Beyond Passing — The Trading Business You're Trying to Build

I spent a couple of interesting days in London last week, working with traders who were thinking about their future in the markets, although from rather different starting points.

On Friday, I delivered our VTP Stage 4 Trader Performance Programme to six traders who are working on improving their performance and developing a more structured, multifaceted trading business. Then on Saturday, I was speaking at the London Prop Trading Expo, where my presentation was titled Beyond Passing: What Comes Next for You?

I'd like to thank Simon, the organiser, for inviting me to speak, and everyone who attended the Expo and came along to my presentation. I also appreciated those who took the time to come over for a chat during the day. It's always good to meet fellow traders, hear about their experiences and understand some of the challenges they're facing.

It was Simon who suggested the theme of my presentation. He wanted a few of us older, more experienced traders to share some of what we'd learned over the years and encourage people to think about life beyond passing a prop trading challenge. I thought that was a worthwhile conversation to have, particularly given some of the experiences I've had over more than twenty years in the markets.

Passing a Challenge Is Only Part of the Journey

The Expo was certainly busy, with plenty of energy and enthusiasm for trading. There were lots of stories about successful challenges, substantial payouts and the opportunities that prop trading can provide. Those opportunities are real, and prop firms have created routes into trading that weren't readily available when I started my own journey.

However, there's a distinction between demonstrating that you can pass a challenge and developing the skills, behaviours and financial resilience required to sustain a trading business over the longer term. Passing an evaluation means you've met a particular set of requirements over a defined period, which is an achievement worth recognising, but it doesn't automatically prepare you for everything that comes afterwards.

One of the questions I encouraged people to consider was where they actually wanted trading to take them. For some, the objective might be to develop an additional source of income, whilst others may want to build their own trading capital, become full-time independent traders or eventually move into a professional trading environment.

There's no single correct answer, and your ambitions may change as you develop. Prop funding is one possible route, but it's not the only one. Over time, you might combine funded trading with managing your own capital, longer-term investing or other trading-related activities, creating a business that isn't entirely dependent on one account, one firm or one source of income.

That's a rather different way of thinking about your trading than simply looking for the next challenge to pass.

Building Financial and Personal Resilience

One of the realities of trading is that income doesn't arrive neatly at the end of every month. You might have a very good period followed by several difficult weeks, and even when you're trading effectively, opportunities don't necessarily appear when you need them.

If your mortgage, household bills and everyday expenses depend on what you make from trading next week, that creates pressure which can influence how you operate. You might start looking for trades that aren't really there, increase your exposure, interfere with positions or take risks that wouldn't normally form part of your approach. I've seen this happen often enough over the years to know how easily financial pressure can become a trading performance problem.

This is why I encourage traders to think carefully about financial resilience, whether that's maintaining another source of income whilst developing their trading, building a strategic cash reserve or separating the money required for living expenses from the capital they're trying to grow. None of this is particularly glamorous, but it can make an enormous difference to the quality of your decision-making when the markets aren't providing the opportunities you'd hoped for.

During the presentation, I also described traders as EWOKs, which stands for Eat What yOu Kill. It's a slightly irreverent way of reminding ourselves that, as independent traders, we generally don't have the security of a regular salary or somebody else taking responsibility for our financial wellbeing. Trading profits are rarely linear, so we need to build our businesses and manage our finances with that reality in mind.

Of course, financial resilience is only part of the picture. Trading can be a remarkably solitary occupation, particularly when you're operating independently from home, and it's easy to become absorbed in the markets to the point where everything else gradually takes second place.

You can spend hours watching charts, managing positions and reviewing trades without much meaningful interaction with anyone else. Over time, your mood can become increasingly tied to your latest results, and you may find yourself withdrawing from other activities or allowing the performance of your trading account to determine how you feel about yourself.

I've always believed that the quality of our trading is influenced by the quality of the life we're leading outside the markets. Our physical health, relationships, interests and general wellbeing all affect how we think, make decisions and respond when things don't go according to plan. If we're serious about developing as traders, we need to pay attention to those areas rather than treating them as something separate from our trading performance.

Building the Right Support Around You

Another point I made during the presentation was that independent trading doesn't mean you have to manage everything yourself.

Running a trading business involves considerably more than analysing markets and executing trades. There are financial decisions, operational responsibilities, technology, record-keeping and the ongoing challenge of developing your own capabilities. Depending on your circumstances, you may benefit from an accountant, a business adviser, a trading mentor, a performance coach or simply having other traders around you who are prepared to challenge your thinking.

One of the benefits of working with experienced people is that they can often recognise something you've overlooked or help you approach a problem from a different perspective. They may also have encountered the same difficulties themselves, which can save you considerable time and frustration.

That doesn't mean handing over responsibility for your trading decisions. Quite the opposite. It's about making better use of the experience and expertise available to you whilst remaining responsible for how you operate.

From VTP Stage 4 to DECS 27

What struck me about those two days in London was how closely the conversations connected, despite the different audiences.

On Friday, the six traders attending VTP Stage 4 had already made the decision to invest time in examining their own performance. We were looking at their preparation, decision-making, execution, risk management and the personal behaviours that influence how effectively they trade. They weren't there simply to collect another strategy; they were trying to develop a more professional approach to their trading and the businesses they're building around it.

On Saturday, I was encouraging people at the Expo to start thinking about those same issues, perhaps at an earlier stage of their development. Once you've passed a challenge or received your first payout, it's worth considering how you're going to manage the opportunities, responsibilities and pressures that come with trying to make trading a sustainable part of your life.

These conversations also reflect much of the work I do through TradingBeliefs, where I help traders examine the relationship between their trading approach, their decision-making and their own behaviour.

For someone who recognises that their trading isn't working as they would like, Turnaround Your Trading (TYT) provides a focused opportunity to examine what's happening and begin making practical changes. We start with a detailed two-hour diagnostic session, followed by four individual one-hour sessions where we work on the main areas identified.

For more experienced traders who already have their own methodology and want to invest in their development over a longer period, I'm also introducing DECS 27 Trader Performance Mentorship. This is a twelve-month programme providing individual performance coaching, experienced mentoring and accountability throughout 2027, working with the trader's existing approach rather than trying to replace it with mine.

The two programmes serve different needs, but the underlying philosophy is much the same. Improving your trading performance isn't always about acquiring more market knowledge or finding another strategy. Often, it's about understanding how you operate, recognising where your behaviour and decision-making can improve, and then doing the work required to make those changes.

If you'd like to explore either approach, you can find more information here:

Turnaround Your Trading (TYT)https://www.tradingbeliefs.com/service-page/turnaround-your-trading-tyt

DECS 27 — Trader Performance Mentorshiphttps://veterans-trader-project.teachable.com/p/decs-27-trader-performance-mentorship

Alternatively, you can arrange a complimentary 15-minute Trader Performance Conversation if you'd prefer to discuss your circumstances and establish whether working together would be useful.

Book a Trader Performance Conversation: https://calendly.com/tradingbeliefs/15min

A Final Thought

I enjoyed both days in London, and once again I'd like to thank everyone who attended the Expo, listened to my presentation or stopped for a conversation. It's encouraging to see so many people enthusiastic about trading and the opportunities it can provide, particularly when I think about how much the industry has changed since I first started.

If there's one thought I'd encourage traders to take away from Beyond Passing, it's to think beyond the next account or payout and consider the trading business they're trying to build, the trader they need to become to run it, and the life they want that business to support.

Those are questions worth asking whether you've been trading for six months or twenty years, and they're worth returning to as your circumstances, ambitions and experience develop.