How Karim Went From Nothing to 7 Performance Fees in Year One, Then Lost It All and Came Back

Karim (London, 20) made 7 performance fees in his first year of prop trading on Alpha Capital - 10% on a 10K account, 20%+ on a 5K account, consistent 10% cycles on a 50K account. Before his 20th birthday he lost everything when his little brother accessed his phone and blew two accounts. After two to three weeks off to reset mentally, he came back. He moved onto Alpha Futures, passed on the first cycle, made 5.8K (10%) on a 50K account, and is now trading both platforms simultaneously while studying to become a broker.

Watch the full interview on the Alpha Capital YouTube channel

Coming from nothing

Karim does not dress his background up. He grew up in London in an area where, in his words, people come from nothing and not many make it out. His mother raised him alone - his father lives in Cyprus, they split when Karim was young. His mother could not afford the rent. She could not afford school trips. She played both roles and did everything she could.

"I've genuinely like now found myself more as a person. Trading helped me just bring my discipline and the way I think about everything. Complete different mindset to how I first came. If I looked at myself three years ago compared to where I am now, complete different person."

He was 16 or 17 when he found crypto. Meme coins, Shiba Inu, the usual early entry. He was not taking it seriously - he just wanted something different from the life he was in. The lifestyle he was involved in before trading is something he is open about without going into detail. He wanted a change. He wanted to do something with his life.

Trading gave him the framework to build it.

The first firm that paid him half

Before Alpha Capital, Karim spent his first three months with a different prop firm. He blew a few accounts early, which he puts down to not understanding the difference in risk management between prop firm rules and standard live trading.

"When I got my payout, it was meant to be a $1,000 payout. They emailed me saying, 'Sorry, you decided to close your trade during a speech. Here is the deducted amount.' They gave me $500. I was thinking, I'm meant to be getting a $1,000 performance fee. You've given me $500."

His advice on picking a firm comes directly from this experience: go to the UK Government website, find the registration, check what kind of business it is registered as. Alpha Capital is there. That other company had a completely different setup - one name on the registration, one man behind it.

"If you do the research about Alpha Capital, you go on to the UK Gov website. You find the registration. You see what business type they are. Loads of different prop firms have to be regulated - especially if you're from the UK. If it looks too good to be true, don't go for it."

He used that $500 partial payment to buy his first Alpha Capital account.

Year one: 7 performance fees

His first Alpha Capital cycle: 10% on a 10K account. He was risking a little more at that stage, and he knew it. But the percentage held.

After a month of struggle, he bought a 5K account and made over 20% - $1.1K. That trade made Alpha Capital's Trade of the Week on Instagram. He was not thinking about the dollar amount. He was thinking about the percentage.

"Where a lot of people go wrong, when they're in a trade, they look at it as: I want to make $2,000. I say, if you're on a 100K account, sorry brother, that's 2%. Don't look at it as money."

He compounded. The 5K cycle rolled into a 50K account. Another 10%. Then another 10%. By the end of his first year of prop trading, he had made 7 performance fees - more than one a month.

"I'm doing something that clearly these guys are not spotting. You must be doing something different."

He knew the streak was irregular. He did not get complacent because of it. Instead, he took note of it and kept his risk the same.

The day his little brother blew two accounts

Just before his 20th birthday, Karim lost everything.

His little brother got onto his phone. Two accounts gone.

He does not blame his brother. He takes full responsibility for not having his accounts protected. But the psychological weight of it - compounded by his family already thinking he was gambling, two, three years of their doubt playing on a loop in the back of his mind - hit hard.

"It was not just about losing the accounts. It was my family's voice in the back of my head saying, 'Oh, you're gambling. You're doing this. You're doing that.' Are they right? Are they not? What do I want?"

He took two to three weeks away. He did not rush back to the charts. He just let himself process it.

"I had to say to myself: do you really want this? Not what other people want. Is that what you want?"

