“You need a strategy, risk management and psychology all perfected before you can make any money in these markets” – Usman
This week we speak to Usman, a funded trader who was able to make over $15,000 in payout. He shares not only his simulated trading journey; but principles on risk management, psychology and a look into his strategy.
Usman tells us about his Background
Usman aka LP simulated trading was born in Pakistan but lived his whole life in Toronto Canada where he grew up. Early 2020, he was fed up with his job and wanted to find something online. While he was trying different things, he came across simulated trading and knew that was it for him. He has never looked back since.
Before then, Usman worked in his family business for eight years. It was a Monday to Saturday (9am to 7pm) type of commitment. He was working every single day of his life without having a social life or making progress. He became so fed up with that life and thought the solution would be getting a job where he’d get a Saturday off because he never had that and didn’t know what it felt like.
He eventually got a job, upgraded his skills, and got into digital marketing sales at a fortune 500 company. He thought he’d hit his goal in life by doing that, but he soon realized that the job was actually worse because he felt more like a slave. At the family business, he felt he didn’t have a life, but he at least had some ownership in some way. At the new job however, if he clocked in two minutes late, his boss would send him an email about it. Another instance was when he bought a car and couldn’t go pick it up for three weeks because of the job.
Forex simulated Trading Transition
After getting sent home in April because of pandemic, plus hearing rumors that he was going to get furloughed or let go from his job, Usman started his research and found out about crypto trading. He invested about five thousand dollars in Bitcoin, and random coins at Binance and made about four thousand dollars. Because of this, Usman was ecstatic and wanted to learn more about trading. First, he bought the most expensive course available which was about $1300 because he believed it was going to help him become more profitable. He was dedicating about six to seven hours a day to study the course, but he proceeded to lose thirty thousand dollars on some Binance futures. However, he didn’t give up. He knew his only other option was going back to his old job, but he didn’t want that.
Usman made a switch to Forex in August of 2020 and spent literally all of his waking hours learning Forex simulated trading and market structure. He also bought a course every week despite people’s opinions and was able to learn a lot from it which he believes helped in making him the trader that he is today. At first, he started to get fed up because he was missing risk management and psychology but over time, he was able to improve this.
First Funded Forex Payout
In January of 2021, Usman decided he was going to give simulated trading one more try and if it didn’t work out, he was going to accept his fate and try doing some other kind of online business. That month, he tried one of the FTMO challenges, followed all his rules, followed risk management and everything that he could possibly do right and thankfully, he got funded with FTMO in March of 2021 and got his first payout of $2800. The next month he got an $8000 payout and then started to understand the mistakes he had been making that weren’t making things work out for him. That summer in July, Usman also made $30,000 with FTMO and got interviewed by them.
Old things are passed away
The first thing Usman did after getting paid was to buy a new iPhone. That summer in August, he took some of his money and flew out to Bolivia, South America to meet a friend who he had been friends with online and had been simulated trading with. They had an amazing time and he came back the following Monday. When he got back, he got an email from his boss saying they looked over his work and needed to have a meeting with him because he hadn’t really been doing anything for three months. The meeting was meant to be at 10 o’clock but by 9:45, he happily sent in his resignation letter explaining how he had been working as a full-time day trader. Before quitting his job, he had a lot of indecision, but he overcame it because he knew he was already getting profitable and he was tired of getting reprimanded.
Newly found Forex community and Forex Strategy
Usman gave a big shout out to the simulated trading LP community; his mentorship program, where they had over 300 students and more than a 100 funded students with majority in TFT. Usman believes his group was one
of the only groups with so many funded traders. One thing he teaches his students is that people eventually get good at trading. There’s that form of intuition where it’s almost like you know when you’ve seen something before and also how to approach it.
Usman’s strategy depends on supply and demand. When he became a full-time Trader, it was like a snowball effect. His simulated trading was getting better, he was making more profit, he was more consistent. The strategy he was able to come up with was shaped from taking tons of courses. He was able to pick little pieces out of every single thing like timeframes and market structure which helped him determine what worked and what didn’t. He called this his confluence list but eventually he created something called A+ setup which he introduced to his program which literally helps to achieve a 70-80% win rate in his Discord community.
He says there’s a big difference in going from part-time to full time because you’re no longer limited to simulated trading at super small hours of the day that you get before or after work. You have a greater opportunity to trade throughout the entire day and the opportunities just keep coming.
