Market Recap July 15th - Final Countdown, Lessons Gained

Hi there, welcome to the final countdown of my prop firm challenge. This is the recap of Day 30 – the day I crashed my funded performance account.

📉 Summary: Yesterday was the last dance. I took a technically solid trade, but got hit with a 3-point slippage on the Micro ES – yes, Micro, with its low liquidity. My planned 4-point stop turned into a 7-point loss. At that point: $10 left in the account. I still had a 2pt.-room for one final trade with one contract – again, a valid setup – but got stopped out immediately… and, of course, the trade ended up working afterwards. But let’s rewind and look at what actually happened in the market.

📊 Market: The market opened with a gap down on Monday – tariff talk again. Then reacted bullishly Tuesday night – also… tariffs? Back and forth. Noise. Headlines. At 2:30pm (CET), CPI data dropped. The market reacted positively and traded close to or above ATH in the pre-session. We saw:

Heavy volume accumulation in the weekly range's value area high - bullish
A classic P-shape volume profile – bullish
A strong gap up open above yesterday’s high - bullish
Higher highs, no lower lows - bullish
News-driven bullish momentum on top of a technically bullish structure

Then came the strongest sell-off in weeks. That’s trading.

By the way: my account was deleted overnight. So, no trade screenshots. But hey, I’m not here to fool myself – I know what happened.

🧠 Lessons Learned - This final day had everything:

I traded Micro ES, trying to extend my limited capital
I had only a couple trades left in the tank
I’ve been fighting low-volatility, headline-driven chaos for days
I made mistakes early in the challenge – especially in risk management – and was still trying to recover

Still, my first trade:

Aligned with my analysis
Confirmed by seller absorption, low volume rejection, value area re-entry attempt
I executed it unemotionally, with discipline

But: slippage ended the game.

In hindsight, I had even watched my playbook in the morning: “Best setup today would be to wait for a long trade at the previous week’s midpoint.” Yes, a short after the open was risky but valid. Yes, my long was valid too. No one can guarantee the outcome – it's all about probabilities. The likelihood of a retest of the previous week's midpoint was highest (68.2%), not that of a noisy bullish breakout (!).

I lost this day. I lost this challenge. But I haven’t lost the lesson.

📈 What's Next? I’ll now step back and:

Review the entire challenge
Uncover every mistake
Analyze what worked – and what didn’t

I still believe in my system. I believe that I can become profitable with it. I accept the loss – and I will improve. The next challenge is coming after my review. And I’ll be ready to win it.

📩 That was my recap of the recent trading day. If you’ve followed along this journey – thank you. I hope you found some value in the wins, but even more so in the losses. If you’ve been through something similar, let’s talk –💬 Drop your thoughts or feedback in the comments below.

See you soon. I’ll be back. Stronger. Smarter. Focused.

Bye Bye 👋

Nicolas

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