Pep sat down with Catalin for another Alpha Capital Group trader interview. Catalin has been trading for roughly 20 months, profitable for 13 of them, and has held his current $100K Qualified Account since July 2024 over a year without losing it. He is max allocated at $300K across Alpha Capital programmes, has taken close to 20 performance fees, and estimates $40K–$50K in lifetime earnings with the firm.
We asked Catalin about trading one asset obsessively, the CPI breach that wiped his first account, and a strategy peers laugh at until they see the numbers. If you are new to the model, start with how prop firms work, then read Are prop firms legit? before you pay for anything.
From Drop Shipping and Crypto to Full-Time Gold
Catalin is 25, from Romania, and says he would never have guessed he would trade for a living. He thought markets looked stressful. He ran drop-shipping businesses, bought Bitcoin and crypto, and initially wanted to grow coin stacks not chase US dollars.
Forex pulled him in. He Googled prop firms, compared terms, and landed on Alpha Capital as his first and only firm.
He bought an account with almost zero background, lost it four or five months later in Bali during CPI: he was not watching the calendar, woke up to a daily loss breach, and learned the expensive way that news windows are not optional.
Before that, he had only worked a 9-to-5 for one year. Since committing to trading, he has been full-time, no plan B. He was always strong with numbers and maths, believed in the process, and poured time into backtesting. That intensity, he thinks, is part of why profitability showed up in under two years when many traders need longer.
He is not pretending the path was clean. He lost two or three $100K accounts early. After passing his first $100K evaluation, he took a performance fee what many traders search for online as a payout lost that account, bought another $100K, then a $200K, and has not lost an account since. Consistency over hero trades became the identity he wants on a business card: reliable trader, not one-off jackpot.
One Kick, 10,000 Times: Why He Only Trades Gold
Catalin quotes Bruce Lee: he does not fear the trader who knows ten thousand setups he fears the one who drilled one kick ten thousand times. His kick is gold.
He combines a long-term bullish fundamental view on gold with technical pattern work tested over roughly ten years of history. Longs have outperformed shorts in his data, so he removed sells entirely. Check his chart history: no sell trades for one to two years, maybe one misclick.
On Alpha Capital he mostly scalps; 1-minute, 5-minute, and 1-hour entries, often 30–40 pip targets, not multi-day swings. On his personal cash account he runs a heavier swing variation with slightly different win rates. Same bias, different expression.
Win rate on the full system, by his measurement, sits around 99% overall but he is quick to say there is still room to improve. He wants to be better than 95% of traders, not stop at beating most of them.
The Morning Process: Flags, Triangles, and Risk by Day Type
Every morning around 8 a.m. Romania time (6 a.m. London), between Asia close and London open, Catalin reviews daily, 4-hour, and 1-hour charts. He looks for old-school patterns many traders dismiss: bullish flags, bearish flags, symmetrical triangles, channel support.
If the higher-time-frame read says bullish day, he takes long setups inside the range with higher confidence. If the day looks dangerous bearish flag, unclear triangle he cuts size or waits for the pattern to resolve before adding risk.
Entries: pattern on 1-hour, confirmation on 15-minute close, execution often on 1-minute. Another high-win-rate setup: draw a channel, place a limit at support, trail the trend line. He claims ~98% on that pattern in testing; live execution still depends on attention; sometimes he misses the touch because he was asleep.
What makes the approach unusual is stop placement and recovery logic. Catalin uses wide stops at key support and resistance to what he calls negative R on individual tickets because rejections at those levels, in his backtest, happen often enough to keep win rate around 90%+. If a swing-style stop gets hit on his cash account, he may re-enter with tighter size at the same level to recover the loss. He runs 1% to 2.5% risk per trade on Alpha Capital; at one point his last 35 trades were consecutive winners on an account.
Trade frequency shifts with conditions. On a strong day he takes everything that fits the morning read. On a weak or messy day he pulls back. Roughly 10–15 trades per week on ACG, 20–30 on his cash account.
He trades the raw spread environment on gold with Alpha Capital and credits spreads and terms as part of why he stayed with the firm after comparing options at the start.
Psychology, CPI, and Treating Every Account the Same
When Pep asked what holds most traders back from passing an evaluation or as the wider industry often calls it, a prop firm challenge Catalin did not blame the strategy first. Psychology.
If an edge worked for ten years in testing and you are still not making money, the edge is probably not the problem. His early mistakes: moving stop-losses, holding winners too long, ignoring CPI and red-folder events, trading distracted on holiday. After nearly passing his first account with zero background and losing everything to one careless day, he had a blunt conversation with himself: those flaws are not affordable anymore.
He does not treat Qualified Accounts differently from evaluations or from his cash account. Same risk framework, same patience. He sees some traders risk 5% to rush a pass, blow the account, and repeat a loop he compares to gambling. He prefers small, repeatable performance fees 1% to 2% requests over swinging for 10% hits he does not need. That mindset is how he has held a $100K account for a year while others take one large withdrawal and breach.
For beginners, his advice is mathematical and blunt: most people will not be profitable not because maths is impossible, but because psychology turns trading into gambling. If you feel the casino dopamine, you join the 95%. Careful consideration before you start matters as much as the strategy.
Community-wise, Catalin shares performance fees and drops into the Alpha Capital community now and then, but he would rather backtest than live in Discord. Time on chart beats time in chat.
Alpha Capital Experience, Scaling, and What's Next
On Alpha Capital specifically, Catalin says the experience has been strong enough to keep him exclusively with ACG for now most performance fee requests accepted; a few rejected when he missed Best Day or similar rules, which he accepts as his oversight, not a dispute.
One wish: a scaling plan tied to consistency over time e.g. steady profitability and regular performance fees over six months rather than needing a 10% month he is not trying to hit. He also flagged news restrictions on gold during unrelated CHF or EUR events as friction for XAU/USD traders; worth feedback for the product, even if rules exist for a reason.
Goals for the next 12 months: merge allocation into one $300K account, stay profitable for 24 consecutive months (he is at 13 now), and scale his personal cash account toward $100K–$200K. Other prop firms are maybe, not a priority; he is happy where he is.
If you want another gold-focused mindset piece, read Grecko's interview. For a fast scalper on FX instead of metals, see Elroy. For evaluation path choice, Pick your Alpha path compares Alpha One, Pro, Swing, and Three.
Ready to Prove Your Edge?
Catalin's story is not "find a holy grail indicator." It is one market, ten years of testing, brutal news discipline, and choosing consistency over lottery tickets after an early CPI lesson most traders learn the hard way.
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