The 80-20 Rule

Smiling math teacher explaining new topic to her pupils

MyPropChoice Gateway Evaluation was created to evaluate skilled traders who can consistently stay profitable. At MPC, we have an anti-gambling policy. Gambling is not promoted because it is not a profitable practice long term.

Using huge lot sizes to pass a challenge in minutes or hours is becoming more popular amongst traders i.e., they trade with big lots sizes of 10 and 20 lots in a few hours or days while completing the minimum trading days with micro lots like 0.1. This is considered as gambling by MyPropChoice.

What makes a good trader is not huge profits from overleveraged trades. A good trader is recognized by consistency in strategy and risk assigned to each trade being fully there is no certainty in trading.

To sieve out gambling, MyPropChoice created a rule called the 80/20 rule. This rule states that “80% of your trade volume must not be opened within 20% of an evaluation’s minimum duration. (For prop builder program, that means 1 day; for MyPropChoice gateway challenge, that means 2 days). This means every trader should trade normally and not try to the profit target in one or two days.

Note: Failure to fufill the 80/20 rule does not result in termination of a trader’s account. It only has to be fulfilled before an evaluation can be considered to be completed regardless of profit target being hit.

If it happens that 80% of the trade volume is opened in 20% of evaluation minimum duration, a trader’s account shall not incur a violation. However, the trader must continue trading until the trading volume is more evenly distributed.

 

Case Study

Jack, Jon and Ross are traders who hit the 10% profit target in 10 minimum trading days without hitting max daily loss or max total loss on MPC Gateway evaluation i.e. they all passed.

According to the 80-20 rule, 80% of their trade volume must not be in two days. Let us see if they satisfied the 80-20 rule. The table below shows the total lot size used for each trading day.

 

 

 

Jack

Jon

Ross

Day 1

3

10

20

Day 2

6

10

1

Day 3

5

10

1

Day 4

4

0.1

1

Day 5

7

0.1

1

Day 6

5

0.1

1

Day 6

5

0.1

1

Day 7

8

0.1

20

Day 8

5

0.1

1

Day 9

5

0.1

1

Day 10

2

0.1

1

 

 

 

 

X

15

20

40

Y

50

30.7

48

Z

30%

65.1%

83%

Verdict

Satisfied

Satisfied

Satisfied

 

X= SUM OF TOTAL LOTS TRADED ON TWO PEAK VOLUME DAYS

Y= TOTAL LOTS TRADED OVER TEN DAYS

Z= PERCENTAGE OF TWO LARGEST VOLUME DAYS WITHIN MINIMUM TRADING DAYS

 

With this table above, it is clear the 80-20 rule is not difficult to obey.

According to the case study, Jack is a trader who used lot sizes within a close range to pass the challenge. He has also satisfied the 80-20 rule.

For Jon, most of the trade volume during the course of the gateway challenge were within the first three days of trading. This appears like gambling but is still not a violation under MPC 80-20 rule. The two highest trade volumes weren’t higher than 80% of total traded volume. Therefore, the 80-20 is still satisfied.

 

Trader Ross cannot be allowed to proceed to his Prop Firm of choice yet; not because he failed but because the 80-20 rule is not satisfied yet. He has to even out his trades better.

Do I need to manually calculate if I obey the 80-20 rule?

Absolutely no! You do not need to go through the stress of calculating if you’re passing the 80-20 rule or not. The Prop Equity Monitor indicator has an in-built feature that displays if you are passing the 80-20 rule or not.

 

An image of an account that fulfilled the 80-20 rule can be seen below

An image of an account that did not fulfill the 80-20 rule can be seen below

You can click here to learn how to set up the Prop Equity Monitor

 

 

The 80-20 rule was never created to fail our traders. It’s rather to promote consistency in trading. The 80/20 is one of the reasons we have a good MPC gateway pass rate since inception. Together, we can keep it that way.

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