How to pass a challenge

Before your first trade, open the account's Rules tab and write down:

• the profit target for each step;
• the max loss, and whether it's static, trailing at the end of the day, or trailing live;
• the daily limit, and whether reaching it ends the account or pauses it until 00:00 UTC;
• the minimum trading days, and whether only profitable days count;
• the time limit, if any;
• any best-day (consistency) rule.

The type of max loss and the daily limit decide how much room you really have. If anything is unclear, How a challenge works and the rulebook explain each rule.

Your max loss is your real budget. Not the account size, and not the target. On a $10,000 account with an 8% max loss, you have $800 to work with for the whole step.

Leverage tells you the most you can open. It isn't a guide to how much you should.

Decide what one losing trade costs, as a share of the account. A common choice on a challenge is 0.25% to 1%. At 0.5% of $10,000, a loss costs $50, and it takes 16 losing trades in a row to reach an $800 max loss.

Then work out each trade's size from its stop:

Gold at $4,000, with a stop $8 away: 1 lot is 100 oz, so the stop costs $800 a lot. $50 ÷ $800 is 0.0625, so you'd trade 0.06 lot, which risks $48. The terminal can do this for you: size the trade in Risk $ or Risk %, set your stop, and the ticket works out the size. Leave a little room for the spread and, on Raw, the commission. See Risk per trade.

Pick a loss at which you stop for the day, well before the daily limit. Half the limit is a good start. Or count trades: stop after three losses in a row.

Also check that your worst day fits. If you take up to four trades a day at 0.5% each, your worst day is 2%, under a 4% limit even if one stop fills worse than planned. See Daily loss limits explained.

A trading day is a UTC day (00:00 to 00:00) with at least one trade filled. If your challenge counts only profitable days, a day counts when its closed profit reaches the set %.

The count starts again with each step. With 3 minimum days and two steps, you need at least 6 trading days in all. See Trading days.

On Runtiler, a step passes when a trade closes and leaves nothing open, with the balance at or above the target and every other condition met. Open profit never passes a step.

• If you're over the target with a trade still open, close it to pass.
• If you reach the target before you have your trading days, you can stop there. On a later day, open and close a small trade: if your balance stays over the target, the close that completes your days passes the step. If only profitable days count, that day needs its set profit too.
• When a step passes, the account starts again at its full size, with fresh limits, and any pending orders are cancelled.

Without a time limit, there's no hurry at all: an extra week costs nothing. With one, work out the pace you need on day one. It's almost always calmer than it feels.

The hardest moments are just before a target, and right after a pass. Near the target, there's a pull to take one big trade to finish. After a pass, there's a pull to trade bigger in the next step. Keep the same size in both.

The challenge: $10,000, step 1 target 8% ($800), step 2 target 5% ($500), a static 8% max loss (floor $9,200), a 4% daily limit ($400) that ends the account, 3 minimum trading days per step, no time limit.

The numbers

Step 1: $800

At $100 a win and $50 a loss, 14 wins and 12 losses make $800 ($1,400 − $600). That's about 26 trades. At two or three a day, it's roughly two to three weeks, well over the 3 minimum days.

A bad stretch of 8 losses in a row costs $400. With your daily stop, it spreads over three days, and leaves you $400 above the floor to keep going.

If the challenge also had a 40% best-day rule, no day could be more than $320 of the $800 profit at the pass. A steady $50 risk keeps most days well under that.

The pass

Say your balance reaches $10,830 on your eleventh trading day, and you close your last trade with nothing open. The step passes. The account starts again at $10,000 for step 2, with a fresh floor at $9,200.

Step 2: $500

Same size, same daily stop. 9 wins and 8 losses make $500 ($900 − $400). It's a shorter step, but the room under you is the same $800 as before, so there's no reason to trade bigger.

Funded

When step 2 passes, the account is funded, at $10,000 again. Keep the same plan. With an 80% split, $500 of profit is a $400 reward. After each claim, the account goes back to $10,000 and you carry on. See How payouts work.

Many traders need more than one try. Look at what ended the account, or what stopped you reaching the target, and change that one thing. Common reasons accounts fail lists the usual ones, each with a fix.