Rayner Teo

Passing a prop firm challenge is one of the most dangerous things that can happen to a trader. Because it convinces you that you've made it.

You can hit the target, get the capital, and feel unstoppable.

A few weeks later, the account is gone. Daily drawdown limit hit.
Rule breached. Game over. And you're sitting there confused, because you passed, didn't you? You did the exact thing they asked you to do. You even printed the certificate (and it’s now hiding in a drawer).

Here’s the deal:

Passing the challenge and being a profitable trader are two completely different games. Like how passing your driving test and being a good driver are two completely different things.

(Ask my wife. She passed on the first attempt. God help us all on the road.)

The challenge tests one thing: can you hit a profit target without breaking the rules? And you can do that... by getting lucky. Size up, catch a hot streak, sneak past the line. It feels like a skill. But a lot of the time, it's just a coin flip that happened to land your way.

Let me explain…

Imagine you flip a coin. Heads you win, tails you lose. You flip it five times and get four heads. Are you a genius coin flipper now?

Of course not. You just had a good run. Flip it a few hundred more times and reality shows up.

A trading challenge is the same. A few good weeks can carry you across the finish line. It says nothing about whether you'll still be standing after a hundred trades.

Because the market doesn't care that you passed. The next month, it asks you the only question that's ever mattered...

Do you have an edge?

An edge is something you do over and over that makes money in the long run—like the casino that doesn't sweat one spin of the wheel, because it knows the math works over thousands of them.

That's what lets you survive a losing streak without panicking.

That's what lets you follow your rules when the account is bleeding.

A prop firm can hand you capital. A slick dashboard. A payout structure. What it cannot hand you is a system that makes money from hundreds of trades.

So before you pay for your next challenge, ask yourself one honest question:

If I traded my own small account with these exact rules for the next 100 trades... would I come out ahead?

If you can't answer yes with a straight face, the funding was never your problem. The edge was.

6 days ago | [YT] | 148

Rayner Teo

One of the greatest traders made money while being wrong most of the time.

His name is Ed Seykota. And back in the 1970s, when everyone else was squinting at ticker tape and shouting across trading floors, this MIT grad did something nobody understood. He coded one of the first computerised trend-following systems and let it trade for him.

The result? He turned $5,000 into roughly $15 million over about 12 years. Around 60% a year.

But here's the thing...

He didn't do it by predicting the market. He didn't catch tops. He didn't catch bottoms. He did 3 things that make most traders feel uncomfortable.

1. Ride the trend. Don't fight it.

The trend is your friend. Stop trying to be the genius who calls the exact reversal. Catching a falling knife feels smart. Following a trend feels dumb and obvious. But one of them pays the bills, and it's not the clever one.

2. Cut your losses fast.

Small losses are just the cost of doing business. When the system says you're wrong, you're out. No hoping. No "it'll come back." No averaging down because you've fallen in love with a position. You take the small loss and move on, like ripping off a plaster.

3. Let your winners run.

This is the brutal one. Every instinct in your body wants to grab a small profit and feel safe, then you watch the big move take off without you, like a bus you missed by ten seconds.

Trend following forces you to hold. Because here's the math that makes the whole thing work...

You only need a few huge winners to pay for all your small losers. That's it. That's the secret. You can be wrong 6 times out of 10 and still get rich, as long as the winners are big and the losers are small.

Now...

Notice how every single one of those rules fights your emotions?
Riding the trend means ignoring the urge to outsmart it. Cutting losses means swallowing your ego. Letting winners run means resisting the itch to grab and run.

Your feelings will sabotage all three. Every time. In the heat of the moment, fear and greed grab the wheel, and they are terrible traders.

That's exactly why you need a system.

Not to predict the future, nobody can do that. But to keep you in the winners and out of the losers long enough for the math to actually work.

1 week ago | [YT] | 192

Rayner Teo

I read 175 books on trading. Here's what will make you rich...

Learn more: https://youtu.be/k1TKN8iGDao

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 424

Rayner Teo

Why 95% Of Traders Fail (And Only 5% Succeed)

Learn more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAR_J...

3 weeks ago | [YT] | 243

Rayner Teo

Amateur traders ask:
"How much can I make from trading?"

Professional traders ask:
"How do I survive the next 1000 trades?"

A big difference.

3 weeks ago | [YT] | 783

Rayner Teo

Discipline without an edge just means you'll lose consistently.

