you to see the truth. When I finally broke my numbers down I found two days a week made me almost all my money and the rest I was just donating. I found my longs printed and my shorts bled. Had no idea until the data slapped me in the face. You can't fix what you don't measure. It just holds up a mirror and shows you who you actually are as a trader, which is uncomfortable and exactly why it works.

5) Prop firms are a smart way to start, if you respect them

Here's the math that made it click. You can spend years saving enough to trade a real account big enough to matter, risking your own money the whole way and probably blowing it while you learn. Or you pay a small evaluation fee, prove you can follow rules, and trade real size without your own capital on the line. For most people starting out that's a no-brainer. The catch is people treat the eval like a lottery ticket instead of a job interview. It's not a get-rich button, it's cheap access to capital once you already have an edge. There are solid firms and there are shady ones, so do your homework, check payout proof and Trustpilot, and don't fund anything you haven't researched. Get your psychology right, build one setup, journal it, then go prove it. That order matters more than anything.

Want to get funded and start copy trading your own accounts?

🔹 Alpha Capital Group → CLICK HERE

🔹 Alpha Futures → CLICK HERE

When I started I did everything backwards. Bought the books, bought a course, blew accounts, rage-quit twice and came back. If I could hand my younger self a list, this would be it.

1) The classic trading books are mostly a waste of your time

I own the whole stack. The big technical analysis textbook, the bar-by-bar price action one, the volume books, all of it. Here's the truth nobody selling a course will say out loud. Those books make you feel productive while teaching you almost nothing you can use when price is actually moving and your money's on the line. You finish 400 pages and you still freeze in real time. They turned me into a guy who could explain every candlestick pattern and still couldn't hold a winner. The market doesn't care that you can name a three-bar reversal. Knowledge isn't skill, and trading is a skill. You build it through reps and review, not reading.

2) The books that actually helped were about my own head

The ones that changed things weren't really trading books. Best Loser Wins by Tom Hougaard, The Psychology of Money, The Compound Effect. They hit because the problem was never my charts, it was me. Fear of taking the loss, needing to be right, the revenge trade after a red day, boredom trades when nothing's there. That's what blows accounts, not a bad indicator. The only technical ones I'd actually defend are Bellafiore's books because they're about building one repeatable setup and grinding it, which is the whole game.

3) A good charting platform is non-negotiable, get it day one

You don't need fourteen subscriptions and a paid Discord. You need clean charts, the ability to mark your levels, alerts so you're not chained to the screen, and a replay feature so you can backtest your setup over and over without risking a dollar. That replay function alone is worth more than every book in point one combined. I learned my entire model by replaying the same hour of the day hundreds of times until I could read it cold. Free tier gets you going. Don't overcomplicate the tool stack early.

4) A journaling habit is what separates the pros from the gamblers

This is where most people quit because it's the boring part. If you're not tracking your trades you're guessing, full stop. Whether you use a dedicated tool or a spreadsheet, the point is the same: it forces you to see the truth. When I finally broke my numbers down I found two days a week made me almost all my money and the rest I was just donating. I found my longs printed and my shorts bled. Had no idea until the data slapped me in the face. You can't fix what you don't measure. It just holds up a mirror and shows you who you actually are as a trader, which is uncomfortable and exactly why it works.

5) Prop firms are a smart way to start, if you respect them

Here's the math that made it click. You can spend years saving enough to trade a real account big enough to matter, risking your own money the whole way and probably blowing it while you learn. Or you pay a small evaluation fee, prove you can follow rules, and trade real size without your own capital on the line. For most people starting out that's a no-brainer. The catch is people treat the eval like a lottery ticket instead of a job interview. It's not a get-rich button, it's cheap access to capital once you already have an edge. There are solid firms and there are shady ones, so do your homework, check payout proof and Trustpilot, and don't fund anything you haven't researched. Get your psychology right, build one setup, journal it, then go prove it. That order matters more than anything.

Brody just collected a $3,000 performance fee from Alpha Futures. Processed and paid out as of yesterday.

The thing people miss about payouts like this is they're boring to earn. There's no secret setup behind it. Brody got here by showing up, taking the trades that fit his plan, and walking away on the days where nothing lined up. That last part is what trips up most people. Sitting on your hands feels like you're doing nothing, but protecting your account on a dead day is exactly what keeps you in the game long enough to collect a check like this.

Go count the trades in your log that you took out of boredom versus the ones that were actual setups. That ratio tells you everything about why your payout hasn't come yet.

I started prop firm trading with less than $500 in evaluation fees. As of today I've been paid $95,336 in total payouts. Net after all evaluation costs and resets: $86,697. That's a 1,003% return on investment. I'm about 5 weeks away from crossing $100K in total payouts at my current pace, and I want to break down exactly how I got here because none of this is complicated.

I trade two setups. That's it (well technically 3, but that one rarely ever forms). The 15-Minute ORB and ERL → IRL. One catches the opening momentum, the other catches the weekly swing. Between them they cover basically every condition NQ/ES (futures) gives me. I don't switch strategies when one has a rough week. I don't add indicators when I'm in a drawdown. I've been running the same two frameworks for over a year and the equity curve speaks for itself.

Here's what six years of trading taught me that no course or YouTube video ever will. The market doesn't care about your analysis. It doesn't care how many confluences you stacked or how many hours you spent on your game plan. It either moves in your direction or it doesn't, and your only job is to make sure you survive the times it doesn't so you're still around for the times it does. That means small size, hard stops, and the ability to take a loss without it turning into three more. Every blown account in my career came from the same place, I was right about the direction but wrong about the timing, and instead of taking the loss I doubled down and also one of my biggest downfalls was trying to catch a falling knife.

The other thing nobody tells you is that profitable trading is boring. My best months are the ones where I take 1-2 trades a day, hold them for a few hours, and close the platform. My worst months are when I'm staring at charts all day looking for setups that aren't there because I want the dopamine of placing a trade. The less time I spend at my screen the better my results are and that's not a coincidence. When you're glued to the charts your brain starts manufacturing reasons to enter. You see patterns that aren't there. You talk yourself into B and C setups because you're bored. The traders making real money from this are the ones who do their prep in 10 minutes, set their orders, and go live their life.

If you want the full breakdown of both setups with chart examples, entry rules, stop placement, and risk management, I've posted detailed walkthroughs of the 15-min ORB and the ERL → IRL framework on here before and I'm happy to do updated versions. Drop a comment if that's useful and I'll put them together. Six years of trading distilled into two setups that I run every single day across 5 funded accounts and now I used those to fund my own live cash account. The edge is in the patience.