How do you stay motivated after nearly giving up on trading?

How did Tom Bird almost quit trading before turning it around?

Tom Bird says he nearly quit trading more than once, after a strong early run on his funded account collapsed into a heavy drawdown. He says his mindset was not in a good place, and looking back he says he should not have been trading at all in that state.

On the BWE Podcast, Tom Bird describes starting his trading education in March, with no prior demo account experience. He says he "went straight funded" from day one, trading full margin on news releases before he understood the risk he was taking. That approach produced fast, unstable results: sharp recoveries followed by losses that wiped the gains out again.

He describes one stretch where he pulled a funded account back from a deep drawdown to break-even, only to lose it again shortly after. He says that cycle, a big recovery followed by a fresh setback, is what pushed him closest to walking away from trading altogether.

What kept him motivated when he wanted to give up?

Tom Bird says the two things that kept him going were reaching out to his mentor, Bri, when he was at his lowest, and reconnecting with his personal "why": more time with his daughters and freedom from full-time manual labour into his sixties.

He says he messaged Bri directly during the periods he wanted to quit, describing her as someone who "brought him back to life a little bit" by putting his progress into perspective. He says the conversations helped him see how far he had come, rather than fixating only on the losses in front of him.

He also ties his motivation to a specific, personal goal rather than a vague wish to get rich. He says he does not want to still be a builder "banging in nails" at 60, and that the freedom to spend more time with his two daughters, on set days each week, is the reason he kept working at trading when the results were not there yet.

Why does he compare trading to his weight-loss journey?

Tom Bird compares learning to trade to an earlier weight-loss journey, where he went from around 110kg to roughly 85kg. He says both followed the same pattern: fast early progress, then a plateau where nothing seemed to move, before results picked up again.

He says the weight loss came during a difficult personal period, and that he trained at home rather than in a gym. He describes losing a large amount of weight quickly at first, then hitting a stretch where progress stalled even though his effort stayed the same.

He applies the same framing to trading. Tom Bird says the early months brought fast gains in basic knowledge, then a plateau where new, more advanced information became confusing rather than clarifying, before the pieces started coming together again with more screen time.

What did he change about risk and how he traded news events?

Tom Bird says his biggest practical change after the drawdowns was to stop trading high-impact news releases, and to size his risk against his account's maximum drawdown limit rather than its full balance. He says that shift came directly out of the losses that nearly made him quit.

He describes his earlier approach as reckless: trading full margin around news events with no stop-loss, resetting evaluation accounts repeatedly, and treating position size casually. He says a mentor warning him against trading "by yourself, full margin, on news" became a recurring, only half-joking message between them.

By the time of the podcast, he says he calculates risk differently. On a $50,000 evaluation account with a $2,000 maximum drawdown limit, he says he risks around $20 per trade, roughly 1% of the drawdown limit rather than 1% of the headline account size. He also says he has become quicker to move his stop-loss to break-even once a trade moves in his favour.

How did passing prop firm evaluation accounts affect his mindset?

Tom Bird says passing prop firm evaluation accounts, which he calls "combines," gave him a real confidence boost, but he says he also had to actively pull himself back from overconfidence afterward. He describes the shift from evaluation to a live funded account as its own separate psychological adjustment.

He says he failed several evaluation attempts before passing two, and that he was deliberately more aggressive on evaluation accounts than he says he would be on a live account, because the money at risk was smaller. He says that gap between evaluation behaviour and live-account behaviour is something he is still working to close.

He also describes one specific trade, on a futures evaluation account, where a buy order he says he forgot he had placed was filled during a volatile move and produced a large paper profit over a weekend. He is candid that the trade had no stop-loss attached and that the outcome was closer to luck than repeatable skill, and he says it is not something he would recommend relying on.

This is a single trader's account of one outcome, not a typical result. Retail leveraged trading carries a substantial risk of loss, and one profitable trade says nothing about a strategy's reliability over time.

What changed between his early trading habits and his habits after nearly quitting?

The table below summarises the shift Tom Bird describes, in his own words, between his trading habits before the near-quit period and the changes he says he made afterward, covering risk, routine, and support.

| Habit | Before (his account) | After (his account) | |---|---|---| | Demo account | None, went straight to a funded account | Still none, but slower and more deliberate on evaluations | | News trading | Traded high-impact news full margin | Says he no longer trades news events | | Stop-loss use | Often none, or forgotten | Uses stop-losses more consistently, moves to break-even early | | Position sizing | Casual, based on full account balance | Calculated against the drawdown limit, around 1% per trade | | Support | Isolated, few people to talk to about trading | Reaches out to his mentor Bri when struggling | | Routine | Inconsistent, driven by news events and impulse | Fixed gym and work hours, set charting time after 4pm | | Setbacks | Account resets, repeated blown evaluations | Journaling and backtesting he says he still needs to improve |

What process does he describe for rebuilding motivation after a setback?

The podcast does not present a formal system, but Tom Bird's account of what he does when motivation drops follows a repeatable sequence. The numbered steps below are drawn directly from what he describes doing during and after his near-quit period.

1. Recognise the mindset problem first. He says he identifies when he is not in the right headspace before blaming the market or the strategy.
2. Step back from the charts. He says trading while not "100%" is what led to some of his worst drawdowns, so he treats stepping away as a first response, not a last resort.
3. Reach out to a mentor or support person. He says messaging Bri directly, rather than working through frustration alone, is what pulled him back from wanting to quit.
4. Reconnect with the underlying reason for trading. He points to his daughters and long-term freedom from manual labour as the "why" that outweighs a single bad stretch.
5. Return to fundamentals rather than chasing losses. He says revisiting the basics of the strategy, instead of trying to force a recovery trade, is what actually rebuilt his account balances.
6. Adjust risk mechanically. He says recalculating position size against the account's drawdown limit, instead of its full balance, reduced how much single trades could hurt his confidence.
7. Keep a fixed daily routine. He describes a set schedule (early gym, full-time building work, then charts from around 4pm) as what kept trading sustainable alongside a full-time job and shared custody of his children.

What do independent statistics say about the odds in retail trading and the size of the forex market?

Independent regulatory and industry data give useful context around a personal story like this one, without confirming or predicting any individual's results. Two figures are relevant here, from sources outside the podcast itself.

ASIC Report 828: Risky business records that 68% of Australian retail CFD investors lost money in the 2024 financial year. That figure is a market-wide regulatory statistic, not a comment on Tom Bird's personal outcomes, and it underscores why he describes risk management and mindset, rather than any single winning trade, as the part of trading that actually changed his results.

The BIS 2025 Triennial Survey reported average daily OTC foreign-exchange turnover of US$9.6 trillion in April 2025. That scale illustrates how large and liquid the market he trades within is, but it says nothing about the odds facing an individual retail trader inside it.

Neither figure comes from Tom Bird or the podcast. They are cited here as independently verified context, separate from his personal account of nearly giving up and what he says brought him back.