Although as simple as it sounds, Usman didn’t wake up one day and became magically profitable. The real buildup was the hard work that was put in during these years which people don’t see. Times of not sleeping and times of people thinking you have a gambling problem.
Forex simulated Trading Wins & Losses
Usman has won a lot of challenges this year and he even made a video where he showed a total of 100K withdrawal in different prop firms. He has gotten to the stage where even if he loses a challenge or an account, it’s no big deal because all he has to do is wait for A+ setup, wait for the right time and moment and the account will be back with the money made again.
There was a time he lost $18,000 in one day from his personal account which would have probably made him depressed but with the support of his community he was able to get over it fast. He had lost the money on Thursday/ Friday but by Monday morning, one of his students shared a trade on EUR/CHF and he was able to make $32,000 back that same Monday.
Forex Strategy Insights
Sharing his screen and explaining his supply and demand strategy that he trades and teaches, Usman talked about his A+ setup and the last trade he took that was successful. It was one on CAD/JPY even though he doesn’t like simulated trading CAD. He was not on a low time frame but he saw an area of supply and followed something in his system called a “final destination”. He knew the market will eventually come
down because there’s always an imbalance at that point so when he saw the market pull back at what he calls the “three-pin pattern”.
His main entry gives him two to three R but then he scales in multiple time to increase the overall risk to reward. The way he made fifteen thousand dollars was not because he wins every trade but just because he’s able to capitalize on that one trade that he wins. He just scales in and in and in and it just makes him a ton of money. He says for a good month for him is usually a win rate of like 40-45%. Using another trade instance that he took on EUR/CHF, the main thing was for the overall trend to be down.
Usman also uses a tool that people may not know about called the Forex Sentiment tool. This tool tells you what retail traders are doing in the moment and it was connected to MyFxBook. He would go to EUR/CHF and see what the majority of the people were doing- either buying or selling. Also knowing that most of the
people lose money in the market, his strategy was to rather do what the majority of people were not doing. i.e. taking the opposite side. Usman doesn’t really pay attention to fundamentals, and he does not like to hold positions for more than 12 hours. He tries to get in as soon as he can and then if he makes 2R he’s done.
Forex simulated Trading Pairs & Routine
Usman’s routine is typically to get up around 6am in the morning and trade the New York session which he loves doing. He doesn’t know why but New York has worked so well for him. Although he gets up at 6am in the morning, he just looks through the charts, responds to DMs and doesn’t place a trade until 8: 30 am when the New York opens because he feels it gets manipulated.
Usman loves simulated trading all the AUD pairs and the CHF pairs. He then goes to where he sees the best opportunity and sets alerts on the chart and goes about his day doing other things like working on other projects, YouTube and one-on-one with his community. Every hour he comes back to check if anything has already happened. He does his simulated trading in a pre-planned manner waiting for price action and for areas to get hit.
First Forex Funded payout and simulated Trading Psychology
The first payout Usman got from The Funder Trader program was $15,338 which was about 21 000 in Canadian dollars since he’s in Canada. This was how much he would make at his old job in five months of 40 hours a week.
Tori talked about how psychology comes with experience and how you basically get to learn it as you go but she wanted to know Usman’s perspective on it. In terms of psychology, Usman says you’ll be over leveraging if you’re simulated trading an account that’s too big or simulated trading a challenge that you cannot afford to lose more than five times in a row. This is something that messes up your psychology if you lose. Imagine losing a trade at 8:30 in the morning, all you’d want to do is close your computer because you’d be done for that day.
However, you need to let your brain rest and ‘reset’. You can give it 12 hours to just calm down, go for a walk or even catch up on some hobbies. The psychology will automatically improve
when you’re risking only 1% and using your best setup for it.
Advice to other Forex Traders
The three things that Usman believes would help traders are having the right strategy, proper risk management and focusing on the process. Another thing which he also likes to tell his students is funding can change your life, but it can also ruin you. It’s important to find a strategy that matches your personality; could be scalping, intraday or even swing trading.
You also need to perfect your risk management skills because no one has control over the markets. To be a good trader, you have to be a good risk manager. If you can’t control your risk, it’s already game over for you. Learn to take smaller challenges and to go slow. The prop firms aren’t going anywhere so there’s no rush. Usman takes all of this very seriously because it’s his living. Trading is what changed his life, what allowed him not to go back to his old job and what allowed him to travel the world.
