Louie (Essex, 30) spent 10 years on the railway before quitting to trade. He lost £10–15K on his first day home, cycled through three years of paid mentorships without profitability, gained nearly 4 stone sitting at a screen, and reached suicidal lows. He rebuilt by pulling away from every community and strategy he had tried, backtesting his own mechanical system alone, and tying his trading discipline to daily gym discipline. He passed with MyForexFunds and reached a £100K qualified account - then they collapsed for £310 million overnight. He received nothing back. He found Alpha Capital, joined the ACG F1 event, and has made £47,000 in performance fees since. He is now on a 200K account.
Watch the full interview on the Alpha Capital YouTube channel
Ten years on the railway, then one Instagram notification
Louie left school and went straight onto the railway. That was all he knew. Night shifts, no security, met some good people, but no future in it. He was one step away from the top of site for his age - young for that level - but he was earning some days his week's wages, other days his month's wages, and he hated every minute of it.
COVID gave him the break. He had time off. He was not looking for trading. He started exercising, put in his headphones, and an Instagram notification came in. Someone asking if he knew about Forex Trading. He thought it was a scam. He clicked on it anyway.
"I looked into it, started seeing that you can potentially make money. Thought to myself, I'll give it a go."
The first three years that followed: paid mentorships, signal services, courses, gurus, one more bootcamp, one more promised edge. None of it worked.
"Three years. Paying for education. Following everything people were telling me to do. No consistency, no profitability."
He went back to the railway for six months. Started making real money trading on the side. Told everyone at work. They told him he was stupid to quit. He quit.
The day he got home: lost between £10,000 and £15,000 on his personal account in one session. A year's money gone.
"That killed me. I've just quit a decent job. I've just done this. And now this."
From that day forward: prop firms only. No personal account, ever again.
The dark years
What followed was three years of jumping from firm to firm, mentor to mentor, strategy to strategy. He was failing £200K FTMO evaluations - each one cost £1,000. He was buying another one the same day he failed.
He gained nearly four stone. He would sit at the laptop through the night, his girlfriend would leave for work in the morning, come home at 8pm, and he would still be at the screen. He had not been outside. He had not moved.
"I was addicted to the charts. I couldn't get off them for the life of me."
The psychological low was as dark as it gets.
"I was suicidal. I was depressed. I felt like I'd made the wrong decision. Everyone was right."
He is open about this because he still gets messages in his Discord from people in that place, and he writes back paragraphs every time.
"When I started to be hopping about from this strategy to that strategy, things got that bad. Which is now why when I get messages from people on Discord, I open up and tell them as much as I can. To stop them going through what I went through."
He kept one thing alive: the belief that there was a way through it. Trading is not irrational. There is a plan behind it. It is statistically provable. It is backed by data. He had not found it yet, but it existed. That was enough to keep him going.
The reset
Near the end of year three, the money had run out. A close friend offered him two to three days a week helping with a house renovation - pay his bills in exchange for the work. No formal job. Kept him out of the house, kept him sane, and kept him trading on the side.
He paid £2,000 for another course. Still nothing.
Then he went to Spain at Christmas to see his dad. His dad, the most risk-averse person he knows, had supported him the entire way through without Louie even telling him how deep it had gone. He told his dad the plan. His dad backed him with the money to focus for a full year.
He wrote down everything he was going to change. No smoking. No drinking. Gym every single day. Fruit drinks and water only. No takeaways. No lunch.
He kept every single one for six months.
"As soon as I started going to the gym and being consistent - I started being consistent with my trading. People say, if you can't be disciplined in other areas of your life, how are you going to be disciplined on the chart. It is so true."
The other change was bigger: he walked away from every community, mentorship, YouTube strategy, and course he had ever touched.
"I pulled myself away from all of it. Everything I'd seen on YouTube, I'd tested. None of them are consistent. None of them are doing what they say."
He started building his own strategy from scratch. No models. No gurus. Just the chart, his observations, and a rigorous backtesting process.
"To backtest one pair for one year - that takes me at least a week. Going on TradingView, marking repeatable processes I've seen work, testing whether they actually work, putting it into numbers. Win rate. Consistency."
The £100K account. The Friday morning. The collapse.
