**I spent $550,000 on prop firm evaluations and learned this — Transcript & Summary | SozAI**
Source: https://sozai.app/transcript/spent-550000-prop-firm-evaluations-lessons/

JJ Simon shares insights from spending $550K on prop firm evaluations, turning it into $1.9M payouts by optimizing trading strategy and mindset.

## Key Takeaways

- Prop firm trading can generate substantial real income when approached with the right mindset and strategy.
- Scaling requires managing emotions and focusing on expected value rather than individual trade outcomes.
- Maximizing monthly dollar returns can be more effective than maximizing ROI per trade once a certain bankroll size is reached.
- Diversifying across multiple prop firms and frequent evaluations helps sustain growth and manage risk.
- Tracking and understanding your own trading metrics is crucial for long-term success.

## What the video covers

- JJ Simon invested $550,000 in prop firm evaluations and earned $1,931,000 in payouts after profit splits.
- He compares prop firm trading to growing a live account from $550K to $1.9M, emphasizing real money despite the simulated environment.
- Started with only $5,000 and scaled up through consistent payouts and reinvestment.
- Achieved rapid growth with increasing monthly payouts, reaching over $100,000 per month consistently.
- Uses about 20 prop firms simultaneously, averaging six evaluations per firm per month.
- Shifted focus from maximizing ROI per trade to maximizing dollars earned per month by trading more aggressively.
- Maintains an expected payout average of about $4,000 per funded account, with a roughly 50% success rate per evaluation.
- Identifies three key phases in scaling: managing emotions, following a proven strategy, and optimizing expected value.
- Stresses the importance of tracking personal trading averages and expected values for sustainable growth.
- Encourages traders to scale based on measurable, repeatable decisions and to focus on monthly income rather than just returns.

## Chapters

1. 00:00 Introduction and Overview of $550K Investment and $1.9M Payouts
2. 02:03 Proof of Payouts and Monthly Earnings Breakdown
3. 04:26 Scaling Strategy and Shift from ROI to Monthly Dollar Optimization
4. 06:45 Expected Value and Payout Frequency Analysis
5. 08:49 Emotional Challenges and Early Trading Experiences
6. 10:53 Trading Strategy, Risk Management, and Firm Selection
7. 12:55 Measuring Performance and Scaling Decisions
8. 15:36 Summary and Final Advice on Scaling and Trading Mindset

Answers

## Questions about this video

Is prop firm trading just gambling?

No, JJ Simon explains that although prop firm trading occurs in a simulated environment, the money spent and earned is real. With the right mindset and strategy, it is a legitimate way to grow capital.

How much money did JJ Simon start with?

He started with only $5,000 and scaled his trading over time to generate consistent six-figure monthly payouts.

What is more important: ROI or monthly dollar earnings?

Once a trader has a bankroll above $5K to $10K, it is more effective to optimize for monthly dollar earnings rather than maximizing ROI per trade.

## Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

00:00

Speaker A

I spent $550,000 on profit valuations, but it resulted in $1,931,000 worth of profit payouts after the profit split. Now, the question that I get asked the most is, "Well, aren't you just gambling? What even is this?" Well, let me rephrase it in a different way.

00:13

Speaker A

If I had a $550,000 live account and I grew that live account into $1.9 million in just a year and a half, that would be incredible. I would be one of the best traders that there is. So, why is

00:22

Speaker A

when we look at that in a broad, from specific way, 550 of evals to 1.9 in payouts, it's looked at as gambling?

00:29

Speaker A

Well, that's because it's the sim environment. And if you're thinking like that, then you have the entirely wrong mindset. It is sim, but the money you're spending is real, and the money you're getting paid out is extremely real.

00:38

Speaker A

Here's just proof of stuff hitting my bank account in the last few weeks. Also, I did not start with 550K.

00:44

Speaker A

Everyone thinks I started with 550K. Absolutely not. I was literally a freshman in college. Actually, it was my second year in college. I started prop firm trading officially. I had dabbled with it before in high school. Only lost

00:55

Speaker A

money. But my first ever month actually doing it correctly was February of 2025. My first ever month, I started with $5,000. I was playing poker part-time, going to casinos, making money. I had made about $25,000 from poker. And to

01:11

Speaker A

have that money, I had worked a job at Kumon Math as a math tutor. And I was a welder part-time. Then going to college, I got into quantitative finance and I studied that. Got into poker. Anyways, started with 5K. First month, $17,000

01:24

Speaker A

worth of payouts. First month ever, not ever trading, first month ever trading the correct way on prop firms. December, January, I was broke. That was like $200 and then $17,000. But of course, it wasn't just a lucky month. The next

01:36

Speaker A

month, $40,000, $46,000. Then May, you can see over here, $83,000 in my fourth month ever trading. And then my fifth month, not ever trading, my fifth month trading the correct way, six-figure month. So, the scaling is incredible if

