No Guarantees, Just the math

Description

Most traders don’t fail the market. They fail the rules.

An estimated 86% of traders who buy a prop-firm evaluation never pass it, and most of those who do never collect a payout. It’s rarely the trading. It’s a drawdown floor that moves while a trade is still open, a daily loss limit that ends the session before the drawdown does, and a consistency rule that quietly caps a trader’s best days. No Guarantees, Just the Math lays out the arithmetic behind those rules, so a trader can see what an evaluation actually demands before paying the fee.

Inside:
– How evaluation accounts really work: static, trailing, and end-of-day drawdowns, daily loss limits, consistency rules, activity requirements, and payout splits
– The futures math behind every decision: tick values and commissions across ES, NQ, CL, GC and their micro contracts, position sizing against remaining drawdown room, expectancy, and why a high win rate can still lose money
– Risk of ruin, sample size, and Monte Carlo simulation, used to test a strategy against an account’s actual rules
– Three real strategies (a triple EMA crossover, VWAP mean reversion on micro gold, and an opening range breakout), each tested against the same account, with the actual trade logs analyzed in the appendices
– Building a trading plan that fits a specific account, and the common mistakes, posted track records, and copy-trading setups that undermine one
– The true cost of reaching a payout, and whether a prop evaluation is the right vehicle for a given strategy at all – A ten-minute check to run before buying any evaluation.

Written for traders new to prop firms, the book assumes no prior knowledge of how these accounts work. Every number is either exact arithmetic or clearly labeled as illustrative. What this book is not: it names no firm, sells no system, and hands over no strategy to copy. Futures trading carries a real risk of loss, and nothing in these pages is investment advice or a promise of any trading outcome.

The numbers a trader should have seen before paying the fee.