Jack Stinton
Jack Stinton is a systematic EUR/USD trader from the UK who blew a $100,000 funded account in two weeks, rebuilt his mindset from scratch, and has now been funded with Instant Funding for over two years. Here is his story, in his own words.
I first got into trading around six years ago and, honestly, I hadn’t got a clue what I was doing. Like a lot of people starting out, I was listening to influencers, joining signal groups and buying into the dream that trading was an easy way to make money. I had no understanding of risk management, no trading plan and completely unrealistic expectations. It didn’t take long before I’d blown the money I’d started with.
The funny thing is, even after losing it all, I absolutely loved trading. Instead of walking away, it made me want to understand why I had failed. That’s when I joined a trading community called The Golden Suite. I worked through their course and, for the first time, started to understand how the markets actually move – how to read charts properly, understand market structure and, most importantly, how important risk management really is.
Not long after that I discovered prop firms. I’d built what I thought was a decent strategy, but looking back I rushed into it. I hadn’t backtested it properly, I hadn’t spent enough time on demo – I just went straight into a challenge. Somehow it worked. I passed a $100,000 funded account with The Funded Trader while manually trading multiple currency pairs. At that point I thought I’d cracked it. I hadn’t. Within two weeks I’d lost the account.
It wasn’t because my strategy suddenly stopped working. It was because I stopped following it. I became emotional, forced trades, ignored my rules and gave back everything I’d worked for. That was probably the biggest lesson I’ve ever had in trading.
I took some time away because I was gutted, but I always knew I’d come back. Trading was something I genuinely enjoyed, even after the setbacks. In 2023 I decided to start again, this time with a completely different mindset. I joined Zentum Trading and worked through their education, and everything just clicked more than it had before. I started understanding price action properly and realised trading isn’t about getting rich overnight – it’s about doing the same things consistently over a long period of time.
After around five months I felt ready to take another prop firm challenge. It wasn’t easy and it certainly wasn’t quick, but one thing had changed massively from my first attempt: my risk management. I was protecting my capital properly. I still had moments where emotions crept in and I’d take trades I shouldn’t have, but they became less frequent. Eventually I realised something – every mistake I made came from me, not the strategy.
That’s when I completely changed how I traded. I decided to focus on just one market: EUR/USD. Instead of trying to master lots of pairs, I wanted to become an expert in one. I spent months refining a single strategy and then used TradingView’s Strategy Tester to backtest it over years of historical data until I had complete confidence in the numbers.
Once I knew the strategy had a genuine edge, I built it into a semi-automated system. The system finds the setup, but I always have the final say before placing a trade. That gives me the chance to avoid high-impact news releases or anything unusual happening in the market. It removes the emotional side of trading while still allowing me to use my own judgement where it matters.
Even now, I don’t just let it run and forget about it. Every trade is journaled and reviewed. Around every six months I go back through all of my data to make sure the strategy still has the same edge – I look at things like maximum drawdown, losing streaks and overall performance, and I review every losing trade individually. Sometimes the trade lost because it was simply a pullback before the market carried on in the original direction, and that’s completely normal. Other times I’ll look to see if there’s anything I can learn from it. I never assume a strategy will work forever without checking the data.
Today I’ve been funded with Instant Funding for over two years and have received multiple payouts. I’m also currently working on five more prop firm evaluations.
One of the biggest things trading has taught me is that capital is everything. People often think the big payouts come from taking massive risks, but in my experience it’s the complete opposite. The goal isn’t bigger trades – it’s more capital. If you’ve got a strategy that’s proven over hundreds of trades and you consistently risk just 1% per trade for a 2% target, then scaling your capital is far more important than increasing your risk.
That’s exactly how I trade today. I don’t chase the next strategy, I don’t jump between markets and I don’t look for shortcuts. I trade one market, one proven strategy and the same fixed risk every single time. Looking back now, I don’t think becoming profitable was about finding a better strategy – it was about becoming a better trader.
About the writer – Jack Stinton
Jack Stinton is a UK-based systematic trader who trades a single market – EUR/USD – with one backtested, semi-automated strategy and fixed 1% risk. After blowing a $100,000 funded account early in his journey, he rebuilt around discipline, journaling and constant data review. He has been funded with Instant Funding for over two years with multiple payouts, and is working through five more evaluations.