01:52

Speaker A

you can do it correctly. And then obviously just keep doing that. I do over $100,000 a month every single month since then in payouts. You can see there. Uh, this is last last year technically. Uh, but pretty good for last

02:03

Speaker A

year. Then, uh, here's this year. So there's August 2026. Lucid still paying, which is great. So still over six figures a month in payouts. Now let's watch this quick little video. Just show you proof of my payouts. Going to watch

02:14

Speaker A

it eventually. Here's Topstep 300K and then we'll go to Lucid. Here is 140K. Here's Tradeify with 180K. All these pages are refreshed, by the way. Funded Next. Here is 177,000. I also do use a few smaller firms. Here's

02:33

Speaker A

288K from E8. I'll go into my firm breakdown, the cost per firm in just a second. My funded futures, 87K. It was 92K. I'm not sure why they changed it.

02:44

Speaker A

Here's Alpha. I think it's 80K. Could be a bit less. Hola Prime, I believe, is $60,000 worth of payouts. Funded Seat is, I think, 46K. Yep. Plus the live accounts. So, yeah, basically 46K. Take Profit Trader probably 70K, 60K. And

03:04

Speaker A

then Apex, another 60K. So, there's just proof of all the payouts. Now, how many firms is that? Because 550K on evals, I know you're thinking that's a lot of money. Well, to be fair, I did start with 5,000 and I never invested more

03:16

Speaker A

than 5,000. Add five grand to my name. I turned that 5K into what I have now.

03:21

Speaker A

Anyways, 550K and we assume the average eval is about $250 because I'm trading 150K accounts mainly. I also did buy some much more expensive ones. I bought some cheaper ones, but on average, we'll just assume 250. That buys me 2,200

03:35

Speaker A

valuations. And this is over a 19-month period, recording this in September 2026. And I started trading the correct way in February of 2025, as you saw by the picture earlier. So that is about 116 eval per month over 19 months which

03:51

Speaker A

gives us 5.8. So basically six evals on a firm in a month assuming I used 20 firms over this time which is a pretty accurate estimate. Some firms are like you get in there you make a lot of money

04:03

Speaker A

and then you stop trading them because they send you live. That happened to probably 10 or 12 of the firms. I'm still mainly active on like 10 right now. Just the best 10 that generate me the most EV per hour of my actual

04:14

Speaker A

trading. So, six evals per month, that's not even that much, right? Like to spend that much. Six evals per month. Like, if you think about your own trading, only six evals in a firm. I'm just doing it at a much larger scale. So, I have to

04:26

Speaker A

spend more to make more. That's my whole goal. Plus, I've changed my optimization. When I first started, I really cared a lot about ROI. So, if I had 5 grand to my name, the most important thing for me was turn into as

04:38

Speaker A

much money as possible on any specific attempt. So, I wanted to go from 5 to 25K. But now I'm under a much different mindset of I want to maximize how much money per month I can make. There's a

04:49

Speaker A

huge difference in proper trading between doing a 5 to 25K run or doing a 5 to 15 to 45K run. Right? This is 3x from here to here and this is 3x from here to here. This is a 5x. Now this one

05:02

Speaker A

automatically might look a little bit better because it's a higher return. But what if you could do this run in the same time as this run with reinvesting your 15K? Right? You started with the same amount. This one you have more. So

05:15

Speaker A

what if you traded two times as fast but traded slightly worse entries, slightly more aggressive, slightly higher risk, things like that to where you're getting a less return because inherently you're trading a little bit worse than you could optimally, but you're making more

05:31

Speaker A

money per month. That is what I'm optimizing for right now. I'm at the point where my bankroll essentially is infinite because it's proper trading.

05:36

Speaker A

Like I can't spend more than 1.9 million. So ROI is no longer something that I even care about. If you have less than 5K, definitely go ahead optimize your ROI. Once you get past 5K, maybe 10K. It's a lot better to optimize

05:49

Speaker A

around dollars per month. Now, how many payouts is that? It is going to be about 483 payouts if we assume the average $4,000 payout per payout.

06:01

Speaker A

Yes, 'cause the average on the 150Ks is probably 4.5K after the split, but I take some larger ones because I go live accounts and I grow those to decently large balances. I also take smaller ones because I do trade some 50K accounts and

06:14

Speaker A

some 150K accounts get low balances. So, we'll just assume 4K is like my average payout. And you can see if I bought 2.2K 2K evals, then either I passed 500 and get one payout per or I passed probably

06:28

Speaker A

a bit less. But on average, assume one payout per account. Obviously, that's not going to guarantee that an account gets a payout. It's more like a 50% chance at two payouts and a 50% chance at zero payouts.

06:45

Speaker A

So, that's where we're getting the one payout per account on average. It's really important that you have averages of your own trading. So, you know, like if I'm going to get a funded account, I know my expected value is going to

06:55

Speaker A

generate me exactly a $1,000 payout on average. Now, to obtain this, here's what I learned. Three huge phases, three different decisions in my scaling process. First one, emotion. Many people, almost everybody at some point has struggled with emotions and trading.

