Just requested withdrawal, I got many payouts from prop firms, but this one is somehow different - because it’s not from the prop firm at all. It’s from the investor account I am building. Feels different.
Even though the amount itself isn’t significant, I take this as a pretty big step forward and I’m genuinely excited about what might happen next. It’s nowhere near the biggest withdrawal I’ve ever made from trading, and if I only looked at the number, there wouldn’t really be much to write about.
For years, prop firms were a huge part of my trading journey. They gave me access to capital I didn’t have myself, allowed me to scale much faster than I otherwise could have, and eventually I reached the point where I was managing hundreds of thousands in funded capital. I’m grateful for that because without prop firms, my journey probably would’ve looked very different.
But exactly here comes the difference.
You can have a $100k, $200k or even much larger funded account displayed on your dashboard, but it will be always demo funds. There are rules you have to follow.
There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that. I made money from prop firms, learned a lot through them and I still think they can be an incredible tool for traders who don’t have much capital.
I just feel that I need to try something different.
Over the last few years, I’ve started caring much more about building something that exists outside of that world. I wanted a real track recordthat I could point to over time, something based on my actual performance rather than how many challenges I could pass or how much “funded capital” I could collect.
And eventually, I want my trading to be backed by people who trust me with their own money.
Every real trader I have listened to, they have one thing in common - they have track record verified on 3rd party company. I do not mean verified with some no name company who just tries to build the status for the trader, I mean like real institutional verification that the trades you took were executed in real environment. That’s whtat I am focusing on now.
It’s real trust. Something what tells if you are really good trader or not. You can’t argue with the person if he shows that track record.
That’s probably why requesting this withdrawal felt more significant than some much larger payouts I’ve received in the past. Financially, it is not something huge, but in terms of where I want my trading career to go over the next few years, it feels like the first small piece of something I’ve wanted to build for a long time.
What could demotivate you on this approach is definitely the slow scaling. I am not the guy who would make 1,000% in one year, but I do pretty stable and consistent gains.
When I was younger in trading, the numbers were incredibly exciting to me. Getting another $100k funded account felt like progress because the number on the dashboard became bigger, and naturally I wanted to keep pushing that number as high as possible. I was never the “flip the account” trader, but I also liked huge RR trades and was validating my skill based on that.
I eventually the point on my journey when I got humbled pretty quickly and I am now happy for that, even if it was tough times. Was more humbled in the expectations than to not be greedy. As it is often said, we often remember the bad times and we are looking at it with different scope than we did before. At the present moment it looks like exciting story. The story you want to tell. But when you lived throught that, it hurt as hell.
But it gave me a lot.
I got into the slow game. I mean very slow game. I’d rather build something for years that has a real foundation underneath it: a track record that gets longer every month, capital that grows because somebody trusts the results behind it, and eventually a situation where I don’t have to keep proving myself by passing another challenge.
One withdrawal doesn’t prove anything and I’m definitely not writing this as some kind of victory lap. There will be drawdowns, bad months and probably plenty of moments where this whole thing progresses much slower than I’d like it to.
But I think it’s important to notice the small moments when you’re moving in the direction you actually want to go.
For me, this is one of them.
Let’s see where it goes.
Bless you all.
- Luke
Congratulations and hoping you receive more!
congratulations Luke