What are the best tips to pass a funded trading challenge?

What Are The Best Tips To Pass A Funded Trading Challenge?

Passing a funded challenge comes down to four things: risk management strict enough to stay inside the firm's drawdown limits, a strategy already proven with trade-journal data, patience to wait for high-probability setups, and knowing every rule before placing the first trade.

The video frames this as a Big Work Energy Podcast conversation between the host and two guest traders who describe themselves as seven-figure funded traders. Their claims below are personal accounts of how they approached specific challenges, not RihariFX performance promises, income guarantees, or a description of typical results for anyone who buys a challenge. Where a dollar figure or outcome is mentioned, it is attributed as something the video says a specific trader experienced, not a forecast.

Across the conversation, the recurring tips are:

• Treat the firm's maximum allowed drawdown, not the headline account size, as the real number to protect.
• Build a trading journal before paying for an evaluation, so entries are backed by a measured win rate rather than a feeling.
• Read the full rulebook for the specific firm being used, since rules differ firm to firm and a broken rule can void a pass even when the trade was profitable.
• Wait for a small number of high-conviction setups rather than forcing trades every session.
• Expect to lose some evaluations along the way and treat that as normal, not as proof of failure as a trader.

What Separates Traders Who Pass From Traders Who Fail?

The video's traders say the split comes down to discipline and consistency, backed by a trading journal that shows a real win rate, versus traders who rush toward funding without a tested strategy and then either get lucky or blow the account within days.

One guest explains that journaling gave them the confidence to enter trades because the data showed they won roughly seven times out of ten under their setup, and that this confidence came only from the work done beforehand, not from a gut feeling. The other guest points to risk management specifically, noting that a $300,000 account's real trading capital is effectively the size of its allowed drawdown, not the headline balance, and that traders who treat the two as the same tend to overexpose themselves.

The video also draws a distinction between traders who are simply too early in their trading development and traders who are gambling. Both guests describe funded challenges becoming extremely cheap during promotions, which they say changes the psychology for a lot of buyers: because the evaluation fee is small, some traders stop caring whether they pass, and effectively gamble the account rather than trading it properly. The traders who pass, according to the video, are the ones who apply the same process they already use on their own trading regardless of how little the challenge cost them.

How Should You Manage Risk During A Funded Challenge?

The video's core risk rule is to size trades against the firm's maximum drawdown, not the headline account balance, since a $50,000 account with only $3,000 of allowed drawdown cannot absorb the same 1% per-trade risk a trader might use on a larger personal account.

One guest describes their early approach to funded evaluations as risking around 1% of the account's drawdown per trade, aiming for a 1:3 reward-to-risk trade, which in their case was enough to pass a challenge within a couple of days. On moving that same account live, they describe cutting position size further, to roughly a quarter of the challenge-stage risk, while still targeting similar reward ratios and gradually scaling up as the balance grew.

Later in the video, the traders describe a noticeably more aggressive approach used on larger accounts once they had years of screen time behind them, including full-margining a position on a $300,000 futures account when their analysis gave them high conviction, and breaking the final portion of a profit target into smaller trades near the finish line rather than holding one large position all the way to the target. The video is explicit that this style of risk-taking followed years of data collection and a specific setup they trade every day, and it should be read as a description of how two experienced funded traders behaved, not as a template for a beginner's first challenge.

Why Do The Rules Of Each Prop Firm Matter So Much?

Every prop firm's rulebook differs, and the video's traders say most failed challenges come from breaking a rule rather than losing money outright, since firms are run as businesses that profit when evaluations are not passed and are within their rights to deny a payout over a technical violation.

The video gives a concrete example: one guest describes passing a $1,000,000 CFD-style funded account within a required holding period, only to have the payout disputed after the firm identified a rule that had been broken, which soured that trader on CFD funded accounts generally. On the futures side, the traders mention firms such as TopStep introducing tighter payout caps, for example limiting newly opened accounts to a maximum payout of around $5,000 per payout period, which they interpret as the firm managing its own solvency rather than a rule aimed at any individual trader.

The video's practical suggestion for dealing with dense rule documents is to read every clause and, if the legal language is unclear, use a tool like ChatGPT to break down what a specific rule actually requires. The traders frame this as no different from managing risk: a trader who does not understand the daily loss limit, the overnight holding rule, or the drawdown calculation for their specific firm is exposed to failing the challenge for reasons that have nothing to do with trading skill.

Futures Funded Accounts Vs CFD Funded Accounts: What's The Difference?