07:10

Speaker A

I was chasing losses, forcing recovery, and I was so focused on one individual account where I was not performing optimally at all. I was so focused on the account instead of the actual setup, the rule set, the expected value

07:23

Speaker A

generation, all that sort of stuff. And it was a much larger problem when I first started trading. Now, I technically first found out about trading when I was 14, and I did it until I was 19. But by did it, I mean

07:33

Speaker A

off and on, randomly trying one Topstep eval once a year for $50 and losing it.

07:38

Speaker A

After that, I obviously went to college, studied quantitative finance, graduated when I was 19, and I think, yep, near the end of my 19th year, I...

07:53

Speaker A

February of last year. Since then, it's been obviously a lot more effective. Now, the reason why is I was thinking in terms of expected value. Now, what is expected value? How do you find it? All that sort of stuff. First, you need to

08:05

Speaker A

price your attempt. Pretty much that's just your eval fee. Next, count failures. So, what is your chance of passing? What is your chance of a payout? And most importantly, you have to think about it across a sample of

08:16

Speaker A

accounts. I'll show you an actual example from my account in just a minute where I talk about the actual like the importance of a sample size. And then it has to be repeatable, right? If you're if you can make 100K one month, great.

08:28

Speaker A

But if you can't make 100K the next month, then that's not so great. Well, I mean, it still be good that you made money, but you obviously want repeatable months. Um so in order to do repeatable things you have to understand account

08:38

Speaker A

states statuses basically. Um so if your account is at a specific state what is the value of the account and then if you hit the next goal what is the value of that new account? Uh one way I looked at

08:49

Speaker A

it that might be like a light bulb moment was if you have a normal 50k eval and you have to minus 2k draw down. You have the 3k profit target and say it cost 100 bucks. Now, if you pass it,

09:03

Speaker A

what is your funded account worth? Obviously, you should know that. We'll assume for the sake of this this example that it's worth $1,000.

09:12

Speaker A

So, if it's worth $1,000, then maybe we know and like how is it worth a,000? If you have 50 accounts and 50 accounts, 50 funded turns into $50,000 worth of payouts, which you can test for yourself. Just go back this. Go pretend

09:25

Speaker A

you have 50 funded accounts over the last year and see if you traded those accounts, you went within the rules, you took payouts, how many payouts would you get from 50 accounts? That's a pretty good sample size to know. All right, if

09:36

Speaker A

I get another one, if I get a real one, I'm going to expect $1,000 worth of payouts from it. Obviously, it could be more, could be less, but on average $1,000. So, if we pass the eval, we make

09:45

Speaker A

$1,000, right? Because that's how much our funded is worth. If we lose the eval, we lose $100, which is just the cost of the eval. You don't lose the 2K or anything. So, the way I started thinking about it was obviously this is

09:57

Speaker A

not possible. But what if I was to do minus 2,000 plus 3,000 on one trade? So, just one trade. I was going to risk the whole account and go for the whole profit target. Obviously, they have rules against all that stuff. But what

10:09

Speaker A

if I did that? What if I thought in this manner? How much am I actually risking?

10:12

Speaker A

$100. What is my actual upside? $1,000. So obviously this is a 1.5R trade. And then this here is basically 10x. So if I was to win more than one out of 10, then I'd expect to make money on this given

10:26

Speaker A

interaction. So that's the way I started thinking about the evals. That's how I started thinking about the funded accounts because the funded accounts are pretty similar. If your funded account is at like $54,000 of profit or not profit, $54,000 balance. So $4,000 worth

10:39

Speaker A

of profit and you're qualifying for a $2,000 payout pretty soon. Well, your expected value is probably going to be a lot higher than if your account was at even if your account was at a 54K but not close to a payout. This one would

10:52

Speaker A

have more expected value because it's closer to that payout. And by expected value, all I care about is payouts. I don't really care about account size or balance. Obviously, it is correlated how much you make on the account, how much

11:03

Speaker A

you get paid. But all I really care about is when payouts hit my bank. If I can't qualify for a payout, I don't really care. So, I thought about how does expected value change from eval to average funded to the funded profit to

11:15

Speaker A

after you take payouts because your account's not dead after you take a payout. And then I was also thinking if I lose this trade, how much am I actually losing for my bank? If I win, how much am I expected to gain in

11:25

Speaker A

expected value? Which is just this example here. So, that's how I made it really repeatable. It's definitely important to think that way specifically. Unfortunately, I did have pretty bad emotional trading when I first started. Obviously, this is a

11:38

Speaker A

$60,000 loss from one of my Apex funded accounts. Maybe you've seen this picture before, but I was trying to go for some record size payout for whatever reason.

11:46

Speaker A

I don't even know looking back at it. Can't remember. I was trying to go for the world's largest payouts. I even was ready for a payout. Like, I had 60 grand in profit that was ready for a payout.

