Interview with Successful Funded Trader: Toan shares his Journey from Digital Marketing to Profitable Trading

In this exclusive interview, successful forex prop firm trader (Toan) reveals key strategies he adopted to move himself from several trading losses/failures to consistent profitability.

Let’s hear from him:

1. Tell us a little about yourself

My name is Toan, and I have been actively involved in trading for over 2 years.

At first I still had a full time job at digital advertising, and traded in my freetime.

I made many mistakes and lost many challenges before but the full time job helped me recover from it and kept going.

Then after a year I got better and started to make a profit, then switched to work as a freelancer and focused more on trading.

Now I had a good strategy so I was less likely to reach maximum drawdown.

2. What trading strategies do you consider the most effective on your trading journey?

My strategy mostly focuses on the long term trend of an instrument, and waiting for a good chance to enter that trend.

For example, right now the war in Gaza and Ukraine is still going on, combined with the FED on path to lower rate, I see the long term trend of XAUUSD is uptrend, so I’m usually waiting for a pull back, then take a long position.

I usually don’t follow the trend caused by the breaking news. But if it is against the current big trend, I will analyse it and decide if that news’s effect will fade soon or not.

If it fades soon, then I treat it as a pull back and use MA to open position to follow the big trend.

Stop loss has to be decent, not too tight, take profit has to be far, because when breaking news or economic news happens, spread will widen or slippage happens and it will less likely to hit SL.

I often do not get emotional due to the fact that my risk management is safe and sound.

3. How do you manage risk in your trades, and what advice do you have for prop traders looking to improve their risk management skills?

I have a few rules about manage risk that help me a lot:
– Stop Loss, I keep it at 1% or less.
– When losing money, I decrease my risk.
– I enter trades with a potential reward 1.5 times greater than the amount I risk.
– I only open 1-2 positions a day, (but I prefer 1).

I suggest other traders develop similar rules to restrict themself (from losses).

Do not use the whole daily loss drawdown on 1 or 2 positions.

Also, don’t set SL/TP too tight, beware of breaking news and false breakout.

4. How do you handle emotions during challenging market conditions? Or when you’re in a drawdown, do you struggle with emotions?

I have hit Stop Loss many times before, so this does not affect me as much (as before).

After the oil futures went negative a few years ago, I accepted the fact that anything can happen.

You can never be 100% sure about anything in the financial market.

With my risk management plan, I will most likely recover, just a matter of time and patience.

5. Can you talk about the importance of discipline in sticking to your trading plan and how it contributes to long-term success?

A good strategy without discipline is almost useless, and with a useless strategy, you can’t make profit consistently. And you lose your account prematurely.

6. Which markets or currency pairs do you focus on, and why?

I mainly trade gold and USDJPY. For me, gold is better for the long term (its intrinsic value is almost fixed).

Thus, it is less complicated than a pair of two currencies with more factors to affect it.

The yen is less likely to be affected by any news from other countries and the Japanese officials rarely say anything that moves the market, so I see it as most stable.

Yen would be less complicated than other pairs and more likely to follow the trend it was on.

I also trade with other pairs but with less priority.

7. How do you adapt your trading strategy to different market conditions, such as high volatility?

I try to avoid or decrease my risk when in high volatility.

8. Can you share your most significant trading success and your biggest failure during your trading journey (highlighting the lessons you learned from these moments)?

My biggest success would be to get funded with RebelsFunding and receive multiple withdrawals till now, four (4) months already.

My biggest failure would be to fail the challenge last year at phase 3.

When in drawdown and hit sl consecutively, I wanted to recover fast so I increased the risk. It led me to even bigger losses.

But this time, I do it differently.

9. How do you handle losses, and what steps do you take to effectively recover from drawdowns?

When in drawdown, I usually decrease my risk, so I would not lose the account with many losses consecutively.

But when I’m winning, I will increase my risk a bit so I will recover a bit faster.

10. Which technical indicators do you rely on, and how do you use them when deciding on trades?

I use MA to find the entry on pullback and to exit trade and RSI to look for reversal of a trend in order to open a position.

11. How do you determine the optimal time frame for your trades, and what factors influence your choice?

I usually see the big timeframe first, D1. If the price fits my strategy, I will look at a smaller time frame to enter my trades, like H1 and M15, M5.

12. On a scale from 1 to 10, how would you rate our prop firm (RebelsFunding), and why?

I rate RebelsFunding 9.9, because of the inconvenience with mobile platform, everything else was great:

Fast email reply, withdrawal process in 36 hours, challenge‘s price is affordable and even offers a big account I want to try later (320k).

The platform on browsers is great. It helps me easily keep track of my daily drawdown. It shows my potential profit/loss before I open a position.

Lastly, the swap free is great and unique. It helps me greatly when I go long on Gold for a few days.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW TOAN’S TRADING PERFORMANCE/RESULT