How to pass the Earn2Trade 50k Trader Career Path

Important notes

The advice in this section assumes you are already consistently profitable and understand risk and how to trade, but are new to funded accounts.
The strategy assumes your first withdrawal is likely to be in excess of $1000. This will more than cover the $90 evaluation fee(s).
It assumes that $90 is not a lot of money for you to risk. It is equivalent to 8 ticks on ES.

The strategy

I've seen many people say they're going to trade "slow and steady, small size, 15 days of consistent profits". While this seems a sensible way to approach the evaluation, the reality is if you've spent 12 days getting close to you profit target, you're now under a large psychological strain to complete. As you've been trading a small size, you can't realistically reduce your position size to help the psychology.
An easier strategy is to aim to complete the evaluation within 4 days.
The strategy simply requires you to place two and a half winning trades, and to not have two consecutive losing days. For example:
- Win, Win, Half Win
- Win, Loss, Win, Win, Half Win
- Win, Loss, Win, Win, Loss, Win, Half Win
Do you think you can place 2.5 winning trades without having 2 consecutive losing days? Yes, it really is that easy.

Preparation

Remember to select Live Commissions when you sign up. This reduces the cost of MES from $2.02 to $0.83 per side, and reduces the cost of ES from $2.02 to $1.99 per side.

Day 1

On the first day you should not be under any stress as your maximum risk per trade is $90! If you have a losing trade you can simply reset the account and start again.
Make one trade: 2 ES contract, 36 tick profit, 40 tick stop. The trade will either win or lose. (See Position Sizing below for alternates to 1ES/36ticks).
The reason for having a profit target of 36 ticks is to meet the consistency rule. Any day cannot account for more than 30%. Do not exceed 36 ticks or your profit target will increase.
The reason for having a stop at 40 ticks is to stay within the $1100 max daily loss limit. This allows for 3 ticks of slippage; any more and you will blow the account.
Mathematically, you could purchase 2 accounts, trade 1 long and 1 short. For an extra $90, you've reduced your profit target by over $892.04 with no thought at all. You also have a 2nd account that you can recover once the first account has reached its profit target.

Subsequent winning days

Aim to make 36 ticks ($892.04) profit each day. Do not exceed 36 ticks or the day won't count. It is still early in the evaluation and you have little to lose with a failing trade, so think big and try and get one trade that runs for 36 ticks.

Single losing days

A single losing day is acceptable and can be recovered if the following trade is a winner.
If you experience a single losing day, keep the account and try tomorrow.
You must trade a minimum of 15 days, so the strategy allows for a number of single losing days and does not increase the time to pass.

Consecutive losing days

If you experience two consecutive losing days in a row, you have effectively blown your account and will need to reset.

Day 4

If you reached profit of $892.04 on days 1, 2 and 3, you only need 13 ticks to pass. However, you need to trade micros for the reminaing day, so aim for 14 ticks which will allow room for losses during remaining 'dummy' trading days.

Upon reaching the profit target

Once you've met your profit target of $3018.16, open a 2nd evaluation account and repeat the process, but only trade 14 days. The aim is to keep the account on standby and ready to pass with one dummy trade.
The point of trading a funded account is to get rich quick using somebody else's money. The 'quick' is important, because your time is your most valuable asset, so you want to ensure the returns are good in relation to your time. I like to risk my entire daily drawdown each day as my strategy has a high win-rate. However, the trailing drawdown means it is not efficient to recover from 2 consecutive losing days.
If you blow the account, it takes approx 5 weeks to pass again and complete the paperwork. However, having a second (or third) account in reserve reduces this to just a week of waiting for admin, no screen time required!
The cost of keeping backup evaluation accounts in reserve is $90/account/month. This is a very small insurance to pay for potentially saving 4 weeks work, and this amount should be easily covered by your first payout.

Trading the live account

When you are offered the live account, you need to specify whether you will trade ES or MES contracts. If you choose ES, you are limited to just 3 MES contracts. If you choose MES, you can scale the entire 30 MES contracts. I do not recommend trading MES contracts as the commissions are expensive, and during times of low liquidity, MES may spike significantly while ES does not. For example, on 3rd June 2022, 23 minutes before the release of Non-Farm Payroll, MES slipped 22 ticks compared to ES. Two hours later, Earn2Trade sent our emails and a Facebook post entitled "How can you avoid slippage in your trading?" I don't think that was a coincidence!
There are no consistency rules, so if you suspect a trade is going to run, do not take profits early as you have to do during the evaluation. However:
- Trailing drawdown still applies, so if you get an immediate runner and you move your stop to break even, you cannot just leave the trade to the end of the day. If it pulls back into your Trailing Drawdown Limit, you will blow the account even if you are still in profit for the day with a stop at break-even.
- For this reason, I recommend only trading strategies with a pre-determined profit target, and exit with a limit order rather than a pullback into a trailing stop.
Any withdrawals come out of your trailing drawdown. If you less that one day's trailing drawdown available, consider cashing out any remaining profit (close the live account) and then immediately pass one of your backup evaluation accounts.

Risk/Reward

Risk/Reward can be approached differently on a virtual evaluation as your actual max loss is $90 plus the number of days you have been trading. Having a big stop compared to a small profit target significantly increases the win-rate and makes passing easier. This strategy does not work for a real account as multiple bad trades will adversely affect your account size, sometimes irrecoverably. However, for passing an evaluation, this is an acceptable strategy because you can reset at any time.

Position sizing and profit targets

The 25k TCP allows you to choose between 1ES and 2ES contracts at any time. However, with the 50K it is only reasonable to consider 2ES contracts as a minimum. You cannot increase to 4ES contracts until you have passed $1500 in profit.

Below 1500 in profit

Position size: 2 ES
Profit Target: 36 ticks
Maximum allowable adverse excursion: 40 ticks

Trading during difficult market conditions

If you are taking your evaluation during difficult market conditions, your trades may start strong but then fail to reach your profit target leaving you in a loss. In these cases, halve the profit target and double the number of trades. As with trading a real account, this strategy is less effective than taking trades that are more likely to meet a profit target. However, the focus is on passing as quickly as possible and sometimes the market does not always give perfect conditions and it is necessary to adapt.

Below $1500 in profit, markets that do not follow-through on breakouts

Position size: 2 ES
Profit Target: 18 ticks
Maximum allowable adverse excursion: 40 ticks

Above $1500 in profit

Position size: 4 ES
Profit Target: 18 ticks
Maximum allowable adverse excursion: 20 ticks

Above $1500 in profit, markets that do not follow-through on breakouts

Position size: 4 ES
Profit Target: 9 ticks
Maximum allowable adverse excursion: 20 ticks

Position sizing