r/PropFirms

Every trader has that one moment.

The one that completely changed the way they trade.

Maybe it was blowing an Evaluation.

Maybe it was revenge trading.

Maybe it was risking way too much on a single trade.

Or maybe it was realizing that discipline matters more than strategy.

I'll go first.

>Risk management isn't exciting. Neither is blowing an account. I'd rather be bored than start over.

Ab aapki baari. ☕

👇 What's the biggest trading lesson you've learned the hard way?

It doesn't have to be related to Tradeify.

Your experience might save another trader from making the same mistake.

wanted to document my experience with the firm, so anyone can go over it and draw their own conclusions.

Over about four months, I passed The5ers' two-phase High Stakes evaluation and traded the funded account up to a $3,000 payout. I requested that payout on June 4th. Roughly two weeks later, it was denied and my account was terminated. The reason they gave me was that during the risk interview, I hadn't disclosed my earlier use of an Expert Advisor, an open-source position-sizing calculator.

It's worth being clear about what that tool actually is. The5ers' own support confirms that on a High Stakes account, a position-sizing tool that sets your lot size and lets you drag visible stop loss and take profit levels is permitted, as long as it doesn't copy trades, or run other restricted automation. Its not prohibited software.

As for the interview itself, I was asked how I execute my trades, and I answered honestly that I trade from my phone, which is how I'd been trading throughout the funded account. I wasn't asked about the methods I'd used on earlier evaluation attempts, and I didn't think to mention a tool that I had stopped using from months earlier, because it didn't seem material to how I was trading at the time. The firm treated that as a failure to disclose. One can reasonably argue I should have volunteered more. But the tool was permitted under their own rules so what this really comes down to is a disclosure judgment about a permitted category of tool. The response to it was anything but proportionate, and that's the part I find hardest to accept.

The way it was handled only made things worse. I requested the payout on June 4th and my risk interview was scheduled for 2 weeks after, a day after which the termination notice arrived. Every request I made for the specific evidence behind the decision went unanswered, the risk team took days to reply and said little when they did. A clearer explanation didn't come until 19 days after my payout request. After a lot of back and forth with the risk team I got an opportunity to get on a call again, the only question they asked was whether I'd used an EA which I answered directly, and I even showed them where the tool came from because I didn't have it setup on any of my devices. No other discrepancies were brought up during the call.

To make matters worse, now that the account is closed, I can't review my own execution data at all. Only their risk team can see the logs the decision rests on. So I've been left in the position of being told my trading history contradicts what I said, while having no access to the very data they're citing, and no reliable way to reach the people who hold it.

When I add it all up, this is what it came to: a terminated funded account, a denied payout I had earned, no refund of my evaluation fees and, above all, 5 months of wasted time.

Does anyone have any experience with this prop firm ?

I have a qualified account now. KYC everything is done.

As long as I follow the rules and keep those 2 minute trades. Payouts wouldn’t be a problem right ?

I’m based in India. If it helps please guide me , if there are any quirky rules at play to deny payout

Hello, I need honest advice, not sugarcoating.

I've been prop trading futures (mainly NQ/ES) on Lucid for a while now. I do have a defined strategy, I understand market structure, and I've actually hit some payouts — so I know the edge is there.

But I've blown 68 accounts. That number hurts to type.

Here's what keeps killing me:

1. Revenge trading** – I take a loss, I know I should stop, and I immediately re-enter trying to "get it back." Every. Single. Time.

2. Hyperconfidence** – After a good run I feel untouchable. I size up, I skip confirmations, I treat the market like it owes me something.

3. The payout trap** – This is the big one. I lose accounts most often when I'm *right on the edge of a payout*. I get tight, I start protecting instead of executing, or I flip the other way and rush to lock it in. Either way, I sabotage myself.

For anyone who's been through this — how did you actually fix it? Not "just follow your rules" advice. Real stuff. Did you journal? Did you reduce size after every loss? Did you literally close the platform and walk away?

How do you trade the same way whether you're up 5% or one trade away from a payout?

Any advice appreciated.