He passed with MyForexFunds. Made a few performance fees. Then got their £100,000 account. He was 3-4% up. He was at his peak.
One Friday morning, 6am. He sat down at the laptop. Opened MT4. No data. Just the midnight candle sitting there. He thought it was a technical issue. Refreshed. Checked settings. Tried everything. Then opened the internet and typed it in.
MyForexFunds had collapsed for £310 million.
"I thought: you've got to be joking me."
He received nothing back. Not a single pound. Five years of working towards that account - gone in a paragraph on a news site.
He called his dad expecting him to say it was always a scam. His dad said nothing of the sort.
"He's the most risk-averse person you'll meet. But he wasn't against it. He supported me the whole way through."
Finding Alpha Capital
The person who introduced Louie to Alpha Capital was someone he had met in a trading community. They met up in London and went to the ACG F1 event together.
Louie looked into the company properly before joining.
"UK-based company. Looked into it. Liked what I saw."
What he actually saw: no commissions. Clean trading conditions unlike anything he had experienced before. He opened a simulated account on day one and tested the conditions. Not one issue.
He joined the Discord. Alex was active. Questions were being answered. In four months with Alpha Capital, he had not experienced a single problem.
"With other companies - if you're making a few trades a day, you experience a problem a few times a day. With Alpha, I've experienced no problems."
He also had an issue once with an account where he was on holiday and could not manage things properly. Alex was there.
"I can ring Alex anytime. That's not what you get from other firms. You email them. You get an automated reply."
Since joining Alpha Capital, he has made £47,000 in performance fees. He is now on a 200K account.
How he actually trades
The system Louie runs today is the opposite of who he was five years ago. Then, he wanted to scalp, be in and out fast, react to everything. Now, most days he does not even open his laptop.
The night before: He marks up the charts the evening before. Identifies which pairs he wants to watch the next day from the 29 Forex pairs he monitors.
The morning: He wakes at 6:30. Checks his phone for alerts. If no alert, he does not open the laptop. Gym. Family. Dinner. Same again.
"Most days I won't even turn my laptop on."
When an alert fires: He moves to the next stage of his process. Sets a limit order. Maximum five to ten minutes of actual chart time.
Risk: Half a percent per trade. He will not enter a trade that does not offer at least a 1:2 risk-reward. Many of his trades go to 1:5, 1:6, 1:7.
Win rate: 50% or above. He is clear that this is mathematically sufficient - provided the risk-reward holds.
"If I'm running a 50% win rate with a minimum 1:2 risk-reward, it is almost impossible to lose over time unless I deviate from the system. The only way I lose is if I move my stop loss."
Higher time frames only: After years of backtesting, he moved away from anything low time frame.
"Higher time frames hold the weight. They're consistent. There's less chance of making emotional decisions. Stay away from lower time frames."
The data removes the decision: Every trade in his system is mechanical. There is no discretion. If the setup is there, he enters. If it is not, there is nothing to decide. He can hold a position in £4,000 profit at 10am and not close it early - because his data tells him not to.
"I've had people trading for years tell me: why aren't you closing it? You're crazy. And I'm thinking, you're insane. You've got your data. Let the trade work."
The psychology cost of external pressure
Louie is honest about where he is now. His nan has had cancer for five years - told she had weeks left multiple times. Since her condition worsened, it has affected his trading in a way nothing else has. Not his strategy - his psychology. Moving stop losses. Not being present. Opening the laptop compulsively with nothing to do on it.
"I've had my psychology nailed for so long. I thought nothing could break me. And then real life hit harder than the chart ever did."
He missed two trades - 2% on his account, roughly £4,000 - when he got the call that his nan had fallen. He drove straight to her. Family first. But something about missing those two trades triggered a psychological spiral that his discipline alone could not immediately correct.
He is working through it. He knows exactly what he needs to do - he even knows while he is doing the wrong thing that it is wrong. That is what five years of building a system gives you: the awareness, even when execution temporarily falls short.
His advice on this:
"You've got something that's proven it works. If you deviate from it, even once - everything you went through to build it becomes worthless. Every hardship, every loss, every year of work. Worthless. Because you moved your stop loss."
