Trader interview. Saad's results are self-reported from a January 2026 interview. Related reading: how prop firm trading works, choose a trading style, how many Evaluation attempts are normal, passing an Evaluation without rebuilding the strategy, why traders fail Evaluations, more trader interviews.
Quick answer: In an Alpha Group Podcast interview published on 8 January 2026, Glasgow trader Saad said he had been trading for about 11 to 12 months. He described a rule-based 5-minute index process, five years of manual backtesting, and more than £7,000 in self-reported Alpha Capital performance fees. Those figures are his account of his own results. They are not typical and they are not a guarantee.
TL;DR: Saad is a Glasgow trader with a business degree and a banking background. When this interview was recorded he had been trading for roughly 11 to 12 months. He started with forex signals, deposited savings into a brokerage, and lost them, then moved to prop firm Evaluations and a systematic index strategy. He trades German 30, NASDAQ, and Nikkei 225 on separate accounts, on a 5-minute chart, with what he calls zero discretion. On Qualified Accounts he says he risks 1% per trade. That risk figure is his choice, not an Alpha Capital rule.
This page summarises what Saad told the Alpha Group Podcast in From New Trader to £7,000+ in Performance Fees in Under a Year, a 31-minute interview uploaded on 8 January 2026. The 11-month timeline is as of that recording, not as of the date this article was published.
Saad trader profile
| Detail | What he reported in the January 2026 interview |
|---|---|
| Name | Saad |
| Location | Glasgow, United Kingdom |
| Experience at the interview | About 11 to 12 months |
| Background | Business degree; previously Santander; working in banking and fintech at Monzo at interview time |
| Learning route | He says he was self-taught and does not mention a paid course |
| Early mistakes | Forex signals, oversized crude-oil exposure, revenge trading |
| Markets | German 30 (DAX), NASDAQ, and Nikkei 225 |
| Earlier market | Gold, before he narrowed to three indices |
| Chart | 5-minute only. He says he does not use a higher-time-frame filter |
| Trading window | About 6:00 a.m. to market close |
| Style | Systematic, rule-based, zero discretion in his description |
| Indicators he named | STC and a UTbot alert |
| Backtesting | Five years of manual testing on TradingView Premium, logged in Notion |
| Risk on Evaluations | Static, and heavier than on Qualified Accounts, in his account of it |
| Risk on Qualified Accounts | 1% per trade, his stated choice |
| Account structure | One index per account, traded one at a time |
| Performance fees | More than £7,000 self-reported. The interview also mentions about $8,000 |
Alpha Capital Evaluations and Qualified Accounts use simulated funds. Performance fees are based on eligible simulated results and are not guaranteed.
Who is Saad?
Saad is a Glasgow trader who said he entered the market roughly 11 months before this interview, after a business degree and a career in banking and finance. Trading appealed because it sat close to the industry he already understood.
At interview time he was working full time in banking and fintech. He does not present trading as his only income. His plan was to keep employment until simulated trading income reached a level he would call life-changing. He warns that a backtest does not guarantee future results, and that quitting a job after one performance fee would be a mistake.
Why did Saad start trading?
He says he wanted money quickly after university, not a long education in markets. Lifestyle content online pushed him toward forex signals and large live deposits.
"I just wanted to make money. Just want to make money. Want to make it now, not tomorrow. I want to make it today."
He later treats that impulse as costly. In his view, trading only works when it is a skill with a delayed payoff. How prop firm trading works explains how Evaluations, drawdown rules, and performance fees differ from depositing into a personal brokerage.
The crude-oil loss
His first live experience was not a small learning account. He says he deposited savings, treated the brokerage like a bank balance, and placed large crude-oil trades without understanding risk.
He describes being up around £3,000 in a day, then roughly £6,000 to £7,000 the next day. He went for a shower and came back to find the position gone. "I was in tears."
That led to redeposits and revenge trading, then to the view that he needed a skill rather than another deposit. The useful point is not that every trader must lose savings. It is that he only changed position size and process after the loss.
How he heard about Alpha Capital
Saad says he switched to prop firms after he ran out of money to keep depositing. He sold personal items to fund more live attempts, then saw Evaluation fees as a smaller upfront cost than reloading a brokerage wallet.
Drawdown limits also forced risk management into the process. He still loses accounts. He presents a failed Evaluation as cheaper than repeated live deposits without a tested process. How many Evaluation attempts are normal puts a single failed account in that wider context.
