One of our followers asked if there are advantages to using higher risk to reduce the time spent on evaluations. In other words, can you pass a challenge quickly by risking more?
The short answer is no. In practice, rushing tends to cost you more time, not less, and it can quietly wreck your trading habits along the way.
Key takeaways
When you push for a fast pass, you start taking anything that looks like a setup, so your trade quality drops and you lose more.
High risk puts you in deep drawdown, and most people react by risking even more to claw it back, which is a bad cycle.
Failing means waiting for another account and restarting at step one, so the impatient route often eats more time overall.
Most firms removed time limits about a year ago, so there is no requirement from their side to pass quickly.
If you need income fast, trading is the worst option, since you want a calm mind, not urgency.
Patience means taking action while letting results take care of themselves, and it tends to pass challenges faster.
Why higher risk backfires
When you use higher risk to pass quickly, you end up taking lower quality trades. You look for anything and enter it, so your losses go up.
Even skilled traders lose trades, so with high risk you will probably hit significant drawdown. From there, most people risk even more to get back and start revenge trading.
However you approach it, higher risk raises the probability of failing the challenge.
“Higher risk will end up increasing the probability of you failing the challenge.”
Rushing costs you more time
Here is the irony. When you fail, you have to wait for another account and restart at step one, so you likely spend more time even though the goal was speed.
There is no logical reason to rush anymore. It has been almost a year since most firms removed the time limit, so there is no requirement from their side.
Ask yourself why you are impatient. If you need income quickly, trading is the absolute worst option, because you want a calm state of mind, not urgency. And even after a pass, the payout takes a few days to issue.
Patience is not the same as waiting
Waiting is a problem. If you sit on a challenge and do not trade because of anxiety or delay, that is waiting and it holds you back.
Patience is different. You are already taking action, but you are not rushing the results, you are focusing on the process.
Specifically, when you manage your risk you have room to make mistakes, you take fewer low quality trades, and you can trade consistently until you pass.
“Patience shouldn’t be confused with waiting. Waiting is always a problem.”
The real advantage of taking your time
Take your time and you trade more, and the more you trade the better you get. You have room to journal mistakes and fix them because you are not risking too much.
You avoid massive drawdown, you stay calm, and you build good habits like consistent trading and managing risk.
Overall, the statistics we have looked at show that successful traders tend to hold trades longer and take longer to pass than those who fail. On average it takes about two weeks to a month to clear both steps and become funded.
How a few firms compare
A quick look at where some of the firms we cover land, on a 50K 2 Step account.
If you are not sure which firm fits how you trade, Propvator AI, the Prop Firm Matcher, can point you to firms whose rules and conditions suit your strategy.
Compare reliable prop firms with fair conditions and the best discounts on Propvator before you start your next challenge.