The money is not lost
One reframe from Louie that shifts how you look at every loss:
"I don't see losing a percent as losing money. Number one, it is not my money - so I cannot lose it. Number two, the money is never lost. It is in the market. It is just not your turn to take it yet. You have to wait for your turn."
This is not toxic positivity. It is a structural view of prop trading. The evaluation model protects your own capital. Your performance fees come from your results, not your deposits. A losing day on a simulated account is a data point - not a destruction.
What he tells traders starting out
Louie does not sell courses. He does not teach. He trades so that he does not have to work. That is the point for him. But he is consistent about what he tells traders who message him on Discord:
Do your own thing. "Do your own thing. Do your own thing. Do your own thing. Look at a chart. Test what you see. Build data. You don't need to pay anyone to give you an edge. The edge is yours to find."
Consistency off the chart builds consistency on it. "As soon as I started slipping in the gym, my trading started to slip. It is the same discipline. If you cannot hold yourself to a standard outside the charts, you will not hold yourself to one inside them."
Use the naysayers as fuel. "I had everyone telling me I was stupid to quit the railway. I have not spoken to most of them since. None of them would have a clue I trade. This interview is the first time people are going to find out. Use it all. Use every no. Use every person who doubted you."
Know your maximum consecutive losses. "The most I have experienced on my strategy is a seven to eight loss streak. That does not bother me. I know my win rate is 50%. It is mathematically not abnormal to take 15 consecutive losses with a 50% win rate. If you have the data, you can sit through it."
FAQs
What happened when MyForexFunds collapsed?
MyForexFunds was a prop trading firm that was shut down in 2023 after regulatory action related to alleged fraud. Louie had built up to a £100,000 qualified account with them and was 3-4% up when the firm collapsed overnight. He received nothing back. Many thousands of traders around the world lost their qualifying positions in the same event. This is why Louie now emphasises doing due diligence on any firm before buying an evaluation - checking their UK registration, business type, and community transparency.
How do you pick a trustworthy prop firm?
Louie checks UK Companies House before joining any prop firm. He looks at the business registration type, who the company is registered under, and how the structure is set up. A legitimate UK-registered firm will have a clean, transparent registration. The firm he previously had success with before Alpha Capital failed these checks in retrospect. Alpha Capital Group is UK-registered, has an active Discord with direct engagement from the team, and has not had a single trading conditions issue in Louie's four months of activity.
What is a mechanical trading strategy?
A mechanical strategy removes discretion entirely. There is no decision about whether to take a trade - if the setup is there, you enter; if it is not, you do nothing. Louie's system is fully mechanical: he sets alerts on 29 Forex pairs the night before, checks his phone in the morning, and only opens his laptop when an alert fires. The entry, stop loss, and take profit are all pre-defined. The result is that his maximum chart time is five to ten minutes per day.
How many Forex pairs should a trader watch?
Louie watches 29 Forex pairs. He disagrees with the common advice to focus on one pair only.
"If you've got 29 options, why are you not going to take advantage of the best ones when they set up? You will drive yourself insane trying to force setups on one pair when your strategy is only showing on another."
How do you stay disciplined on a losing streak?
Louie's answer is data. He knows his win rate is 50%+. He knows that seven to eight consecutive losses are not abnormal with that win rate - it is mathematically within expectation. When he has that data in front of him, a losing streak is not a sign that his edge is broken. It is a statistical event he already prepared for. Without the data, the same losing streak feels like a reason to give up. With it, it is just noise.
What is the ACG F1 event?
Alpha Capital Group hosted an F1 event that brought together traders and members of the ACG community. Louie attended the event with a friend he had met online. It was the moment he was introduced to Alpha Capital Group as a prop firm, and he joined the platform shortly after.
Start your Alpha Capital evaluation. The community Louie describes is there from day one.
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Alpha Capital Group is a proprietary trading firm based in the United Kingdom. All accounts operate in a simulated trading environment with simulated funds. Performance fees are based on eligible simulated trading results and outcomes are not guaranteed. Trader results described in this interview reflect individual experience and are not forecasts or guarantees for future traders. Always confirm current rules, eligibility, and pricing at alphacapitalgroup.uk and help.alphacapitalgroup.uk .
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