11:55

Speaker A

Like, I could have just stalled and just taken payouts. But I wanted the world record payout. So I decided to risk the entire account over the series of multiple trades. Uh which did not end up well. Basically lots of break evens here

12:09

Speaker A

bas unfortunately. Uh so yeah 60k down drain in one day. That was when my net worth was probably 200k. So it was pretty large impact since this was technically payout money. So I think it was because the loss became personal.

12:22

Speaker A

I'm trying to look back at it now that I make this video trying to look back on it. See what exactly caused me to do that. I think it's what that I could not accept being wrong about the trades. So

12:30

Speaker A

I tried to force it, tried to end the day in profit because that's my goal right now. Like right now my goal on an account is to end the day in profit. Um now I know to optimize for that because

12:40

Speaker A

of the speed thing and like dollar per month optimization, but back then I just wanted to end the day winning or else I wouldn't feel satisfied. So protect your next decision. Protect your expected value if you've generated it. Basically

12:51

Speaker A

if you're ready for a payout, don't do that. Now that is just one huge expensive one, but there's also much smaller ones. first entering on NQ versus MNQ has probably lost me at least 100K uh for whatever reason. I don't

13:03

Speaker A

know. Sometimes I enter on the wrong one and like I'm trying to use max 15 or 20 MNQ and I enter with the absolute max 15 NQ and the trade just loses like 10 grand in a matter of few minutes on the

13:16

Speaker A

open or I enter with MNQ and I win. I'm like, oh shoot, I just won $50 instead of 500 and I get tilted and I would extra risk extra and then lose that. But obviously I do win some when I tilt, but

13:28

Speaker A

I'm just going to estimate 50 to 100K probably was lost by using the wrong instrument. Probably a very simple change that you could just never never do that. Second, chasing a loss. As mentioned previously, increasing your risk to recover is not optimal,

13:41

Speaker A

obviously. Then count fit. So don't force the same approach into all of your accounts. Each account is worth a different amount. straight up like unless your balance is the exact same and it's on the exact same firm with the

13:52

Speaker A

exact same payout rules your accounts are worth different amounts. So if a specific setup is best for one account that is obviously not going to fit fit the other one. And then lastly copy trading copying trades does not create

14:04

Speaker A

independent outcomes. Obviously that should make sense but there's no reason to increase variance. Now in the traditional sense increasing variance doesn't have anything to do with expected value right either you're going to win more you're going to lose more.

14:16

Speaker A

So instead of flipping a coin for 50 bucks, you're flipping a coin for $5,000. You didn't change your value.

14:21

Speaker A

It's still break even, like 50/50 chance to win. So you're not adding or removing expected value in a traditional sense by copy trading and increasing variance.

14:29

Speaker A

However, on a proper environment, it is actually it is decreasing your expected value when you decide to increase your variance. And the reason for this is it's not a huge change. All right? It's not huge at all. It just assumes that if

14:41

Speaker A

you win a bunch of accounts all at the same time, you're much more likely to get moved live, which is bad for your EV. Uh because EV is generated through getting new funded accounts because of the cost, not growing your funded

14:53

Speaker A

accounts in profit because you're risking payout money, if that makes sense. So your variance, increasing variance is decreasing EV because of concentrated risk. Essentially, you're getting more accounts to be in profit at one time, which makes you more likely to

15:08

Speaker A

be sent live and then never get payouts from those accounts. So, if possible, try not to copy trade. Also, copy trading. Usually, if you were to risk like 200 bucks on 10 accounts versus 2K on one account, usually this one's a lot

15:23

Speaker A

better. The reason why is speedwise. Now, same exact example, 3,000 before minus 2K on the Eval. If you do this, you win 200, you lose 200. How many days do you think it's going to take you to reach 3K? Right? Even with the draw down

15:34

Speaker A

trailing, even if the draw down doesn't trail, you still need to win 15 times more than you lose. So even if you won 15 days in a row, you would pass, but obviously that's going to take you probably a century to win 15 days in a

15:48

Speaker A

row. Well, it depends on how much you risk obviously, but maybe you're doing a 1:1 plus or minus 200 bucks. Just think about how long it's going to take you to get 15 wins more than losses. Like at

15:57

Speaker A

honestly, I feel like the the lowest probable amount would be 100 wins and 85 losses out of 50/50. Also, people have a very bad idea of risk-to-reward on live accounts as well. Like, I'll hear people saying they trade a one:1 with a 70% win

16:10

Speaker A

rate. And like automatically, I know they're not a trader and you should too. And if you want proof of that, just go to chat GPT, go to Claude, any AI model, and say, if I start with $5,000 and I

16:21

Speaker A

trade a one to one and I have a 70% win rate and I use the optimal sizing, how much am I going to have in a year? It's going to say some number like three billion. Okay? So, you'll know 70% win

16:31

Speaker A

rate. Okay, he's full of [ \_\_ ] 52% win rate. Okay, I'll probably pay attention to that. That is more realistic. So, just do your own research. Like, you can you can ask AI that exact thing and it

16:41

Speaker A

will tell you $5 billion, maybe maybe less. But obviously, you get the the idea of exponential growth. Um, but anyways, the whole point with these small risks, it's going to take forever.