1 month ago | [YT] | 778

Rayner Teo

Here’s my trading result for this year…

YTD return: 21.33%

All-time return: 400.65%

In March, the stock market declined 10%, and this triggered an exit for most of my stock positions.

It turned out to be a false breakdown as the market rallied 17% of the lows.
Ouch!

Because of this rally, my trading system is bullish again, and needed to buy the stocks I sold earlier, albeit at a much higher price.

As you can tell, this isn’t the easiest thing to do because I seem like an idiot who sold at the lows and bought back at the highs.

But there’s a reason for this madness.

Here’s why…

I moved to cash in March because I don’t know if the market will collapse further. If it did, I would look like a genius who avoided a blood bath.

However, it turned out to be a false breakdown, and I ended up selling low and buying high.

But here’s the thing…

You can’t judge the quality of a decision after the outcome.

Instead, the quality of a decision is based on the information you have available and using it to the best of your ability.

It's like going on a date. You dress nicely, bring flowers, and show up on time.
If she turns out to be crazy, that doesn't mean your preparation was bad—you just got unlucky with the outcome.

Now this isn’t the first time it has happened, and it will happen again.

However, it’s the price I’m willing to pay because I know this:

If I take care of my downside, the upside will take care of itself.

That’s how I’m able to beat the markets consistently over the last 7 years.

Not because I'm smart.

Not because I can predict the future.

But because I protect my downside and let the maths do the heavy lifting.

1 month ago (edited) | [YT] | 209

Rayner Teo

Most traders don’t fail because they’re lazy.

They fail because nobody tells them what’s ACTUALLY wrong.

Instead, you hear things like...

“Work on your mindset.”
“Be more disciplined.”
“Control your emotions.”

That’s like telling a drowning person...

“Try swimming harder.”

I know because I spent years making the exact same mistakes.

So here are the 3 mistakes that kept me (and probably you) from being profitable...

𝐌𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞 #𝟏: 𝐍𝐨 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐲

Most traders are using strategies they found on a random YouTube video.

You’ve never backtested it. You’ve no idea if it works over 100 or 1,000 trades.

You’re gambling, but with fancier charts.

It's like following a recipe from a stranger on the internet who says...

"Trust me, bro, put ketchup on your ice cream. It's amazing!"

You try it. It's disgusting. And you wonder why dinner is ruined.

So here’s the deal…

If you don't have a proven strategy, you can't trust your system. And if you can't trust your system, everything else falls apart.

𝐌𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞 #𝟐: 𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐲 𝐡𝐨𝐩𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐠

This one hits close to home because I was the king of strategy hopping.

My first trading strategy was using Bollinger Bands, and I had a few winning trades in a row.

I thought to myself...

"I'm going to retire by 30, buy a villa, and have a swimming pool."

Now, I'm almost 40. No villa. No pool. And I have 3 monkeys running around my house.

Then…

I encountered 5 losses in a row, and panic set in. I thought the strategy no longer works, so I tried to find something better.

I tried things like volume spread analysis, chart patterns, harmonic patterns, etc. But the only pattern I see is my trading account going down.

Here's why this is so deadly...

Every time you switch strategies, you reset. You never give any single system enough trades for the edge to play out.

It's like planting a seed, digging it up after 3 days to check if it's growing, then planting a different seed.

Nothing will ever grow.

𝐌𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞 #𝟑: 𝐄𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬

After 5 losses in a row, something snaps.

You have thoughts like…

"The market is out to get me!"
"How dare you take my money!"
"I'll show you who's boss!"
So you double down to make back what you've lost—and you lose even more.

Now here's what most traders don't realise...

All 3 of these mistakes?

They're symptoms. Not the cause.

It's like when you forget your anniversary and your wife says...

"Don't touch me."

"Go away."

"We need to talk."

Those are the symptoms. Forgetting the anniversary is the cause.

In trading, the cause behind these symptoms is the same thing...

You don't have an edge.

Without an edge, you can't trust your system.

Without trust, you can't follow the rules.

Without following the rules, emotions take over.

1 month ago (edited) | [YT] | 248

Rayner Teo

In this trading guide, you'll discover:
1. A complete trend following system to profit in bull & bear markets.
2. How to immediately boost your returns without increasing your risk.
3. How to ethically “steal” hedge fund’s winning strategies.
And much more...
Grab a copy (free): www.tradingwithrayner.com/essential-guide-to-syste…

1 month ago | [YT] | 226