It is clear that funded trading programs are an exciting system for any trader, especially new traders, with these programs, traders have the ability to prove their profitability and get a funded trading account with a capital that exceeds the amount that they can afford. 

But the excitement about these programs, can blurry the vision of traders. Exactly like a sexy girl or a handsome guy. Traders keep seeing the advantages and ignore the disadvantages. 

When you start a funded trading program, you need to study everything carefully and objectively and be honest with yourself.

So what are the first steps to follow when starting a funded trading program, and what are useful tips and tricks to succeed in your trading journey?

Set the strategy that you want to use

Test your strategy:

You shouldn’t leave it to chance, trading is not having luck, it’s actually having a winning strategy that makes profits in the long term. When you want to start a funded trading evaluation, you must already have a strategy that worked for you for at least 3 months, you must be completely honest with yourself about your profitability.

Your strategy should also have a good idea about all basic things like:

  • Number of trades per day
  • instruments you trade
  • indicators do you
  • Ratio
  • Stop loss and take profit limits…

If you don’t have enough money to test your strategy, You must at least test your strategy in a virtual account.

Risk management strategy:

Even though all funded trading programs force you to follow their own risk management strategy, which is not as bad as it looks, you must also follow your own risk management strategy. It is very important to set a Risk/Reward Ratio.

The risk management strategy can be already implied in your main strategy, if not, it is very important to set one. This should include:

  • Knowing when you can or you can’t make trades
  • Set a stop loss and a take profit for every trade depending on your daily objectives and in your capital.
  • Knowing the percentage of the capital you want to risk in every trade, most traders follow the one percent rule for this.
  • Diversify your trades in a way that you don’t put all your eggs in the same basket. 

Choose the right program for you

There are plenty of funded trading programs out there waiting for you, but their rules and risk management instructions are different from each other. This is why you need to choose the right funded program for you.

  • Check whether the program supports the instruments and the markets that you are trading, whether it is a Forex program like FTMO, City Traders Imperium or The5%ers, or if it is a Futures program like Earn2Trade, Leeloo Trading, Apex or Topstep Futures. Or also stocks.
  • Even if most programs support the most used instruments, you still need to check if the instruments you trade are available.
  • Check the max losses per day, per week, per account, and see if it’s suitable with your risk management strategy.
  • Take a look at the rules, a very deep look, you will find all information that you need in the FAQ section of every website.
  • Check the pricing of every program and see if they are affordable to you. Most offers prices start from $90⁓$150 You must also check the reset fees that will help you continue trading if you broke a rule. We made a table with discounts links and coupons to make it your first step cheaper for you:

To help you choose, we made some reviews for the most know funded trading programs:

Practice in the free trial

The best way to practice your trading with the rules and instructions of any funded trading program is to use their own free trials. Almost all funded trading programs have their own free trial where you can trade according to their rules.

It is very recommended to use the trial at least for a few days.it will help you get used to the funded trading program that you chose and practice your skills.

Every trader has the opportunity to use the free trial at least one time, that’s enough to test any strategy they have. In that time, You will have access to the funded trading program dashboard where you can follow account metrics, trading journals, statistical information, and much more.

Here are some platforms that provide free trials:

Futures ProgramsForex Programs
Earn2TradeFTMO
Leeloo TradingThe5%ers
Topstep FuturesCity Traders Imperium

Don’t rush to start the challenge and read the FAQ section

This is one of the most common mistakes that traders make when they start a funded trading account.

The idea to start trading in a funded trading program is very exciting and very unique for a lot of people, it comes with a lot of benefits for traders as well. New traders love the percentage of the earnings that they will get after being funded, they read a few lines about the rules and immediately get started with the evaluation.

Anyone who starts like this probably will fail the evaluation process.

We recommend anyone who will start any program to fully understand the rules and instructions given by the platform, like the scaling plan rule, the trailing drawdown rule, the daily and weekly losses limit, and all other rules. so you have to check the FAQ section of the program that you want to pass to get detailed information.

Try multiple times

This may seem bizarre as advice, but there is a reasonable reason why we said that. And we will explain it to you.

But before we do that, you must be sure that your strategy can make profits and you are not just a gambler. Check the first paragraph of this section for more details.

Explanation:

Let’s say that you choose the account size of $25.000 from Leeloo Trading, the usual price for this account is 150$, and the target profit is $1500.

  • You tried the first month and you failed = – $150
  • You tried the second month and you failed = – $150
  • You tried the third month and you failed = – $150
  • You tried the fourth month and you failed = – $150
  • You tried the fifth month and you failed = – $150
  • But finally, you succeeded in the sixth month. = – $150

That costed you until now : $150 * 6 = $900

  • And the seventh month you got a funded account and you made $1500 profits. Leeloo Trading will take $300 (20%), and you get $1200 (80%)

This means that even if you did lose the monthly subscription fees of 6 months, you still made a profit of $300:

  • $1200 – $900 = $300.

Conclusion

As you can see the funded trading journey is not that easy as most new visitors think, you must study your choices very carefully and be completely honest with yourself. Most traders fail to get a funded trading account because they didn’t follow the tips above. 

Most of these tips are for those who have financial problems and can’t afford to buy a challenge easily, but if you don’t have that problem and you want to risk your money, go ahead, we will never stop you, we know you are and you will always be stubborn LOL.