Prop-firm rules

Being picky is a dial, not a rule

Three setup filters run through the same simulator, and the one I use at each stage of a Tradeify account.

My best setups make more than four times as much per trade as taking everything: $53 against $12 per $100 risked, in my simulator. Per day they lose to a looser filter, because only about one day in three has one.

My simulator sorts setups into three grades: A++, A, and everything else. Higher grades show up less often and win more often. These grades are working assumptions for the model, not numbers from my journal yet, and every dollar figure in this post is a model output built on those grades and on winners that pay 1.2 to 3.6 times the risk. (They're also a different scale from the A+ my setup indicator calls in My indicator breaks even. I gave it $2,400 and 60 days to get better.)

Being picky means drawing a line and skipping everything below it. I ran three lines through the same engine.

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Per trade against per day

Five small bar panels comparing three setup filters per $100 risked: take everything 1.35 setups a day, $12 per trade, $17 per day, 0% no-trade days; A and above 0.90 a day, $26 per trade, $23 per day, 10% no-trade days; A++ only 0.35 a day, $53 per trade, $19 per day, 65% no-trade days

Per day, A and above beats A++ only, because A++ setups skip most days.

A great trade I only get once in a while can be worth less over a month than a good trade I get most days. A++ only leaves 65% of days with nothing to take.

How picky to be is a setting, and the right setting depends on what the account is for.

What a filter does to a day

Getting pickier changes three things at once. I take fewer trades, they're better trades, and my days get calmer. I simulated 4,000 days under each filter with the same luck.

Three stacked bars of simulated days at $100 risk per trade: take everything has 60% red days and 40% green; A and above has 56% red, 10% no trade, 33% green; A++ only has 19% red, 65% no trade, 16% green

Pickier filters cut red days from 60% to 19% and turn most days into no-trade days.

Whether that's good depends on the stage.

In an eval, speed matters and a fail costs $95, so a quiet day is a wasted day (In an eval, risk buys time). In a funded account before the lock, A and above makes the most per day, and that gets me to +$2,100 fastest. Once the floor has locked at +$100 (The $100 line that changes everything), a no-trade day costs nothing, and calm is what I want.

One warning. Pickiness at small size can starve a funded account (You can be too small to get paid). At $100 a trade, only 14% of my simulated A++-only days made more than $150, against 30% for the other two filters. Five qualifying days at that rate takes about seven weeks of trading.

My Tradeify card

Here is the whole Tradeify series on one card. Re-checked November 7, 2026: the $95 reset, the +$2,100 lock, the +$100 floor and the $150 qualifying day are unchanged on Tradeify's help center.

Card listing my Tradeify 50K Growth settings by stage by stage: eval takes everything in my plan, funded before the lock takes A and above, funded after the lock takes A++ only, and in both funded stages one win has to clear the $150 qualifying day

One account, three settings, and the same size check whenever it's funded.

The grades stay working assumptions until my trade journal has enough tagged trades to replace them. When it does, I'll rerun the card and show what moved.

That closes Tradeify. Next is Lucid, another firm I trade, and the one account there I'd buy.

Next: At Lucid, buy the Flex

New posts land on Substack first. Free, one a week. The $20k test has a scoreboard, updated every Sunday.

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Educational content, not financial advice. I trade my own accounts; nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell anything. No affiliation with any prop firm named. Futures involve substantial risk of loss.