25 May 2026. I almost lost my personal account.

I felt ashamed even journaling this in public, and that’s exactly why I’m posting it.

I was going long on NQ from my personal account. TradingView wouldn’t open the trade. First time in two months. So I opened Tradovate to place it manually. I don’t trade on Tradovate often. That’s where it started.

#1: Wrong Contract

I set a buy stop on NQ instead of MNQ. Realised it mid-trade. By then I was down $445, about -2.2R on this account. I closed immediately and reopened on the correct contract. That trade went to breakeven.

A trade that should have been a clean BE was now -2.2R, just from a contract-size click.

#2: Leftover Non-OCO Sell Stop

Remember the original NQ order? It wasn’t OCO. I forgot to remove the sell stop after closing the first leg. I wasn’t watching the platform. I was busy trying to resolve the TradingView ↔ Tradovate connection.

The sell stop got hit. Counter-trend. I didn’t even know I had a position open. I only found it because I was poking around Tradovate looking for the connection settings.

By the time I closed it, I was down $2,265. That’s -11R.

Combined hit from the two mistakes: about -13R.

The Honest Math

Cumulatively since inception on 29 April 2026, my personal account is now around -17R.

If I had taken every trade to perfection it would be roughly +0.8R instead. Here’s what “perfection” looks like in practice: on 15 May 2026, my futures system gave a 5.8R win on silver. I took it on the funded accounts. I did not take it on personal because one contract’s SL was $300, about 1.5% of the personal balance, above my per-trade risk. That was the rules working correctly. The +0.8R baseline assumes that level of execution throughout.

The strategy didn’t fail. The execution environment did.

A pure drawdown from day one. It will take time to climb back.

And drawdowns are not symmetric.

A 20% drawdown needs a 25% gain to break even.
A 50% drawdown needs 100%.

Winners and losers are not made the same. Capital preservation is the most important job in trading.

What I Didn’t Do

Yes, it stings. A lot. But you don’t see me revenge trade to earn it back.

I closed the position the moment I saw it. I could have held it and hoped price came back to my entry so I could close at breakeven. But the position was counter-trend. What if price went further against me?

I took the loss and internalised it.

Hope is not my trading strategy.

You’re Trading An Environment, Not Just A Strategy

Live trading is not just entering and exiting a trade. You’re also in charge of your trading environment: the platform, the orders sitting on the book, the backup plan, the daily limits.

My strategy was fine. My execution environment wasn’t.

What’s On The Desk Now

  • Fix the TradingView ↔ Tradovate connection so I’m not forced onto a backup platform mid-trade again.
  • Tradovate daily loss limit set to $600 (-3R) at the platform level. No more “I forgot to check.”
  • Before any new entry on a backup platform: confirm contract (NQ vs MNQ), confirm OCO bracket, confirm no leftover stops on the book.
  • No manual execution on a backup platform unless the checklist passes.

No change to the trading plan. The plan didn’t break. I did.

Why I’m Leaving This Visible

This is a bad start to my personal account’s track record. A pure drawdown from inception. I’m leaving it visible anyway.

I could have erased this. Open a new account, never mention this one, post only the clean version. Plenty of people do that. I’m not doing that. Transparency is the brand, not a tagline.

The whole point of building this in public was the real story, not the highlight reel. If you’re a trader, you’re unlikely to take a -13R hit. But shit happens. When it does, the only question is whether you close it, internalise it, and write the checklist, or hold and hope.

Hope is not a strategy.