One Prop Trader a Day – Dominico Busack: Funded on the First Try, Then the Real Work Started

One Prop Trader a Day – Episode 110

My name is Dominico Busack. I’m 19, a Finance major at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and a funded futures trader. I’ve been trading NQ with ES for a little over eight months.

I passed my first evaluation in January of 2026, but the year before that was all paper trading and learning the science of trading. When I became funded, it felt like those many months of learning had finally paid off, and like I could turn what had seemed like an impossible task into a reality.

The first thing I bought with money made from trading was a trip to Tampa to see the friend who taught me how to trade in the first place. Being so young, I had never bought my own plane ticket before, so that alone felt like an accomplishment. We traded together for a few days, and somewhere in there I noticed I was taking some of the same setups as the person who taught me, without even realizing it.

Being funded on my very first evaluation was one thing. Getting to a first payout was a different journey entirely. I blew probably $2,000 to $3,000 worth of evaluations before that first small payout of only $500 came through. As soon as that money hit my account, I knew I could do it. Since then I’ve accumulated thousands in payouts, though the journey to consistency was rough.

I remember countless nights in college and at home where I turned down hanging out with friends and partying, just so my mind could be sharp for the next morning of trading. That, combined with taking any sort of loss in trading, inevitably took a toll on my mental health. Trading is one of those few things in life where you can be doing everything perfectly right and still lose. At the end of the day the markets are ruthless, and you can’t be right 100% of the time.

I do think trading has made me more stoic in a way. I have developed amazing habits like going to the gym, eating right and staying calm when life gets challenging. Other than the money, that is the biggest upside trading gives you long term.

I trade with mainly two prop firms, Tradeify and Topstep. I’m phasing out Topstep at the moment purely due to the recent backlash it has received online, and I think there are just better firms out there. In a firm, I look for one that has accounts available that match my trading style, which is low risk to reward and high probability setups.

I normally get on the charts at 9am EST to find my daily bias and what I want to see for the day. At market open my style works top-down: higher timeframes for liquidity targets, lower timeframes for entries. I usually take 1:1 to 1:2 RR trades, with a few exceptions, one being if I have a very strong draw on liquidity.

My most recent loss came purely from a careless mistake. Price on ES reached my liquidity target and take profit while I didn’t notice, and normally I would go to break even if one asset hits that area and the one I’m trading hasn’t yet. Since I didn’t notice, I was not at break even, price reversed and it stopped me out. I saw what I had done wrong after the trade was closed, then reflected and learned from it. My biggest single payout came last month, when I took $8,100 out in just five days.

I try not to broadly advertise what I do, because I think trading has a negative stigma around it. When people ask, I do tell them, and the reaction is majorly negative. Some people think it’s a scam, and others ask, “If trading is so easy why doesn’t everyone do it?” For those reasons it is easier to keep quiet about what I do.

What separates me from traders who quit early on is my upbringing as a child. My parents, who are absolutely amazing, always pushed me as a kid, and I am extremely thankful for that. Excellence was expected from me from a young age, and sometimes I wonder if it was really them who expected it or if it was self-inflicted. Either way, God and my parents are the reason I am where I am today, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Growing up I played just about every sport under the sun, which in turn developed my work ethic. A lot of days you wouldn’t want to go to practice, or in some cases three different practices for different teams in one day. You just had to suck it up and push through. That early instilled grit is what separates me from the traders who threw in the towel on their third go-around.

To finish with the fun one: handed a $1,000,000 funded account today, I would risk 1% per trade, so $10,000 per trade. Assuming the account had rules similar to the popular firms, a payout on it would be $40,000 using my own payout rules, which are to build a 4% buffer and then request a payout of 4% of the account every time I crest +8%. After each payout I would immediately invest $10,000 into my long-term investment portfolio, then $20,000 into a live trading account for future use. With the remaining $10,000 I would start saving for a real estate investment property in a growing area or city. I believe these actions would accumulate over time and bring me generational wealth.

Verified funded – the receipts