Whatever stain you dragged in today, ego leaks, FOMO splatter, hesitation smudges, or that stop-loss you placed so generously it qualified as humanitarian aid 🫡 toss it in the basket. This is where traders de-grease their brains 🧠, disinfect their delusion, and figure out why their PnL looks like a crime scene.

Because let’s be honest:

In here, we don’t judge, we’ve scrubbed every stain in the book📕. However, if you keep showing up with the same stains, we’ll know who’s been taking the pegs.😯🧺

The gun goes off. Liquidity stops drifting and starts repricing fast.

When the market finally escapes a range with real intent, you get violent moves: imbalanced candles, skipped levels, shallow or nonexistent pullbacks, and trapped traders fuelling every leg. Expansion is where accounts explode upward — or implode instantly.

1️⃣ Imbalance Continuation - Enter on micro pullbacks inside the displaced move. You’re trading strength, not mean reversion.

2️⃣ First Pullback After the Expansion Candle - Highest-probability entry of the entire market cycle. if you miss it — don’t chase late.

3️⃣ Break → Retest → Go (only when clean) - Shallow retest + immediate continuation = expansion. Deep retest = not expansion.

Professionals follow momentum.Retail fights it.

Each week we’ll show the many ways prop firms tilt the odds in their favour. This week we dive into the biggest mind game of all …

Everyone loves saying, “I’ve got a $100K account.”
But if you had a real $100K and risked $1,000 per trade, you could eat 100 full losses before blowing the account.

Now compare that to a prop “$100K” account…. It comes with a Max drawdown of around $6,000 and Profit target $12,000

So you’re not trading a $100,000 account, You’re trading a $6,000 account wearing a $100K costume. Apply the $1,000 risk per trade and you’ll be crying into your Cheerios after only 6 losses. What’s the probabilities of six losses in a row? out of 100 trades it’s 50%.

To survive the drawdown rules, you can’t risk $1,000 a trade like a real $100K account, scale down and set a cap at:

➡️ 0.25% per trade = $250 risk
➡️ Targeting $500 reward (1:2 RR)

Why so small? Because one oversized loss doesn’t blow the trade — it blows the challenge.

To pass the typical $12,000 profit target on a 1:2 RR

At a 50% win rate, a win/loss pair nets you ➡️ +$250. So:

👉 You need ~96 disciplined trades just to pass a “$100K” challenge at a 50% win rate. Not five bangers, Not one “home run, Almost one hundred clean, consistent, small-risk trades.

A real $100K account gives you room to be wrong 100 times.
A prop $100K account gives you room to be wrong 24 times (at –$250 risk).

That’s the gap nobody talks about — and why prop trading requires discipline at a level most retail traders have never practiced.

Overlooking red-folder news carries the same level of regret as misjudging a post-vindaloo fart. Just dont do it🍛

Markets spent the week front-running a Fed cut now priced at ~85%. Every dip got scooped, every headline got spun dovish. S&P pushed a higher high, Nasdaq followed, and the VIX slid to 15.41 — fear left the chat. However If Powell doesn’t double down on a full easing path, expect sharp whipsaws. The reversal risk is brutal. 🎢

NQ1! kissed VAH 25,788 and stretched 450+ pts above VWAP (25,250) (Anchored to the low) — classic pre-FOMC mean reversion vibes.

Trend still 🔼 but PCR 1.5–3.8 = hedged up.

December is usually green ✔️ but VIX 15–18 = chop city.

🟦Base Case (65–75%) - Pullback → POC 25,622 → shallow VWAP tap → FOMC bounce → 25,800+.“Sell the news” risk low with 86% cut odds.

🟩Breakout (20%) - 4H close > 25,788 → 26,000 magnet 🎯 …but gamma walls = don’t chase blindly.

🟥Bear Trap (10–15%) - Hawkish shock → VWAP loss → flush 25,100 → put hedges ignite. ⚡

“NQ just replayed the 2021 script 📼 almost bar-for-bar — three drives, exhaustion pop, rollover signature. If this symmetry holds, this isn’t a dip… it’s history warming up for an encore 🔁.”

It’s Sunday Therapy: the only room where blown accounts become educational content.

1. “I Forgot It Was FOMC Day… My Account Did Not.” 📉⏱️

“I stepped away from my ES long for two minutes. A quick delivery at the door — nothing more. When I returned, it looked like Powell had run a controlled demolition through my position. One expansion candle slipped straight through my stop and erased $18,000 instantly.A sharp reminder that news events don’t wait for you… and they don’t forgive distractions.”

2. “I Copied a Twitter Trader. He Deleted the Tweet.” 🐦⚠️💸

“A well-known trader on Twitter announced he was ‘sizing in heavily’ on a breakout. I followed with my $12k account, assuming he saw something meaningful. Five minutes later, the breakout collapsed — and his tweet vanished without comment. I was left holding a $4,500 loss on a trade he had clearly abandoned. Borrowed conviction is rarely conviction at all.”

3. “The Overnight Hold That Held Me Hostage” 🌙📲📉

“I broke a core rule and held overnight because the setup looked exceptional. At 3:14 AM my phone exploded with alerts: the market had gapped straight through my stop. Low liquidity meant the fill was nearly $9,000 worse than planned. There’s no feeling quite like watching an entire week’s work vanish before sunrise.”

4. “Revenge-Traded My Way Out of a Funded Account” 🤦‍♂️🔥💼

“I was down $600 on a funded challenge — nothing catastrophic. But instead of stopping, I tried to win it back immediately. Lost $1,200, then $2,000, then breached every drawdown rule within 47 minutes. The account was gone long before the emotions cooled. Revenge trading doesn’t correct errors… it compounds them.”

Have your own confirmed therapy story? Email it in & if we publish it we’ll send you some Laundry Room Merch👊🏼