If you want to know what flawless, emotionless trading looks like, you need to know about John Arnold. He pulled off one of the greatest, least-talked-about contrarian trades in financial history.

🌪️ The Setup: The Anti-Gambler
John Arnold wasn't a gambler addicted to the physiological rush of trading. After starting his career at Enron, he founded his own Houston-based hedge fund, Centaurus Energy, in 2002. From the very beginning, his discipline was absolute: his fund never returned less than 50% annually during its first seven years in existence. 
By the spring of 2006, Amaranth’s star trader, Brian Hunter, was aggressively buying up winter natural gas futures. Hunter was betting heavily that 2006 would mirror the previous years in terms of hurricane destruction, which would inevitably spike natural gas prices. 

📉 The $1.5 Billion Strike
Arnold looked at the exact same market and saw reality. The industry had fully recovered from the previous year's storms, and 2006 saw natural gas reserve storage holdings sitting more than 40% higher than the previous five years. The market was prepared, and the massive supply shock Amaranth was betting on simply wasn't going to happen. 
Instead of following the hype, Arnold decided to take the exact opposite positions on behalf of Centaurus Energy. While Hunter was buying, Arnold correctly predicted that the cost of gas would fall and went aggressively short. He was effectively betting against the biggest, loudest bull in the market. 
When the market finally realized there would be no severe supply shortage, natural gas prices plummeted. In September 2006, the axe fell: Amaranth was completely obliterated, announcing a $6 billion loss and its bankruptcy simultaneously. 
But on the exact opposite side of that massive trade, Arnold celebrated. 

🏆 The Quiet King
While the financial media focused on Amaranth's epic, reckless collapse, Arnold quietly banked the profits. His bet netted billions of dollars in profits for Centaurus. In 2006 alone, Arnold's personal earnings from his energy trading dominance were estimated at $1.5 billion to nearly £1 billion. 
By 2007, this single contrarian masterclass made Arnold the youngest billionaire in the United States. 

💡 The Lesson for Prop Traders
There is a reason John Arnold became a billionaire while the trader on the other side of his screen blew up his entire firm.
- He traded reality, not hope: While Amaranth was hoping for a hurricane, Arnold looked at the actual storage data and traded the fundamentals. 
- He removed emotion: Arnold credited his massive success to his ability to completely separate his emotions from his decision-making process. He knew he could always be wrong, so he refused to become blindly wedded to his theories. 
- He knew his opponent: Whenever a counterparty put up an opposite trade against his position, Arnold obsessed over what they were thinking and what they knew so he could make highly educated, confident decisions. 

The next time you are tempted to follow the herd, average down, or force a trade based on a "gut feeling," remember the $1.5 billion contrarian. The greatest trades aren't made by those who yell the loudest; they are made by those who quietly look at the data, manage their risk, and let the gamblers destroy themselves.

Lost two funded accounts the same stupid way: green on the day, then the trailing floor caught me on a pullback and I breached without realizing how close I was.

So I got obsessed with the actual mechanics — and they're different at every firm:

• Apex trails intraday on some account types, end-of-day on others
• Topstep trails in real time
• Tradeify locks your floor once you're up +$100
• TradeDay freezes it at your starting balance

The consistency rules are even messier, and that's what quietly kills payouts — one big day makes your best day too large a share of total profit and the payout locks.

I built myself a calculator that shows your real trailing-drawdown floor and whether your best day breaks the consistency rule, per firm. Free, no signup if it's useful to anyone: https://fundedguard-delta.vercel.app/calculator?ref=reddit-propfirms

What firm/account are you on? Happy to walk through how your specific drawdown works in the comments.

(I built this — risk-tracking tool, not financial advice, not affiliated with any firm.)

I've been trading with prop firms for a while and I always always scared af about loosing my account. I've been searching for a while and I finally found a solution. UpsideOnly.

Hear me out. It's no money required. The ai determines if you're profitable and places trades for you if it deems you profitable. And it's a 50/50 profit split. It's basically paper trading but you make 50% of your theoretical trades if you are profitable enough.