Four days into his Funded Account®, Nick S. in Texas found himself 51% to his total Account Loss Limit. That's right, his $5,000 balance fell to a closing low of $3,307 — putting him just $1,600 from losing his account. But instead of spiraling deeper and deeper and taking larger risks, Nick says that he was hit with the realization: "This is real money." 

Indeed it was, and Nick finally got back to the strategy that helped him pass the Trading Combine® and earn live trading capital in the first place. That led him on a path to $6,700 in withdrawals over the next two months. 

Here's how Nick did it. 

Euro bulls have had little to cheer about lately. After losing 4.5% to the Dollar in 2018, the currency is again facing losses in the early parts of 2019. In fact, the 2% drop in the first quarter was its worst in four years. EUR/USD is now facing an important test heading into the next European Central Bank meeting this Wednesday, April 10. 

Will this be the impetus leading EUR/USD on it's next leg lower?

Did you see that move in EUR/USD yesterday?

Since hitting a low in early March, EUR/USD has been on a tear, gaining eight out of 11 trading days. Heading into yesterday's Federal Reserve meeting, that put the price pushing up towards some critical resistance.

To make things more interesting, the FOMC went ultra-dovish in their statement, backing away from any interest rate increases in 2019, downgrading the outlook for growth and setting an end date for its quantitative tightening. That hit the U.S. Dollar hard and has EUR/USD threatening to reverse a year-long downtrend. Let's take a closer look.

We have a HUGE WEEK for markets ahead. Take a look at the economic events that are poised to move forex markets in the next five days:

• Monday, 10:30 PM ET: Reserve Bank of Australia
• Wednesday, 10:00 AM ET: Bank of Canada
• Thursday, 7:45 AM ET: European Central Bank
• Friday, 8:30 AM ET: U.S. February Non-Farm Payroll Report

Here’s a look at how all these events may shake out in the market.

Are you looking for the best, most concise trading advice that you can find. Then look no further — we have you covered on this Best of Limit Up! episode. Over the year since the Limit Up! podcast launched, Topstep has talked with millionaire (and billionaire) traders and 'Market Wizards,' distilling their experience into actions and routines that you can implement in your trading.

In this episode, Topstep’s Eddie Horn walks listeners through prior conversations with five trading legends — Jack Schwager, Brett Steenbarger, Linda Raschke, Tony Saliba and Larry Benedict. Combined, these guests have taken untold fortunes from futures, options and forex markets. And now they'll share with you those key factors that helped them do it. 

Limit Up! is also available on iTunes, Google Play or Spotify, where you can subscribe to get fresh episodes each week delivered to your inbox. 

Here at Topstep, we’re incredibly proud of our funded traders. They worked hard to make it through Step 2 of our process, proved they had the chops to make it trading actual money, and spend their days carefully weighing opportunity and risk.

One such trader is Kevin M. out of Perth, Australia. He joined TopstepFX to hone his trading strategy and improve his trading discipline. In reflecting on his work to date, he mentions that Step 2 really helped him with money management.

What can you do a week into your TopstepFX Funded Account®? If you’re Shawn B. in North Carolina, you can make $5,160 in profits and put your trading account in a really nice spot heading into the closing weeks of 2018.

Shawn was in tune with the forex market all week, making $2,050 in EUR/USD and USD/JPY positions on his first day trading live capital. Shawn showed a lot of awareness of market conditions. He was not afraid to take a loss and reverse the position. He also wasn’t afraid to press a trade that was going well. In essence, he executed his momentum trading strategy to perfection.

On his second day in his account, Shawn lost $311 before gaining $1,639 and $1,782 on consecutive days on December 6 and 7 — all for $5,160 in realized profits. 

But even with his current performance, Shawn said he still does not consider himself a consistently profitable trader. Yet. Instead, he is constantly working on his trading.

Here’s advice he shared about what's going well in his trading and what he would tell other traders looking to improve and earn a Funded Account.

You may know Annie Duke as the World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions winner in 2004. But you don't make more than $4.2 million in lifetime earnings on the professional poker circuit without knowing how to make decisions and manage risk. 

For Annie, that's been a lifetime passion — and one that she is pursuing more than ever now that she is retired from professional poker. 

In this interview with Topstep's Eddie Horn, Annie details why our decision-making is flawed and how we can change the way we approach problems to reach better decisions. Annie takes complex topics like "resulting" and "hindsight bias" and breaks it into easy-to-understand pieces that will improve your trading. 

Each year, the CME Group hosts a trading challenge for college and university students worldwide. More than 500 teams compete worldwide to see who can trade the CME’s futures products the best. Our latest TopstepFX funded trader, Kelvin C. of Malaysia who is studying to get his MBA, was on the team that finished third in the 2018 Trading Challenge.

He also took eighth place in the Saxo Trade Challenge, where he put his forex trading skills to the test in a competition organized by Saxo Bank.

But while that success can help you build confidence, Kelvin says that it did not come easy — and it has not stopped him from weathering setbacks in his trading. Here’s what he learned on his journey to becoming a TopstepFX funded trader with $300,000 in live forex buying power.

This is our second piece in a three-part series on the 2008 Financial Crisis. For the first piece, please see “10 Years Later: 4 Universal Trading Lessons from the Great Recession.”

Under normal conditions, the stock market goes up and down. So corrections (aka losses) happen from time-to-time. They’re expected and not much of a challenge for our economy to navigate.

But 2008 was different. That year, markets were not operating normally. Because the economy was not operating normally. Here’s a breakdown at some of the moves in equities, commodities and currencies.