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April 18, 2026 · 7 min read

How to build a trading plan prop firms actually respect

A trading plan that survives an FTMO challenge is not a PDF. It's a short list of rules, each one enforceable, each one measurable. Here's the template.
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Most trading plans are essays. They describe a philosophy, name a few indicators, talk about risk management in the abstract. They're written once, printed, pinned to the wall, and ignored after day three. A plan that survives a prop firm challenge looks nothing like that.

What a plan is — and what it isn't

A plan is a list of rules. Each rule is binary — you either followed it or you didn't. Each rule is enforceable — ideally by your platform, failing that by you in real time. A plan is not: a philosophy, a narrative, a mindset doc, a trading journal entry from three months ago.

The 12 rules every plan needs

  1. Risk per trade — fixed % of account, e.g. 0.5 %.
  2. Max daily loss — usually 2 × risk-per-trade.
  3. Max weekly loss — usually 3 × daily, or the prop-firm drawdown minus a buffer.
  4. Max trades per session — 3 is the statistical inflection.
  5. Named setups only — list of A+ patterns from your playbook, nothing else.
  6. Minimum R target — usually 1.5R minimum, 2R preferred.
  7. Allowed sessions — Asia, London, NY — name the ones your edge lives in.
  8. Allowed instruments — list. Not "majors," the actual tickers.
  9. Cool-down after a loss — minimum time between loss and next entry.
  10. Behaviour after 2 losses in a row — stop, review, or day off.
  11. Behaviour after a plan breach — day off tomorrow, no exceptions.
  12. Weekly review cadence — in-plan rate, setup expectancy, what got broken.

The enforcement layer

Every rule on that list needs an enforcement mechanism. Platform-enforced beats self-enforced every time. Rules 1–4 and 9 can be enforced by a disciplined trading journal that hard-locks the UI. Rules 5–8 require a pre-trade checklist. Rules 10–11 require a day-off system. Rule 12 is manual but should have a calendar reminder.

The common failure mode is writing all 12 rules but enforcing none of them. That's why the plan fails — not because the rules are wrong, but because the gap between "rule exists" and "rule fires" is where the blow-up happens.

Why prop firms respect this plan

Not because they'll read your plan document — they won't. They respect the outcome this kind of plan produces: consistent behaviour across sessions, low drawdown volatility, recoverable losing days. The scale-up tiers in every prop firm reward exactly the profile a structurally enforced plan generates.

How Axiont encodes it

Rules 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11 are configuration values in Axiont. Set them once, and the app enforces them every session. Rules 5 and 6 are the setup playbook— name your A+ patterns, set min R, tag every trade to one. Rule 12 is the weekly review view. The plan becomes the app's configuration; breaking a rule becomes something the app refuses to let you do.

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