The Beginning: $100, Two Challenges, and Nothing to Prove

Let me be upfront from the start: I’m not a guru. I don’t have a course to sell you. I’m not going to promise you that you’ll make $10,000 next month. What I am going to do is document exactly what trading looks like for a regular person with a regular life, starting from basically nothing.

What I’m Working With

Right now I have three accounts in play, one is a personal account the other two are prop firm challenges:

Personal account — $100. Yes, one hundred dollars. That’s the starting point for the personal journey to $100k.
$20K 5ers Bootcamp Challenge — In the first phase of evaluation with a $5k account trading Forex pairs. Pass the bootcamp, get funded with $20k, and then trade for a cut of the profits.
$50K Upcomers Challenge — Also in evaluation. This is a newer firm that allows you to trade stocks and forex. Same goal - pass the challenge, get funded, and then trade for a payout from the profits.

The prop firm challenges are where I can actually generate real capital without needing to risk a ton of personal money upfront. Pass the challenge, get funded, trade with firm capital on their rules, take a cut of the profits.

Why Do This Publicly?

Accountability. Even if nobody reads this, writing it down is a good way to keep track of what I’m doing and hold myself accountable. But if people do read it, then there’s an extra layer of accountability. The other aspect is learning. While I’m not here to teach you how to trade, explaining my thought process and risk management reinforces it in my mind and might help someone else who stumbles upon this.

If I blow a challenge, you’ll read about it. If I break my rules, it goes in the post. If I have a week where nothing sets up and I sit on my hands the whole time — that gets documented too, because that’s actually what trading looks like sometimes.

The Rules I’m Trading By

I’ll write detailed posts about each strategy as I use them, but at a high level:

Defined risk per trade — I’m not winging position sizes.
No chasing — if I miss the entry, I miss the trade. Next setup.
Respect the drawdown — especially on the prop accounts. Getting greedy and blowing an evaluation is the most avoidable kind of loss.
Journal everything — wins, losses, thoughts, and mistakes. This blog is the journal.

What Success Looks Like

For the prop challenges: pass them. Simple. Get funded, collect payouts, reinvest into growing the personal account.

For the personal account: build from $50 toward $100,000 over time. Not in a month. Not in six months. However long it takes, with compounding, proper risk management, and patience.

The YouTube gurus want you to think this is quick. It’s not. But I don’t think it is impossible. I’m not going to give up.

Let’s get to work.