Why you should stop buying another prop firm account (and what to do instead)
Buying a new evaluation after every blown account feels like a fresh start, but it repeats the same mistakes at full price. Here’s how to break the loop.
You blow an evaluation on Tuesday. By Wednesday you've bought another one, maybe two because there's a sale. It feels like a fresh start. But nothing about you changed overnight: same setups, same habits, same reaction to two losses in a row. A new account just gives the same mistakes a new place to happen, at full price.
The loop most prop traders are stuck in
- Buy an account, feel motivated, trade well for a few days.
- Hit a bad day, break a rule, lose most of the drawdown in one session.
- Blow it, feel the sting, and buy another one to make the feeling go away.
- Repeat, without ever asking what actually happened.
Every time around, you pay the evaluation fee and learn almost nothing, because you never looked at the data. That's the expensive part, not the fee itself.
Add up what it has cost you
Write down every evaluation, reset and activation fee from the last 12 months. Most traders who do this for the first time are shocked. Ten $150 evaluations is $1,500, before data and platform fees. Then write down your payouts. If the first number is bigger, you don't have a trading business yet; you have an expensive habit. More on that in trading is a business.
A blown account is only wasted money if you don't get the data out of it.
Get the data out of every blown account
Before you buy the next one, answer these from your trades, not from memory:
- How many days did the account last? Is that number going up over time?
- What happened on the day it died? One big loss, or a string of revenge trades after the first?
- What time of day did the damage happen? Many traders lose most of it in one window.
- Which rule did you break? Daily loss limit, size, trading through news?
Import the account's trades into a journal and look at the worst day trade by trade. How to spot evaluation failure in your trades walks through it, and what to do after blowing an account covers the days after.
Earn the next account
- Wait 48 hours before buying anything. A purchase made to escape a feeling is a trade made on tilt.
- Write one rule that would have saved the last account, and keep it in your Morning prep.
- Prove it for 10 days on a sim or your smallest size. If you follow the rule every day, buy the account.
- Buy one, not three. More accounts multiply the same mistakes. See multiple prop accounts and copy trading.
Measure progress between accounts
The goal isn't to never blow an account. It's for each one to last longer and fail for a smaller reason. In Market Matrix, keep every account, even the dead ones, and use the date range and account picker to compare them. If your accounts went from lasting 3 days to lasting 3 weeks, you're getting better, even before your first payout.
See what blew my last account, free →
This article is for education only and isn't financial advice. Trading futures involves substantial risk of loss.