Market notes, session journals, weekly reviews and everything in between — newest first.
"Is this prop firm legit?" hides two questions: will the firm pay a trader who follows its rules, and will it still exist when you get there. What normal looks like in a simulated-funding industry, which signs are real warnings, and eight checks to run before paying.
Twenty MNQ round turns a day is $760 a month at a retail broker and $400 to $490 on an evaluation, and both come out of the same drawdown. Where each cent goes, why NQ is cheaper per point than MNQ, what a lifetime plan has to save to pay for itself, and what data costs.
A journal that logs every reversal as "reversal" averages a 65% trade with a 40% one and calls the result a strategy. Five criteria that separate an A from a C at the same level, three ways to turn them into a grade, what to do with the grade at entry, and how many trades it takes to trust it.
Two ways a copier can close a follower, and only one of them survives a crash. Installing a copier add-on in NinjaTrader 8, picking the master and followers, what happens at entry, at a stop move and at exit, how to read the sync column, and why a 1:1 quantity rule is a feature.
Five copies of the same trade are one bet with five tickets, not five bets. What running several evaluations at once changes and what it doesn't: pass probability, drawdown per contract, the payout cap, the fee bill, and the one version of "multiple accounts" that diversifies anything.
CME never changes its clock, so US traders see nothing move. Everyone else does, twice a year, and for one week each fall and two or three each spring the US and European clocks are out of step. The NQ session table for that week, the spring version, and what to check in NinjaTrader.
A rule that won 62% of 400 replayed trades wins 51% of the first 40 live ones. Where the difference comes from, which sources hurt and which only add noise, and a way to haircut a backtest before it gets a single contract of real money.
The Fed hiked, NQ printed a lower low at 29,053 and closed the week back at the prior value area high. This week has no tier-1 release, so the 10-year yield, Wednesday's flash PMI and Thursday's Xi visit decide whether last week's failed breakdown gets resolved.
A screenshot shows where price went; a recording shows what you saw when you clicked. Setting up OBS Studio or Camtasia for a trading desk, the hotkey mistake that can place an order, what six hours of charts cost in disk space, and how to land on one trade in a long file.
The same MNQ contract, two very different deals. What a prop evaluation and a personal brokerage account cost, why the leverage looks identical until price gaps through a limit, the break-even between fees and your own drawdown, and the tax difference most traders learn about last.
Three in five NQ opening gaps close the same day, and the average hides almost everything. Fill rates by gap size, how fast fills happen, which contexts move the odds, what a fade costs on one micro, and why the previous close depends on your platform.
A plan you can't read in the minutes before the open doesn't get read. A copyable one-page template split into pre-session, live and ending blocks, two other shapes a plan can take and what each costs, and the arithmetic behind counting a no-trade day as a result.
A dark heatmap and a blinding one have the same cause: two cutoff values. Setting them for NQ, filtering volume dots so absorption is readable, which columns earn their width, loading your levels as notes with alerts, and the panels and add-ons worth switching off.
Most prop firm bans trace back to one fact: the fills are simulated. The practices Lucid, Topstep and Apex prohibit, grouped by the reason behind each, where their news rules part ways, and why averaging down is allowed while the way it usually ends is not.
A trade prints at the ask when the buyer was in a hurry and at the bid when the seller was. Delta, footprint imbalances and absorption are three ways of counting that, and all three are silent about the side that decides. What the numbers mean on NQ, one footprint bar read cell by cell, four lies.
Every closed trade leaves three numbers behind; the account keeps one. Maximum adverse and favorable excursion, read on a 40-trade sample: which side of each histogram says something about the stop and the target, the cost of moving either, how to collect the numbers, and four ways they mislead.
Draw PDH on the 15-minute chart and it isn't on the range chart. One setting fixes that, one window fixes every line at once, one dialog hangs a sound on the level. What Attach to does, which four tools mark levels, how to build an alert that fires more than once, and why nothing fires at night.
Every breach ends on the same screen: a reset button and a price. The decision has two parts and traders usually get the order wrong. First the arithmetic, which ignores how close you were; then the diagnosis, which decides whether you should be buying anything today at all.
The $50 point makes ES look like the bigger contract; the daily range makes NQ the bigger bet. How the two E-minis compare once points become dollars, why a 0.9 correlation means holding both is one position, where their intraday behavior differs, and the three answers to "which one".
A broker statement records fills. A journal records decisions, and decisions are the only thing you can change. The eleven fields worth logging on every trade and every no-trade day, the numbers that mislead when they become the headline, and the case for a screenshot at entry over a row of prices.
One is a browser tab that charts everything and executes through a broker panel; the other is a Windows program that executes everything and charts what you feed it. Where each wins on bars, orders, replay, add-ons and data, what the monthly bill is, and why many NQ traders run both.
Every futures prop firm sells the same thing three ways: pass a test first, pay more and skip the test, or earn a live account. The cost of each route, the rules attached to it, the pass rate at which paying to skip the evaluation stops being expensive, and who tends to pick which.
The first hour of RTH draws a box that the rest of the day trades against. What the opening range and the initial balance measure, why the width of the box matters more than its direction, what 5,500 sessions of ES and NQ data say about breakouts, and the two ways traders use the levels.
Expectancy says whether a method makes money per trade. Risk of ruin says whether you survive long enough to collect. Both formulas, one grid of win rate against payoff, and the size at which an edge stops mattering.
Chart Trader, SuperDOM or hot keys: which one for which order, how to set each up, and the five ways an order goes to the wrong price, the wrong window or the wrong account.
Passing the evaluation opens the account; four more layers decide what leaves it. Qualifying days, buffers, splits and per-request caps, and why the same $3,000 of profit on a 50K account pays $900 at one firm and $1,350 at another.
Four weeks in a range under 900 points wide, moving averages stacked, and a Fed hike about 90% priced for Wednesday. Where last week's map held, the levels I've marked on December, and how the European session lines up around FOMC and Friday's expiration.
Three releases decide most of the big data days on NQ, a dozen more move it when the number surprises, and the rest fill calendars without moving the contract. The full tier list with ET and CEST times, the NQ-specific events macro calendars miss, and the Q4 2026 dates.
One print of 50 contracts is 50 volume and one tick. Why that distinction matters in futures, why NQ volume is cleaner than any stock's, what open interest adds, and four situations (roll week, time of day, news, data feeds) where the histogram lies.
After the first payout the question changes from "can I pass" to "what is this for". Three paths traders take from a funded account: stay funded, stack accounts, move to personal capital, each with the cost the marketing page leaves out.