The video's traders compare two funded-account types, futures challenges traded through firms such as TopStep and Apex, and CFD challenges traded through MT4 or MT5-style brokers, and say practical differences in spreads, overnight rules, and platform feel shaped which one each of them preferred.

| Feature | Futures funded accounts (per the video) | CFD funded accounts (per the video) | |---|---|---| | Spread cost | The video says spreads are minimal to none when using limit orders | The video says spreads can be wide, particularly when trading during Asian session hours | | Overnight positions | The video says futures challenges generally do not allow holding positions overnight | Not raised as a restriction in the video | | Platform used | The video says these traders used TradingView and futures-specific desktop platforms | The video says CFD challenges were traded on MT4 or MT5 | | Example entry cost | The video mentions an Apex 300K combine available for roughly $16 to $50 during a promotional period | The video does not give a comparable price example | | Payout experience described | The video describes payouts as regulated and traders receiving them properly | The video describes a dispute in which a rule violation was used to withhold a payout on a $1,000,000 account | | Speaker preference | Both guests said they preferred futures challenges overall | One guest said they had not found a CFD firm they were confident in |

These comparisons are the personal, unverified experiences of the two traders interviewed. They are not independently confirmed facts about any specific prop firm's current pricing, spread conditions, or regulatory status, and firm terms can change at any time.

What Mistakes Do Beginner Traders Make With Funded Challenges?

The video names three recurring beginner mistakes: buying a challenge before a strategy has been tested with real data, overleveraging position size because the account feels like a demo, and gambling on high-impact news candles instead of waiting for a proven setup to form.

On the first point, both guests say a lot of people rush into paying for an evaluation after only a couple of weeks of learning, without a journal or a measured win rate to justify the position sizes they are taking. On the second point, the video is candid that its own guests have treated very cheap funded challenges, in one case costing around $50 for access to $300,000 of buying power, as low-stakes because the fee itself was small, and that this mindset led to oversized, undisciplined trades. They are explicit that this approach worked for them as experienced traders running a specific, repeatable setup, but they do not present it as advice for someone still building a track record. On the third point, the traders describe watching newer traders jump into a random position simply because a setup did not appear on schedule, or take a trade purely off a news release, rather than waiting for the market to reach a defined level.

The video's broader point is that funded challenges are, in its words, designed for people to lose, so a trader without a tested edge is trading against rules built around that outcome rather than against the market alone.

How Risky Is Retail CFD And Forex Trading In General?

Two independently published sources quantify the risk sitting underneath any funded-challenge conversation: Australia's corporate regulator has measured how often retail CFD traders actually lose money, and the global banking body that tracks currency markets confirms the scale of the market traders are stepping into.

ASIC Report 828: Risky business records that 68% of Australian retail CFD investors lost money in the 2024 financial year. That figure covers retail CFD trading broadly, not prop-firm funded challenges specifically, since no regulator in this evidence set publishes audited pass or fail rates for funded evaluations. It is nonetheless the closest independently verified benchmark available for how often retail traders in this style of market lose rather than win.

Separately, the BIS 2025 Triennial Survey reported average daily OTC foreign-exchange turnover of US$9.6 trillion in April 2025, underlining the scale of the market that funded futures and CFD challenges give traders exposure to without requiring that capital personally.

Against that backdrop, the video's own estimate that the statistics are like 99% of funded-challenge buyers losing their accounts should be read as a personal impression from the traders interviewed, not as an audited or regulator-published statistic. It is directionally consistent with ASIC's verified finding that most retail CFD investors lose money, but the two numbers measure different populations and should not be treated as the same figure.

What Steps Should You Follow Before Attempting A Funded Challenge?

The video lays out a rough order of operations: learn one strategy properly, prove it with a trading journal, understand the specific prop firm's rules in full, size risk against the drawdown limit rather than the account balance, and only then put money toward an evaluation.

1. Learn and practise a single trading strategy until entries, stop placement, and target logic are consistent, rather than switching approaches session to session.
2. Keep a trading journal on every trade, wins and losses, so a real win rate and reward-to-risk ratio can be measured instead of estimated.
3. Paper trade or demo trade the strategy until the journal shows a repeatable edge, since the video says entering a challenge without this data is a common reason people fail.
4. Choose a specific prop firm and read its full rulebook, including drawdown calculation, daily loss limits, and any overnight or news-trading restrictions, using a tool like ChatGPT to clarify dense clauses if needed.
5. Set a per-trade risk size calculated against the firm's maximum allowed drawdown, not the headline account balance, before the challenge begins.
6. Trade the evaluation using the same setups and entry criteria already used in the journal, waiting for those specific conditions rather than forcing a trade to fill the day.
7. Expect to lose some evaluations along the way, and treat each loss as a data point to review rather than a sign the strategy has failed.
8. On passing, carry the challenge-stage discipline into the funded live account, and treat challenge and reset fees as an ongoing cost of the process rather than money that must be recovered immediately.

The video presents this sequence as what worked for two individual traders it interviewed. It is not a guarantee of passing any specific challenge, a promise of income, or a claim that funded trading is free of risk.