What was the turning point?
He does not name one date when it clicked. He lists smaller changes:
- Calculating lot size instead of picking a random size
- Manual backtesting across years of data
- Removing discretion from execution
- Treating trading like a business, with fees as costs
"My whole strategy revolves around data."
Once he had a tested system, he argues that psychology should mostly leave the execution. A loss is part of the sample, not a reason to override the plan. That is his view. It is not a claim that emotions disappear.
Why he wants zero discretion
Saad says discretion can work for experienced traders. He does not trust himself to apply it the same way every time. He prefers rules because a losing streak is harder to override, a backtest exists before he trades, and the same process can be repeated on more than one account.
He contrasts a hypothetical higher-return discretionary system with a lower-return systematic one, and chooses the second because he can follow it under pressure. A strategy has to fit the person running it. How to choose a prop firm trading style is a framework for that fit.
Grecko's interview is a different process: macro context, gold scalping, and repetition. It is not the same system.
What markets does Saad trade?
He focuses on three indices, each on its own account:
- German 30 (DAX)
- NASDAQ
- Nikkei 225
He started with gold because it was popular online, then narrowed to these three because his tests and live results were cleaner when each market had its own account. He does not put multiple indices on the same account. That is his workflow, not an Alpha Capital requirement.
Why he talks about different data feeds
Saad says indicator signals paint slightly differently depending on the data feed, so he matches each index to the feed that best fit his backtest. Examples he gave:
- NASDAQ: a CME data feed
- Nikkei 225: a Japanese stock-market data feed
- German 30: an EUREX feed
This is how he refined his own signal system. It is not a rule for every trader, and it is not a statement about which feed Alpha Capital provides.
What is the 5-minute strategy?
He describes a signal-and-confirmation model on the 5-minute chart, with no higher-time-frame filter.
- An STC indicator with a customised setting
- A UTbot alert, which he describes as a moving-average signal with extra conditions
On their own, he says the signals are weak. Together, they are his entry filter. In the example he walked through, a UTbot buy or sell is confirmed by STC moving up while below 25 on the long side. The initial stop in that example sits at the nearest swing low. The first target is around 1:2, then the stop moves to break even. After 1:3, he trails the stop to 1:2, and he showed an example that reached 1:4.
He says he does not use conventional support and resistance. The edge, in his account, is the indicator pair plus trailing logic tested over years. This is not a complete strategy specification and it should not be copied as a signal service.
How he backtested
He manually backtested five years of data on TradingView Premium and logged results in Notion. He writes outcomes down, reviews yearly return by asset, and says he subtracts about 10% from the backtested yearly return to allow for missed setups, news, and execution error. He puts maximum drawdown in testing around 15% to 16%.
He does not replay news events automatically, because he says it would take too long. He discounts the return instead. Passing an Evaluation without rebuilding the strategy covers the opposite habit: changing the system so often that the data stops meaning anything.
What time of day does he trade?
He looks for setups from around 6:00 a.m. until the market close, marks that window on the chart, and ignores signals outside it. If he is asleep, he misses the trade. He is not trying to catch every session. He trades the window his tests support.
How he sizes Evaluations and Qualified Accounts
He says his risk is static. He does not increase size because he feels more confident in one setup.
- On Evaluations he sizes heavier, but still keeps the risk static
- On Qualified Accounts he says he risks 1% per trade
- He is willing to lose an account if the Evaluation fee and earlier performance fees already cover the cost, in his own maths
- He tries to pass or fail an Evaluation within about a week
The 1% figure and the heavier Evaluation size are his choices. They are not Alpha Capital rules. Ajay Morris's interview is a different sizing story: short-term forex, and risk that he changed by account stage.
How he runs more than one account
He no longer uses a trade copier. He runs accounts one at a time and assigns one index to each. If one account is more than about 5% in drawdown, he says he moves to the next. Isolating each index makes it easier to see whether the system or the instrument is the problem. Again, that is his operations choice, not a programme rule.
How much has he reported in performance fees?
Saad self-reports more than £7,000 in Alpha Capital performance fees across roughly 11 months of learning and trading, as of the January 2026 interview. Later in the episode the total is discussed at about $8,000. Pounds and dollars are used interchangeably, so this article treats the exact total as self-reported, not audited.
