A private prop trial, built in the open — for me.

Timeline

One dated start. Everything after is the shape of the work — not a calendar of every deploy.

Trading control centre

A private operator desk for the open spot-crypto book. Dials and the open book stay readable in one glance — personal Lab only.

What changed along the way

Highlights of the rebuild — undated on purpose. Plenty of smaller fixes sit behind these.

• Leaving hyperactivity behind Fewer blind adds and top-ups. Preservation dials, regime gates, fee-aware basket harvests and CEST day baselines replace the early urge to “trade the challenge” faster than the book can survive.
• Sheets as the control plane Risk floors, category toggles, sizing, harvest switches and prop guards live on a Control tab — macro changes without redeploying for every tweak. Transparent dials, not a black box.
• Lean AWS serverless cycle Lambda + DynamoDB + CloudWatch + EventBridge, tuned for a tight ~3-minute main tick (and a slower market worker). The trial now also runs a session-gated ~1-minute spine when markets are open. Built for lean execution and less local editor lag, not an always-on box.
• Prop-aware guards Growth pause and flatten thresholds aimed at Maximum Daily Loss and Maximum Loss — automation that respects the Objectives that end Challenges.
• Regime filtering Higher-timeframe trend gates (including an H4 “sniper” filter) decide whether cold NEW entries are allowed — fewer falling knives.
• Basket take-profits The open spot-coin book treated as one synthetic basket. Fee-aware sweeps use a floor plus a target % of capital, winners-only by default, and a haircut for round-trip costs — so harvests are realised progress, not optical float.
• Sheets fail-closed Control is trusted when warm; a cold miss or consecutive bad reads pause trading instead of guessing dials from an empty sheet.
• Payout extraction lock Sticky arm at equity target plus buffer: flatten the book, block replenishment, and stay locked until Kill Switch Reset — so “at Objective” means ready to extract, not still averaging.
• Sizing spine Target Bid and lot-cap dials so ideas stay equal-weight and one name cannot quietly dominate margin.
• Private trading control centre An open-book table for the spot-crypto book: role chips, Next from the last fill, 2-way distance, and Copy dials with no secrets. Operator clarity on my own desk — not a public product.
• Dynamo-primary control Live dials come from DynamoDB. The Sheets paint and write path is thinner so the tick stays cheap, with Sheets kept as the write and mirror surface.
• Mark-through-Next topups When price is already through the next rung, a topup can fire without waiting on the clock. After the first add, that rung stretches from the last fill.
• 2-way Cap packing Optional 2-way counters aim at the same lot-cap size band as the primary, instead of undersized minimum-volume stubs.

Highs, lows, and the growth now showing

Where it sits now: the trail from January’s scaffold through the August trial start is starting to show steadier behaviour — more patience, clearer harvests, and progress measured against Objectives rather than against a stopwatch. Growth is real enough to keep going; it is not a finished pass story.

Lessons so far

Capital preservation beats velocity. Passing Objectives only counts if the book is still intact when you get there.

Hyperactivity is a trap. Churning adds and top-ups to chase challenge speed burns risk budget while the prop ceilings stay exactly where they were.

Visible dials beat clever opacity. If I cannot see the rule on the sheet, I will not trust the tick.

Gates before adds. Higher-timeframe disagreement is a reason to stand down — not to average harder.

Harvest the book, not just the ticket. Aggregate strength can evaporate ticket-by-ticket; a basket sweep respects that.

At target means flat and locked — not still hunting. Extraction is a state machine: flatten, refuse new risk, reset only by hand.

Prop ceilings are the product. Max Daily Loss and Max Loss are not footnotes — they shape every other dial.

Still to try in the remaining trial

A short list — not a roadmap pitch. The trial runs toward mid-2027; these are the next honest experiments.

• Pressure-test regime gates and basket sweeps through a few more market moods before widening categories.
• Keep tuning lot-cap / Target Bid so the book stays diversified without starving good names.
• Only consider a paid Challenge path if dry-run and trial evidence still look calm under daily-loss stress — never assumed.

Under Horizon

Built by Phil Stone

Private Horizon – FTMO work in Northern Ireland. Meet Phil · Get in touch

Sits alongside Horizon’s other crypto automation work: same engineering habits, different rule set. Private development — no public signup and no absolute performance figures here.

Trading and FTMO Evaluation Processes involve risk, including the loss of Challenge fees and failing Trading Objectives — especially Maximum Daily Loss and Maximum Loss. FTMO uses demo accounts with fictitious funds; any Rewards follow FTMO’s terms. This page describes private Horizon – FTMO infrastructure only. It is not financial advice, not a signal service, not a guarantee of passing any Challenge, not an invitation to invest or trade, and not affiliated with or endorsed by FTMO. Always read the current terms on ftmo.com before you start anything with FTMO.