16:50

Speaker A

So, people who copy trade with tiny risk take forever to pass. So, they make less money per month. Even if they're expected to make money, they're going to make a lot less than just taking higher risk on one account. Next, expected

17:00

Speaker A

value. Here's what I'm pricing. I'm not pricing the market. I do not really care about the price of the market too much.

17:06

Speaker A

Obviously, I do follow a basic trading strategy that allows me to execute across all of my accounts every single day, but the most important thing to price is Eve out to pay out. So, here's a little bit more of a written example

17:16

Speaker A

of what I talked about earlier with the actual risk at stake. Uh, so if you assume a given rule set of minus 4.5K tax loss, 9K profit target, then if you pass this account, maybe your fund is worth $1,000 of value. So, if you were

17:30

Speaker A

to risk the entire account, just all 4,500, well, you already know, okay, wow, I'm risking the whole account.

17:34

Speaker A

That's $250. If you risk half, okay, that's $125. Like, that should be pretty easy to calculate. And when I'm trading, I don't care what these numbers are.

17:43

Speaker A

Well, I guess I do for the optimization technique, but like with actual entering trades, if I set my stop loss to minus 4.5K, I don't really care. Like, my brain doesn't see minus 4.5K. It sees minus 250. And that's how yours should

17:56

Speaker A

operate, too. The expected value of taking this challenge is your chance of passing multiply by $1,000, which is how much your funded account is worth. If you think, well, obviously you test this value for yourself. But just assume your

18:07

Speaker A

fund is worth 1k because that's how much payout you get on average per funded. If your chance of passing is 25%, then you'd break even because 25% of the time you make a,000. So that's 250 in EV.

18:18

Speaker A

Just multiply them together and then you minus 250 for each attempt. So, this should be hopefully another way to think about eBouch payout process. The reason why it's hard for me to give a specific EV per account and all that sort of

18:30

Speaker A

stuff is um you can have multiple payouts per accounts, but literally just go test it for yourself. Now, here is an example before I get into my actual examples. 100 attempts. All right, that's a good sample size. I'd say at

18:41

Speaker A

least 50 plus actual accounts and then probably 100 to 200 trades is what I would prefer you to have for a sample size. And by accounts, I mean like if you're going to test your pass rate to over 10 evals, maybe pass three. That's

18:53

Speaker A

not accurate. Well, it is decently accurate, but I'd prefer at least 50 evals. And then for funded accounts, I'd also prefer at least 50 to see how many you're actually expected to pass. Just a larger sample is more accurate. So, we

19:04

Speaker A

assume 30% pass, 40% of a 4K payout. That means you pass 30. 12 reach the payouts of $4,000 gives you 48K in payouts. To attempt these 100 accounts, your eval fee was $250 each. and that is 25K. So you made $23,000. So it's

19:21

Speaker A

important to think about this as I'm not taking well I guess you are taking a 100red or more trades but you're not really trading the market for for all of these. You're in the mindset I'm trading my eval to funded reward. I'm trading

19:34

Speaker A

minus 25k that's my stop loss. I'm trading minus 25k on one trade and 48k is my profit target. That's the minds that I have. Plus each huge trade like markets are fractal. each huge trade is made up of a bunch of smaller movements

19:49

Speaker A

inside of that. And then this is made up of something smaller inside of that. So I'm assuming the trades that I'm taking inside of my evals which are inside of my expected value are actually this huge trade. So I have a small edge that I

20:02

Speaker A

apply to the market and then a huge edge that I apply to the prop firm to have positive chance of hitting this 48k if that makes sense. Now if only six of your accounts so if half of them if you

20:13

Speaker A

have a bad variance streak you lose money. So, it is still totally possible to lose money even when you're doing it right. Here's an example of how something like that happened to me. So, I just have here my payout history from

20:23

Speaker A

Lucid. Uh, you saw the video earlier. Now, August 19th, I was trading my max accounts and I got what is this? 26k payout or something. 26k payout in August. Or is that? Yeah, it's August.

20:34

Speaker A

Now, what did it take me to achieve said payout? Well, if we look over here, that payout was given on August August 20th.

20:41

Speaker A

So, the accounts at bought after August 20th do not matter. So, ignore these. These are the ones that I'm currently working on. Um, I actually had pretty good variance and I passed five out of these. So, I'm going to have a really

20:50

Speaker A

positive return on this round of spend. I refer to it in my head as a round of spending. Like, I'll drop 5K and I'll turn it into more than 5K. U, but for those guys from August, I bought 1 2 3 4

21:02

Speaker A

5 6 7 8 of them in August. So, I spent 8 time 510. So basically 4K and I received 26K.

