Claudia found trading in her final year of university in 2018, nearly got caught by a Bitcoin scam website in the same week, and went on to spend five years refining her approach across roughly ten different strategies. Her edge is supply and demand on Gold with higher time frame analysis, expectational order flow, and open level theory. She uses two separate journals, an emotional one and a trading one, and a red pen review method for tracking improvement. She passed a 250K evaluation (what many traders call a prop firm challenge) after two months of disciplined Gold focus. She is now working on reducing trade frequency, moving to the 4-hour time frame, and building consistent risk, using gym discipline as a proxy for chart discipline.
Watch the full interview on YouTube
How it started: A university party and a near-scam
Claudia was in her final year at university in Birmingham in 2018. She had a few months left, could not find a job for such a short period, and was Googling ways to make money. Bitcoin kept coming up. She found a website promising to flip £200 a day. Her card details were typed in.
"I thought right, maybe this is a scam website and I'll have no money to go out with my friends. So I didn't do it. Looking back, it was definitely a scam website."
Saved by wanting to go out for drinks.
A few days later she went to an event with a housemate and met someone wearing a large diamond ring. Her friend asked how he could afford it. He said Forex. Claudia asked if that was Bitcoin. He said yes. She said sign her up.
She spent three years on and off with his group, then left to find her own courses and mentorships. She was in and out of the market, not taking it seriously, until lockdown in 2020. With nowhere to go and time to fill, she sat down with the charts properly for the first time.
"Lots of ups and downs since then. It's not an easy journey. But I'm still here and still trying to fine-tune my mental edge and technical approach."
Ten strategies and what she kept from each one
Over five years Claudia has tried approximately ten different strategies. She does not entirely regret this.
"I've taken bits and pieces from strategies I learned before and combined them now. There was definitely a lot of time wasted strategy hopping, but I've ended up moulding something that works for me."
Her current edge draws from several frameworks combined:
Supply and demand zones. She looks for order block supply and demand zones, with the 4-hour time frame providing the highest probability reactions. She is actively transitioning away from the 15-minute chart because she kept finding clean 4-hour setups after the fact and asking herself why she entered earlier on a lower time frame when the real level was obvious on the higher one.
Open level theory. Claudia uses the framework popularised by Larry Williams, tracking the daily open, London open, New York open, and monthly open. If the directional bias is bullish, she looks for a buy below one of those opens in a demand zone. Bearish, the reverse.
Expectational order flow. This was a significant breakthrough for her. Understanding which way the market is building its auction structure, and only entering in alignment with that flow, reduced her getting caught in setups that looked like reversals but were not yet ready to move.
"The most important thing is to figure out which way the market is trending. Otherwise you're just fighting it."
She admits she still impulsively takes counter-trend trades sometimes, but her focus for the current period is 4-hour pro-trend setups only.
Why she settled on Gold
Claudia spent a full year on EUR/USD alone. Then she tried GBP/USD. Then she was in a situation on a small personal account where she did not have enough margin for Gold or indices, entered GBP/USD as an alternative, and it worked. She stayed in the trade for days and hit her target.
So she started running Gold, EUR/USD, and GBP/USD together.
The problem was attention.
"I'd be in a GBP/USD buy and it was taking too long so I'd pull out of it, jump into a Gold or EUR/USD buy, that would hit my stop loss, and then I'd look back at GBP/USD and it had smashed TP."
She decided to commit to one market. She tried GBP/USD first but found she did not have the patience for how slowly it moved. Gold's volatility suited her.
Two months of focused Gold work and she passed a 250K evaluation.
"I know it's not the market when it's not working for me. It's me. So I'm just trying to find that edge in my mental game because I have seen the results. If I trade Gold with the right discipline and mindset, it pays a lot."
The red pen method
Claudia's journaling practice is unusually structured and one of the more interesting approaches in the series.
When she started taking journaling seriously, she ran 90 demo trades, split into nine groups of ten. After each group of ten she printed everything out, took a red pen, and graded her own trades like a teacher marking an exam paper.
"I was going through the printouts like: no, this is wrong, this is wrong, you should have done this. I've got a full folder of them. That really helped me."
The red pen method worked because she was studying in parallel while running the trades. By the time she reviewed group two, she had already learned things that made group one look obviously wrong. The gap between what she saw in real time and what she could identify in review closed over time.
Now she runs two separate journals.
Emotional journal. Captures how she was feeling before, during, and after the trade. Not just the technical setup but the internal state. She identified that a lot of her bad trades were not from wrong analysis but from entering while emotionally compromised, either bored on her phone, half asleep before her morning routine, or chasing after a small loss.
Trading journal. Template built on Google Docs. She records what she sees in the market, what she visualises price doing, why she entered, her thoughts once in the trade, and what happened after.
She also does end-of-day markup review, going back to see how far price moved after she closed, specifically to train herself to hold positions longer and understand how much opportunity she is leaving on the table by exiting too early.
Sunday is her main review day.
"Journaling is a bit like prayer. I only used to do it when I needed help. I'm now trying to do it more regularly."