The answer was yes. He had made nearly 10 performance fees in his first year. That is not a run of luck. That is evidence of an edge.

"I was like, this was meant to happen. Either God's testing me or something's happening. This is just the start."

Rebuilding on Alpha Futures

Once Karim decided to come back, he made a move: Alpha Futures had a 40% discount running. He bought an account.

"I said, I've got nothing to lose. I'm going to go straight for it. I'm going to see how futures work out."

He blew the first account. That is not failure - that is the learning cost of switching from CFD to futures. The instruments are the same. The execution is entirely different: contracts instead of lots, spreads instead of the CFD model, the consistency rule in place. It took him a cycle to calibrate.

Then he passed. Made 5.8K - another 10% - on a 50K Alpha Futures account. He withdrew, leaving a buffer in the account to protect himself from the trailing drawdown.

"When you do get a performance fee, it's a trailing stop - you're recommended to leave money in there as a buffer. So you don't just hit out. Which I think is amazing for you guys to even mention that to people. A lot of other firms are not going to mention that."

He is now trading both Alpha Capital (CFD side) and Alpha Futures simultaneously. His target is full maximum allocation on the Futures side.

How he actually trades

Karim's system is built on ICT concepts adapted into his own structure. He does not use every concept - he picked the ones that work for him.

• The framework he uses daily: AMD - Accumulation, Manipulation, Distribution. Three phases he marks on the chart before every session. He says this alone separates traders who understand what is happening intraday from those reacting to noise. "AMD - you can use it on any timeframe, on every session. It genuinely helps you mark out what's going on for the day, the week, even the month. It always shows you what's going on."
• Time frames: He starts on the daily and 4H for trend direction and weekly bias, then drops to the 1H and 15-minute for setup, then the 5-minute for refinement, and executes on the 1-minute for precision. "I jump to the lower time frame to look more for my entry. Then I'll use the one minute to execute so I can get a more precise position."
• Stop losses: His stop is based on the 1-hour structure, not on the entry time frame. He calls this out explicitly as one of the most common mistakes he sees. "Stop losses around your entry method - that's total noise. You're going to get whipped out every time."
• Trade limits: Two to three trades per day. One position open at a time. If all three do not hit, he walks away from the laptop and gives himself a couple of hours before reviewing. "I've had three winning trades. My friends say come on, one more. I'm done for the day. I don't need anything else. Because if you're doing two to three trades a day risking 1%, that's 3% maximum. If that was five, six, seven trades - it all adds up."
• Favourite instrument: Gold. He acknowledges it is volatile - 50 pip 1-minute candles are not unusual in the current environment. But he says if you can actually trade gold, you are forced to have solid risk management. The volatility that punishes undisciplined traders is the same volatility that creates clean setups.
• Fundamentals: He combines technical and macro. He makes the point directly: "If you don't understand what's going on in the general world, you're not going to know what's going on on the charts. You've got a president releasing a meme coin and rugging everybody. If you don't understand that, you're not reading the chart correctly."

On forward testing vs back testing

Karim prefers live forward testing over back testing. His reason is psychological, not technical.

"With paper trading - let's be honest. You've probably done it. You overrisk on paper compared to what you actually would on your real account. Because you know deep down mentally it's paper. Even if you're still risking the same, you just don't care if it hits or doesn't."

He does not dismiss backtesting entirely. But he believes live testing with real pressure - even on a small evaluation account - builds a different kind of confidence than replaying historical data.

He is reading Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas for the psychological side. His advice to every new trader: pair technical study with psychology study. Learn them at the same time.

On why he stayed with Alpha

He has used TopStep. He has used Apex Trader Funding. His assessment of them is short.

"No support. I don't know who I'm talking to. I'm not even talking to anybody."

He describes Alpha differently - community, transparency, and genuine responsiveness from the team.

He gives two specific examples:

The first: he was on holiday and could not place a stop loss on an account. He contacted Ben. He was given a refund with no issue.