21:14

Speaker A

Now before that, look at how much I had to spend. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 plus all of these in May. Plus all of these in May. And look, I didn't receive any payouts after April. I had a few rounds

21:29

Speaker A

where I got to fund its on max, but I got absolutely nothing from it. So I spent what is this? 12\* 4 probably like 5k. I spent another 5k here. So, I spent 10k and I got zero. Now, my first ever

21:41

Speaker A

time on Lucid, I spent what is that? 6K to get this plus all of this because I went live. I spent 6K and I got 120,000.

21:50

Speaker A

No 105K. So, you can have vastly different returns. I I've been running insanely hot on Lucid. So, I spent four, six, and 10. I spent 20 and I've gotten about 140 150 or this might be 105. I can't

22:06

Speaker A

remember. Uh, so that would be a little bit less. But anyways, on average I'm getting 3.5x, but on lucid I ran really well. I still spent 10k and got zero on one specific run of evals to maxes. So

22:16

Speaker A

know your sample size. Know it's totally possible to lose money on average. So obviously lots of numbers, lots of math, lots of money going in and out of my account every single week, day, month, that sort of stuff. So I had to build a

22:27

Speaker A

pretty strong routine because there were tons of decisions that I have to make. And every decision is either gaining me or losing a lot of expected value. since the numbers at this point obviously are getting pretty large like thousands of

22:37

Speaker A

dollars at a time. So I needed a very repeatable almost automated like decision. Obviously I personally didn't feel comfortable having most of my money in the hands of automation. So personally I just decided to do it manually. So how did I do that? Well

22:51

Speaker A

obviously if you've seen my channel you know about my risk management dashboard. Uh basically what that does is it takes in all of this data and then it prints out the statistically optimal decision for the accounts moving forward uh

23:04

Speaker A

versus the account state. So where is it at right now? That is basically EVEL funded what's its balance and what's its draw down? Which firm is it on and what is the name of the plan? Like is it a

23:15

Speaker A

flex, a direct, an instant funded, a growth, whatever like what is the plan? Then based on that, I would know what the payout rules are. I would also know what happens if it loses. And then if I win, then I would know how much I won.

23:31

Speaker A

Um, so pretty much the whole goal of that is to assume if your account is at its starting point and you take a trade and you have two outcomes, right? You win or you lose.

23:45

Speaker A

On this first outcome, there's probability of this happening. Probability of winning your trade. here.

23:50

Speaker A

Probability of losing your trade, maybe start at 50K. If you lose, now you're 49K. If you win, now you're at 51K.

23:59

Speaker A

And we'll assume it's a 50/50. If you're doing plus or minus 1K, it's a 1 to1 R trade. So, this would be 0.5. This would also be 0.5. So then in terms of your expected value, essentially, you would

24:11

Speaker A

have a 50% chance of your account reaching this status. And maybe your your status here is it's worth $300.

24:19

Speaker A

That's just a random number. 50% chance of hitting this status where maybe it's worth $1,000 and maybe it starts right off in the middle at $600 for whatever reason. Now, you can assume 50% chance of going up there, 50% chance

24:34

Speaker A

of going down here. So, you can sort of structure your trades in a way where maybe instead of going for 51K, I'd want to go for 52K. I would have a lower chance of hitting 52K. Maybe now it's

24:44

Speaker A

33%. And then this one over here would be 66%. So you have a 66% chance of hitting 300 of value. But maybe you have a 33% chance of hitting instead of that $2,000 worth of value. So if you

24:58

Speaker A

multiply 33% of 2,000, that gives you 600 66. And if you multiply 50% of a,000, that gives you 500. Then maybe down here on the bottom side, uh this first one gives you 150. as the the subtraction part because you're like

25:13

Speaker A

losing money or well not really this is just how much it's worth absolute value sort of thing. Um and then this one here would give you 200.

25:21

Speaker A

So this tradeoff is 350. This tradeoff is 466. So this trade seems more plus EV.

25:30

Speaker A

Obviously I literally just made every single one of those numbers up. So don't listen to that because I just made all those up. But you could begin to see how your state of an account changes your expected value. I just have my dashboard

25:42

Speaker A

do all this automatically so I don't have to do it for 25 different prop firms. Evals, funded accounts, live accounts evalu payouts, funds that have taken payouts, funds that are new, funds that are in draw down, live accounts, and the three

25:57

Speaker A

different plans per prop firm. I would prefer to have that coded and automated. Um, so like I manually trade, but the automation does the optimal sizing basically just by doing this for every single account state because as you're

26:10

Speaker A

in a different account state, like if you have 51k on an eval, it's not worth a,000. If you have 51k on a funded, maybe it's worth more like a,000.