The tools that help her stick to the plan
Two practical tools come up in the interview.
Magic Keys EA. Claudia has two screens. MT4 on the main screen, TradingView on the side. Magic Keys is an expert advisor on her MT4 desktop that she has configured to give her a mandatory 10-second pause before executing a trade. That pause has saved her from dozens of impulsive entries.
"On my phone it's so easy to just be watching TV, get a moment of boredom, and jump on a trade. When I'm on the desktop and I look at the side screen, I'm like: wait, you're trading against the trend here."
She is planning to eliminate phone trading entirely until her risk management is consistent.
FX Replay. She uses this for backtesting, setting up a simulated chart environment that plays like a live market. She is currently using it specifically to show herself the maths of consistent risk, watching how compounding works over time at half a percent per trade to break her habit of over-risking when she feels strongly about a setup.
"I want to brainwash myself into seeing how consistent risk pays off in the long term."
What a good trader looks like, in her words
The interviewer asks Claudia to define what a good trader looks like. Her answer covers four areas:
Discipline outside the charts. Not just on execution but in the whole life. Waking up before the markets, meditation, breathwork, exercise. "How you do anything is how you do everything."
Consistent risk management. Minimising risk per trade and understanding that the goal is to preserve capital over the long term, not maximise a single session.
Not seeing other traders as competition. People at the same level are learning tools, not threats.
Humble and confident, not cocky. "When you get too cocky in trading you get humbled very quickly. Especially on Twitter."
This is her definition of what she is working toward, not a description of where she already is. The honesty about still working toward it is what makes Claudia's interview stand out. She is not presenting a finished story. She is describing a process in real time.
What she is working on now
Claudia is focused on three changes over the next six to twelve months.
Fewer trades. She has had good scalping days on Gold, catching moves in both directions and generating strong performance fees, but it leaves her mentally exhausted and unable to do anything else with the day. She wants to set 4-hour alerts, wait for price to come to her, and not look at the charts between those alerts.
"The more times I enter the market, the more chances you give it to take back your profit."
Consistent risk regardless of conviction. She catches herself risking more when she feels a trade is strong. The problem is that this means wins and losses are weighted differently each time, making it impossible to build a stable equity curve or understand her real edge.
Gym discipline as a proxy. She is training alone now, without a PT or class, specifically so she can practise fighting the internal voice that says she has done enough. She believes the discipline built in the gym transfers directly to the charts.
"I'm trying to build discipline in the gym so that I can build it on the charts. When I sit down in front of the charts, I don't want to go full savage on it and have my emotions take over."
FAQs
What strategy does Claudia use for trading Gold?
Claudia uses a combination of supply and demand (order block zones), open level theory from the Larry Williams framework (daily, London, New York, and monthly opens), and expectational order flow to determine directional bias. She enters at demand zones that align with her directional bias, ideally below a key open level. She is transitioning to exclusively 4-hour time frame analysis with fewer, higher-quality setups and longer holds.
How did Claudia pass her 250K evaluation?
After years of strategy hopping across multiple currency pairs, Claudia committed fully to Gold for two months, narrowed her focus to her supply and demand framework, and passed a 250K evaluation (commonly referred to as a prop firm challenge). She attributes the result to removing distraction, sticking to one market, and trading with improved emotional discipline.
What is the red pen journaling method?
Claudia ran 90 demo trades split into nine groups of ten. After each group, she printed the trades and reviewed them with a red pen, correcting her own entries and exits like a teacher marking student work. Because she was studying continuously between phases, each review allowed her to identify mistakes with fresh knowledge. She keeps all these printed journals in a folder for motivation during difficult periods.
How important is mindset for passing prop firm evaluations?
According to Claudia, mindset is the central challenge. She has seen the technical results when she trades Gold with the right discipline and setup selection. The variable is internal. She runs a separate emotional journal alongside her trading journal specifically to understand what state she is in before and during trades, and uses Magic Keys EA on her desktop to add a mandatory 10-second pause before entry to prevent impulsive decisions.
What does Claudia recommend for traders still finding their strategy?
Stop strategy hopping before giving each approach enough time to see real results. Try to take something useful from each method rather than abandoning everything when it does not work immediately. Eventually focus on a single instrument and build expertise in how it moves. Commit to journaling in a structured way, especially tracking emotional states, not just setups and entries.
Ready to start your Alpha Capital evaluation?
Claudia's journey is five years in the making and still moving forward. She is not presenting a finished blueprint. She is sharing what actually works right now, what she is still fixing, and how she stays accountable to the process. The evaluation structure keeps her risk framework honest and gives her something measurable to work toward.
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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 unless a specific product states otherwise. Performance fees are based on eligible simulated trading results and outcomes are not guaranteed. Claudia's story describes her individual experience on simulated programmes and is not a forecast or guarantee for future traders. Always confirm live rules, pricing, eligibility, and evaluation requirements on alphacapitalgroup.uk and help.alphacapitalgroup.uk before purchasing an evaluation.
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