One Prop Trader a Day – Joshua Espinosa: Funded in 5 Days, Then I Built a Platform to Remove My Emotions

One Prop Trader a Day – Episode 145

What if the best way to beat trading psychology is to take yourself out of the trade? Joshua Espinosa, a 19-year-old entrepreneur and day trader from South Florida studying at Cornell University, got funded by Topstep 5 days after signing up. In this interview, he explains why he lost that account after his first payout, how he is building a platform that automates his strategies, why he moved from Topstep to Lucid, and what he would do with a 1 million dollar funded account.

My name is Joshua, and I’m a 19 year old Entrepreneur/Day Trader from South Florida, currently attending college at Cornell University. Over the years, I have traded ES Futures, NQ1, and BTC.

Funny story actually, I first became a funded trader 5 days after I signed up for a Prop Firm account with TopStep. It was very rewarding, but I made sure to keep my psychology the same, and ended up getting my first payout after! I ended up blowing the account after that because I was unaware of the rules after a payout sadly…

I bought a new car with the trading money, and that’s really when it felt like this was a real possibility for me to become something, and it felt like this new avenue of life was opened up to me; especially the prospect of having full self autonomy.

I actually didn’t fail before I got funded and got my first payout. I started failing afterwards because I got too overconfident in my trading skills and wasn’t able to keep my psychology in check.

I didn’t pay for any lessons! I was all self taught. I researched different strategies and always added my own unique twist onto the strategies depending on the patterns I saw in recent market developments.

Trading took a mental, emotional, and physical toll on me. On top of having to do my classwork, I always made sure I was up to trade before my school day started, sacrificing that study time in order to trade. Trading added a lot of added stress; having to look back on my trades, look at my mistakes, and go back and perfect them while dealing with extracurriculars and school-work took an unexpected toll on my body and mental. There were times I didn’t think I was smart enough to continue trading, that I wasn’t cut out for it, and times when it consumed me. I manage that side now by building a platform to help moderate these emotions and bottlenecks – this platform will let traders automate their strategies, get them verified, and sell them on a marketplace. Although there is stress in starting a business, this completely undoes the stress I’ve had constantly trading, and can trust in the platform to provide me with consistent passive income.

I have traded with Topstep, and Lucid. In a firm, I look for low cost (obviously), and light-hearted rules. There are prop firms out there that like to invalidate some traders if they make too much money, and completely undoing the work they’ve done. So, I look for autonomy and a hands-off approach when it comes to a prop firm.

My trading style today is looking at patterns on the market, focusing on the 5 min, 15 min, 1 hr, and 4 hour time frames. If I see a pattern that has proved consistent over time, I would explain that pattern to my platform and develop it for myself and have it run passively.

Today, my trading day is very simple: I login to my platform, and check my portfolio – that’s literally it. I’ve developed and automated multiple strategies that run for me on the backend. Year to date, the platform I’ve made has given me 92.8% returns. There are times depending on recent news in the market, I’ll look to enter a trade that aligns with market conditions if I see something that’s too good to pass up.

My most recent losing trade was a couple of days ago. One of my strategies on my platform looks for futures that have an RSI above 45 on the 1 hour time frame, and ultimately I lost the trade. I trust in my engine, so there’s nothing I would do differently because this strategy in particular has made me over 6,000 in the last month, and losing trades are unavoidable

My biggest milestone I’ve hit so far was on my platform and seeing a 32% net increase in my portfolio over the last DAY! It was a huge milestone for me, and showed me that I had potential to monetize this platform.

The people around me have absolutely no clue what I do, and my classmates would question it and inquire about it. I’ve even personally coached a friend of mine how to trade. It’s a very hard thing to get into and even harder to stick it out.

What separates me from someone who quit after their third failed challenge is that I looked at my mistakes and tried to find a way to minimize them. I realized that my biggest flaw was in my emotions and hesitations when trading, so I figured out a way to remove the human flaw from it and am still developing a way to monetize it.

If I got a 1 million dollar funded account today, I would connect these funds to my Ratify engine (the platform I’m developing). And over 7 days I would expect at least a 10% return on my investment, which would be around 100,000 dollars. I trust in my platform enough to make that money for me.

My take on the firms

Topstep: 2/5. I traded with Topstep first, and my experience was frustrating. The platform crashed far too often and was hard to trade on, which is a serious problem when you’re managing live risk. Rules that I found ambiguous added to the frustration, because it was never fully clear what would and wouldn’t count against me. That’s why I moved to another firm.

If Topstep wants to improve, I’d start with platform stability and a cleaner, less cluttered trading experience. I’d also give traders clearer, more specific rules, so people know exactly where they stand without having to guess or ask for support.

Lucid: 5/5. Lucid has been a much better experience, and I genuinely loved trading with them. The platform is seamless and easy to use, and payouts arrive immediately, which builds a level of trust that matters to a trader. I’ve never had to worry about the platform getting in the way of my trading.

I don’t have major criticisms of Lucid. The best thing they can do is keep their platform reliable and their payouts fast as they grow.

Verified funded – the receipts