26:17

Speaker A

Obviously, it's not a,000 at all. Um, but maybe it's more like a,000. That sort of concept. So yeah, that is the approach to finding EV. and to do about 130 150k a month in payouts. I'm usually spending 40k, sometimes more, sometimes

26:32

Speaker A

even 50k a month if possible, if poss like I want to spend more money. It's never bad to spend more money if you're making money, just a normal investment.

26:41

Speaker A

So, I try to go 40 to 140 is doable. 50 to 150 is doable. Um, it's not the same return on all sites for sure. Obviously, they have different rules. Um, but different optimizations on different sites, different return on different

26:54

Speaker A

sites because I structure my balances differently if I'm trying to avoid the live accounts, a bunch of stuff to consider, but 3x return is totally doable, understandable, easy. Uh, so you can make 100k a month spending 50k, but

27:07

Speaker A

don't think that it's weird to spend 50k. Think that, oh, I had a 300%. I had a 3x on my investment. That is the most amazing investment opportunity that I've ever seen in my entire life. Not. It's weird to spend 50K on prop firms because

27:19

Speaker A

I don't see anyone else doing it. Well, maybe it's hard to do. I don't see anyone else doing it. I don't see anyone else dropping 100 grand a month every single month and documenting it. It's just the approach that I take and it

27:30

Speaker A

seems to be working for me. Anyways, next the strategy was not the bottleneck. So, you could take a ton of different strategies. There's a ton of strategies that work. I just choose mine specifically because it gives me a ton

27:40

Speaker A

of entries all with a slight bias. So instead of taking very specific enter one trade a day, specific take-profit, specific stop-loss, maximizing that for the market, and then hoping it works on the prop firm, which it's not, all of my

27:53

Speaker A

take-profit and stop-loss sizes are fit to the proferm. Then I just enter on a bias. I assume I have a slight linear drift in the direction of my bias. So I'm taking a trade here, taking here, here, here, all that sort of stuff.

28:03

Speaker A

Trying to get in as many trades as possible with a slight bias. So that's just the basic strategy. Like it was not hard to to develop in any means. the expected value calculations. That took forever like literally two years and I

28:15

Speaker A

definitely would not have been able to solve that without my degree. Then so just like the most basic strategy that you can find because it works very well on a prop firm. Next the risk management. How does the trade fit into

28:25

Speaker A

the account? So like this here you have probabilities of winning, you have probabilities of losing. You have your new balance after winning and your new balance after losing. Then based on those balances you have to know the value of the account. So, if your

28:36

Speaker A

account's at a different balance, how much is it worth now in terms of expected value, which is basically like payout chance times size of payout. Uh, you have to know your downside. So, your actual cost to get there, and then your

28:46

Speaker A

path. So, step by step, how do we get to a payout? So, you can have good trading strategies, but you can still lose profit challenges just because you're not structured correctly. Now, how can you do this? Because I definitely

28:56

Speaker A

learned a lot. Hopefully, you learned a lot from this video, but how can you apply what I just told you? Well, first, start with a small, measurable process.

29:03

Speaker A

Remember, I started with $5,000. All right, February was my first month doing this correctly. I did do it before and I lost money just like 50 bucks once a year. Um, but anyways, I started with 5K. It's not a lot. Well, it is. I guess

29:16

Speaker A

it could be a lot depending on how much money you have. Um, it could be a lot, but I felt like it was fine because I had 25K that I made from poker and I was pretty confident with 5K just cuz I had

29:25

Speaker A

already modeled out the expected value and I knew if I followed it step by step, I was going to make money. You can start with 5K, you can start with 2K, you can start with 1K, you can start

29:33

Speaker A

with a 100 bucks. If you start with 100 though, your risk of ruin is like very high. So most important thing that you should do is risk of ruin 33% chance of passing your eval 33% chance of a

29:45

Speaker A

payout. Just assume that u multiply these two together, it's basically going to be 10%. So you have from eval to payouts, you have a 10% chance. So if you get an eval, you have a 90% chance of getting no payouts. If you can afford

29:59

Speaker A

one eval, you raise that to the power of one because you only bought one, you have a 90% chance of losing all $100. If you have $1,000, you have 0.9 to the power of 10 chance of losing all your

30:09

Speaker A

money with these two rates. If this is not a number that you like, ideally this number is less than 0.005, so half a percent, less than half a percent. If it's too much, if your percentage of ruin is too high, then you want these

30:23

Speaker A

rates to go up. You want to increase your pass rate and you want to increase your payout rate. How can you do that?

30:29

Speaker A

Well, probably take better setups, take less trades, more confident trades basically. And on payouts, go for smaller payouts because you have a higher higher probability of achieving a smaller balance. So, make your risk of ruin as small as possible. You could

30:44

Speaker A

start with any amount of money. I could have started with a 100 bucks and done the same thing. 90% chance I would have lost it all. It all meaning one eval.

30:51

Speaker A

Um, but anyways, 5K is really good because your risk of ruin is sub 0.005%.