He describes his first meaningful performance fee as a little over $1,000 from a $100K account. He calls that the biggest emotional point, because it came after the brokerage losses.
All of these figures are personal. They are not typical. They do not mean another trader would see the same result. Simulated trading results do not reflect live trading outcomes.
How he requests a performance fee
He says he waits for a closed trade that followed the system, then requests a performance fee on the next eligible date if the balance is above the minimum he mentioned. He does not close a trade early just because the account has become eligible. The system leads, not the balance screen. Programme minimums and schedules are set by Alpha Capital's rules, not by this interview.
Psychology, faith, and the gym
He is blunt that a tested system should remove most execution psychology. He still talks about faith after financial pressure, the gym and bodybuilding as discipline, and cutting cheap dopamine from scrolling and games. He also says trading made him more patient in ordinary life. Those are personal comments. They do not replace risk limits or backtesting.
KayzFX's interview is a contrast: a sensible idea can still fail if the trader keeps interfering with it.
What he tells new traders to avoid
- Treating trading as instant gratification
- Chasing account size before the skill exists
- Collecting so many strategies that none of them gets a fair test
- Quitting a job after one performance fee
- Ignoring fees and operating costs
- Abandoning one tested system before the sample means anything
He also says trading is not for everyone. Why most traders fail Evaluations looks at process breakdowns rather than market trivia.
What is his longer-term plan?
He intends to keep full-time work until trading income is in the region of £40,000 to £50,000 a month, in his words. He talks about reinvesting rather than lifestyle spending, and about wanting a much larger capital base before trading is his main income. He also says a strategy can stop working. The fast early results and that caution sit in the same interview.
Seven lessons from the interview
- A fast headline can still sit on early losses and a lot of manual testing.
- A lower-maintenance systematic process can be the right choice for someone who does not trust their own impulses.
- Drawdown limits can force position sizing before a trader would have done it alone.
- One market per account can make the review clearer.
- Five years of manual logs came before he trusted the system. Backtesting was not a button.
- He treats some failed Evaluations as a business cost, when his own numbers still work. That is his framing, not permission to ignore the rules.
- One performance fee is not a career. He warns against quitting work on the back of it.
FAQs
Who is Saad?
Saad is a Glasgow trader with a business degree and a banking background. He was about 11 to 12 months into trading when this Alpha Group Podcast interview was published on 8 January 2026.
Is Saad an Alpha Capital Qualified Trader?
He discusses Qualified Account risk and multiple Alpha Capital performance fees. Those results are self-reported. They are personal experience inside a simulated programme, not an audited record and not a typical outcome.
How much has Saad earned from Alpha Capital?
He self-reports more than £7,000 in performance fees within about 11 months, as of that interview. The episode also refers to roughly $8,000. Neither figure is guaranteed or typical.
What does Saad trade?
German 30, NASDAQ, and Nikkei 225. He assigns each index to a separate account and trades them one at a time.
What time frame does he use?
The 5-minute chart only. He says he does not filter trades through higher time frames.
What indicators does he use?
An STC indicator with customised settings, and a UTbot alert, used together. He says each signal is weak on its own.
How does he backtest?
Manually, on TradingView Premium, with results logged in Notion. He says he reviewed about five years of data before he trusted the system.
What risk does he use on Qualified Accounts?
He says 1% per trade on Qualified Accounts, and heavier static risk on Evaluations. Those are his choices, not Alpha Capital rules.
Why does he prefer systematic trading?
He thinks discretion makes emotional overrides more likely. A rule-based process is easier for him to repeat.
Did he take a trading course?
He says he was self-taught. The interview does not describe a paid course.
What was his biggest mistake?
Depositing savings, following forex signals, and placing oversized crude-oil trades without a clear stop.
Should a trader quit their job after the first performance fee?
Saad says no. He planned to keep working full time until trading income was much higher.
Browse the Alpha Capital interview library. Related episodes: KayzFX on leaving one-minute charts and Ajay Morris on two performance fees in eight months.
This article summarises a public Alpha Group Podcast interview. Saad's results and history are personal and self-reported. They are not typical or guaranteed. Alpha Capital Evaluations and Qualified Accounts use simulated funds. Performance fees are based on eligible simulated results. Simulated results do not reflect live trading outcomes. This is general education, not investment advice.
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