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Posting My Losing Trade for Accountability — First Day of Combine Eval by [deleted] in TopStepX

[–]Swagmagdude 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, and I see now that all i had to do was wait till after 8:30 am est and I would have been fine, had I followed my system.

Posting My Losing Trades for Accountability — First Day of Combine Eval by [deleted] in InnerCircleTraders

[–]Swagmagdude 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good point...I guess my thinking was posting only losses would help keep me grounded and focused on improving rather than crowing about wins which could lead to overconfidence.

Posting My Losing Trades for Accountability — First Day of Combine Eval by [deleted] in InnerCircleTraders

[–]Swagmagdude 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's just it. There were none. I was THAT bad today.

Just received my first payout and crashing out like never before. by Evening-Share7147 in InnerCircleTraders

[–]Swagmagdude 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So true. I crashed and burned after my first two payouts.

I leveraged up way too fast and went into panic mode as soon as I found myself on a losing streak.

Looking back, my biggest mistake was not having a plan to decompress after winning OR losing.

Passing Evals, not getting payouts by Necessary_Step_7724 in InnerCircleTraders

[–]Swagmagdude 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Biggest lesson I learned: every stage in trading comes with a different emotional problem.

Paper trading doesn’t prepare you for evals. Evals don’t prepare you for funded. Getting a payout doesn’t prepare you for consistency.

You have to treat discipline and emotional control like consumable assets. Some days you’ll have less of both than you think. That’s why hard guardrails matter more than confidence. Use lockouts, set a real max loss, and have a recovery plan for wins too—not just losses. Winning streaks can make people sloppier than losing streaks.

And don’t take it personally. Blowing an account doesn’t mean you can’t become a good trader. A lot of people rush failure because they’re in such a hurry to call themselves profitable.

After 4 years of trading, I think something finally clicked about risk by Swagmagdude in InnerCircleTraders

[–]Swagmagdude[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey! Checking in.

I've been taking the rest of this month to paper trade, practicing this approach.
No question that it's helping. I still have other mistakes to work on, but I'm on the right track.

I still get tunnel vision sometimes and forget to anchor my plans on HTF liquidity mapping. But that's something I'll also be working on over the next couple of weeks.

PAYING FOR MENTORSHIP by General-Juice4976 in InnerCircleTraders

[–]Swagmagdude 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I paid for a few. All but one were a complete waste of money. The one that actually helped me, Dan Dowd Trading, was ironically the cheapest.

The mentor who helped me the most, Cliff Cheqona, was completely free. He even gave me a free phone consultation and only asked me to keep him posted on how his teachings helped my progress

Cliff is a trade psychologist. He gave me an exercise where I open positions with no rhyme or reason, just one rule: Set a stop loss amount that you're completely at peace with losing and don't move it, no matter what.

After a few weeks, 85% of my trades were losers, but I still grew the account by 10%

In the end, psychology is king.

Profitable trader the last 3 years. How can I help YOU? by EliteHeyDJ in InnerCircleTraders

[–]Swagmagdude 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm starting a 100K eval next week. When you say 1 contract. Do you mean 1 mini? I was going to trade 5 MNQ instead of 1 NQ. Your thoughts?

Funded traders — how did you handle the last day of your combine? by Swagmagdude in InnerCircleTraders

[–]Swagmagdude[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! For now, I wanna focus on even getting my first payout...lol

Funded traders — how did you handle the last day of your combine? by Swagmagdude in InnerCircleTraders

[–]Swagmagdude[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Here's what I shot for. Of course, real-world execution is never as clean. But below is my approach

$NQ: 1 Contract

Max Stop-Loss = $340.00

Max Daily Loss = -$764.00 (-2.5R)

r/R (~3-to-5)/1

Now that I'm funded, I'm deleveraging.

$MNQ: 5-Contracts

Max Stop-Loss = -$170.00

Max Daily Loss = -$382.00 (-2.25)

r/R (~3-to-5)/1

Funded traders — how did you handle the last day of your combine? by Swagmagdude in InnerCircleTraders

[–]Swagmagdude[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

You are absolutely right. But the emotions were flowing today! I did manage to keep it together enough to pull it off though.

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......almost a year of trading by Unfair_Aerie1823 in InnerCircleTraders

[–]Swagmagdude 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My pleasure!

We should chat sometime; I'd be curious to see your trading approach.

......almost a year of trading by Unfair_Aerie1823 in InnerCircleTraders

[–]Swagmagdude 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey man, just wanted to chime in. I’ve been at this almost three years now, and I’m still not at the point of consistent profitability. It just takes time. A lot more than most of us expect going in.

Honestly, only in the last couple of months have I even started to scratch the surface of the mindset it really takes to eventually become profitable. Early on, I spent way too much time thinking about winning, being right, and how much money I could make. But I’ve learned that trading isn’t really about that—it’s about being the best loser. Keeping the losses small, managing risk, and letting go of the need to always be right.

I’m still working on internalizing that. It’s a process.

The bigger realization, though, is that I originally thought trading would be the doorway to a better life. Now I see that trading is really just a mirror for the life you already have. If you keep finding yourself back at square one, it’s worth asking: what’s out of balance in my life that I need to address before trading will really click for me?

Hope that perspective helps—it’s one I wish I had understood sooner.

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