30:56

Speaker A

And then you can do 5K to 17K your first month, 17K to 51K your second month, 51K to 151K your third month. Obviously, this was not mine personally. U I was not able to go that fast. It took me

31:08

Speaker A

until my fifth month to hit 125K in payout. So, it took me 5 months, but I've already done it all. So, now I can tell you exactly how to do it if you want to work with me. So, I could

31:18

Speaker A

probably I probably can't get you there in three months. Let's be honest. Not not that fast. Uh but this is just a not realistic but it's a very possible one if you were to perform at 100% capacity.

31:29

Speaker A

Um I think these might be two month cycles now based on how profits have changed. So it might take 6 months but I could most likely get you to six figures. Not to make any income claims on YouTube. This none of this is an

31:39

Speaker A

income claim. This is just a strategic possible strategic advice or something. But this is something very possible that you could do based on the 5K starting just 3.5x in 2 months. 3.5x in 2 months.

31:51

Speaker A

3.5x in 2 months. So 6 months you turn 5K into 150K and then quit the 9 to5 and then focus even more on growing that trying to stay at 100K a month in profit. Obviously this is reinvesting everything. So in this example we spent

32:05

Speaker A

5K on eval. So we spent a bunch on evals but we also got this much this much and this much in payouts. So that's about a 3x return 3.5x return. And we also only started with 5k which is great. So instead of

32:20

Speaker A

starting with 550K, we started with 5K, turned it into this, now that's the new bankroll, that sort of thing. Um, so you can generate plus EV, you can use any of these techniques on any account size, on any eval spend. It would just be a

32:33

Speaker A

slightly different optimization. So get your budget, get your firm's rules, define your stage, your expected value, know the costs. Another thing you can do is you could know which site do I have the highest payout chance on? Which site

32:45

Speaker A

do I have the highest pass rate on? Maybe there's a site where I'm trying to get a 20% chance at a 10K payout. Maybe there's another site where I'm trying to get a 50% chance at a 4K payout. Both of

32:57

Speaker A

these funded accounts generate me 2K in EV. So, both of these accounts may be the same amount of money, but this one is a much lower probability of losing.

33:05

Speaker A

So, if you have a lower budget, you would prefer to do one of these. Next, track every single attempt, every single rule you violate. Separate your tilt from variance. Do not tilt obviously.

33:15

Speaker A

And then check your eval fees, track your payouts. Then you want to scale once it starts working. So check your full sample. Ideally more than 50 evals and 50 fundeds or 200 trades. Check your results after cost. Find your biggest

33:28

Speaker A

weakness. So is it your eval rate, your funded rate? What are you not generating as much value as you should be? And then scale what you can manage. First payout is the hardest one to get, but it's going to need to be repeated obviously.

33:40

Speaker A

So looking back, what would I change first? Start with a more accurate total spending limit. I had 5k and as I would get payouts from that 5k I would just spend that whole thing if possible do like a 5k and then don't buy more just

33:52

Speaker A

do a 5k see what you can turn it into then you know all right if I spent five I'm getting 17k back over the course of my accounts lifetime I took all the payouts I lost all the accounts after

34:02

Speaker A

taking max payouts from all them and the balances got too small so I could do 5 to 17 so after you ask yourself actually after you do 5 to 17 what would you do next would you do another 5 to 17 or

34:13

Speaker A

would you do a 17 to 51 one. I guess technically it's up to you. I'd probably do the second one just to make more money. Next, choose your account before the risk. Obviously, do not just say, "I'm going to risk $500 a trade." Don't

34:24

Speaker A

do that. Uh, it needs to be correct for that firm, for that account or your account stage, and your payout conditions. As your expected value changes, different risk, obviously.

34:33

Speaker A

Lastly, review the entire sample. I almost scaled too soon. All right. I saw it worked with a 50K account. Like, I got my first payout. That was just to prove to myself that prop firms aren't a scam. I got the first payoff for like

34:46

Speaker A

two grand or one grand. And then I started with 150k accounts just because I was 100% sure it was going to work on average. So review everything of your first 5 to 17k run and then include pretty much everything and then see how

34:59

Speaker A

you can improve that. Now lastly, I do have a mentorship. The strategy you can see on my YouTube. The system exactly how to put your money and turn into more money hopefully is what I teach in my program. So, it's just an extremely

35:11

Speaker A

repeatable process. We talked about risk management, firm selection, I review your trades, all that sort of stuff. If you're interested, you'd like to work with me, then there is a link in the description. You can apply down below.

35:21

Speaker A

If not, all good. Last takeaway, don't treat each account like life or death. Treat it like just a calculated risk of $100, $250, and think about the expected value, your 50% chance of a $1,000 payout. So, you're generating inherent

35:36

Speaker A

expected value per attempt. And then off that, build decisions that you can explain, measure, and most importantly, repeat because you want to scale.

Topics: prop firm trading trading evaluations JJ Simon scaling trading trading mindset expected value trading funded accounts trading payouts quantitative finance trading strategy

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