"Obviously there was an issue more on my end. But Ben said, 'We can see what you're trying to do.' If I went to any other firm, they would have laughed and said, 'We've got your money. You're not getting it back.'"

The second: a friend forgot to sign their contract and missed the payout window. Alpha Futures gave them a free account.

"No other firm would have even entertained that conversation."

Alpha Prime

Karim is open about wanting to be considered for Alpha Prime. He is studying to become a broker, and he sees the two paths as connected rather than competing.

"Something like Alpha Prime puts me in a position for what I'm currently studying. There's a great overlap. You can be your natural self. And the experience you build there - you can't get that anywhere else easily."

What he tells traders starting from nothing

Karim closes with three things he would tell any trader who is where he was two years ago.

One: Think in percentages, not money.

"If your mindset is about money, when it goes against you, you panic. You start chopping yourself at the wrong size. If you think in percentages, it is consistent. It is manageable."

Two: Do not overtrade.

Two to three trades per day. Max. Know your number before the session starts and stick to it. Discipline is not what you feel in the moment. It is the rule you set when you were thinking clearly.

Three: Do not give up after losses.

"I've come from genuinely nothing. Lost everything, more than once. But I've made 10 performance fees. I know what I'm doing works. If you know you have an edge, losses are part of the process. Not proof that you should stop."

He ends with one image that stays in the mind:

"Usain Bolt didn't become the fastest runner overnight. Mo Farah didn't become a long-distance runner overnight. Cristiano Ronaldo didn't become the best footballer overnight. It takes time. Take your time. You haven't got to get there in one shot."

FAQs

What trading strategy does Karim use?

Karim uses an ICT-based system centred on AMD - Accumulation, Manipulation, Distribution. He marks this structure on any time frame across all three major sessions. His top-down process starts on the daily and 4H for bias, drops to the 1H and 15-minute for setup, refines on the 5-minute, and executes on the 1-minute. His stop losses are set at the 1-hour level, not around the entry time frame. He trades gold and US indices, London open to New York close, with a maximum of two to three trades per day.

How did Karim make 7 performance fees in his first year?

Karim built a repeatable system around percentage-based risk management, kept his position size at 1% per trade, capped himself at two to three trades per day, and compounded steadily from a 10K account to a 5K account to a 50K account. He did not chase large returns. He targeted 2-10% per cycle consistently. He credits thinking in percentages rather than money amounts as the mindset shift that made him more profitable.

What is the difference between trading CFDs and futures on a prop firm evaluation?

Karim trades both. On CFDs (Alpha Capital), the mechanics are familiar to most forex traders - spread-based, lots. On futures (Alpha Futures), execution is contract-based with fixed pricing and no spread in the traditional sense. The consistency rule applies differently, and contracts (full contracts vs micros) require calibration. Karim blew his first Alpha Futures account learning the execution model, which he treats as the expected cost of learning a new structure - not failure.

What book does Karim recommend for trading psychology?

Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas. He describes it as essential for understanding dopamine responses in trading, why emotional decision-making leads to recurring mistakes, and how to build a mindset that treats every trade as a process rather than a result. He recommends reading four to five pages daily rather than trying to finish it in one sitting.

How do you pick a trustworthy prop firm?

Karim's approach: go to the UK Government Companies House website and look up the firm. Check what business type they are registered as, whose name the registration is under, and how the company is structured. A legitimate prop firm will have a clean, transparent registration. The firm he left before Alpha Capital had a registration that immediately raised red flags. He also checks Trustpilot and community channels before buying any evaluation.

What is Alpha Prime?

Alpha Prime is the professional trading programme inside the Alpha Group. Qualified Traders who have demonstrated consistent, verified performance across their simulated evaluation accounts are considered for selection. It operates with different parameters to standard evaluations and is designed for traders ready to move into a more professional trading environment. Karim has expressed interest in Alpha Prime as part of his longer-term path toward working in the trading industry as a broker.

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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 .