Prop firm trading journal for challenges and funded accounts

A prop challenge is a test of rules first and profit second: most accounts are lost to a drawdown breach, not to a bad strategy. This guide explains how the usual prop rules work, what to record to stay inside them, and how Haunted keeps every challenge, funded account and payout in one free journal.

Why prop trading needs its own journal

On a personal account a bad day is just a bad day. On a prop account the same day can end the challenge, because the firm judges you by its limits rather than by your long-term edge. That changes what a journal has to answer: how much room is left before the daily loss limit, how far the balance is from the maximum drawdown floor, how far you are from the profit target and how many trading days you have logged. In Haunted each prop account is a separate account with its own starting balance, drawdown limits and target, so every trade you log is measured against that account's rules. Personal accounts live next to them, and analytics can be filtered by account, which keeps a funded account's statistics from being blurred by side experiments on a personal one.

Daily vs maximum drawdown: how the rules typically work

Most firms use two limits. The daily loss limit is usually counted from the balance or equity at the start of the trading day, sometimes from whichever of the two is higher, and resets at a fixed server time. The maximum drawdown is either static, measured from the initial balance, or trailing, following the highest balance or equity reached and sometimes locking once it reaches the starting balance. For example, on a 100k account with a 5 percent daily and 10 percent static limit, losing 5k in one day fails the account, and the balance may never close below 90k. With a trailing limit, after growing to 106k the floor typically moves up to 96k. Percentages differ between firms, but the definitions matter even more, so read the rulebook and enter the exact limits for each account in your journal.

Turning the drawdown budget into risk per trade

A practical way to respect the limits is to express them in R, where 1R is the amount you risk on one trade. If the daily limit is 5 percent and you risk 1 percent, five consecutive losses end the day and the account; at 0.5 percent you have ten. Losing streaks of five or six trades are normal even for a profitable model, so many prop traders keep the daily limit several full losses away and stop for the day after a fixed number of losses. Haunted records risk and R:R on every trade, and the scorecard plus breakdowns by session, model and account show where your losing streaks actually come from: a particular session, an instrument, or the trades taken right after a loss.

Tracking challenge stages and repeat attempts

A typical path is phase one, phase two and then a funded account, and very few traders get through on the first try. Haunted keeps the stages of each challenge and lets you track several attempts at the same firm, so you can see how many attempts a pass really took and in which phase you usually fail. That pattern is useful information. If most failures happen in phase two, the problem is often behaviour rather than the model: traders who passed phase one tend to size up or trade more to finish faster. If failures cluster in the first days of a new attempt, it may be the urge to win back the fee. The journal makes the pattern visible instead of leaving it to memory.

Payout history and the real economics of prop trading

The honest result of prop trading is total payouts minus everything spent on challenge fees and resets. Many traders count payouts and forget the fees, so their prop business looks better in their head than in their bank account. Record each payout against the account and firm it came from, together with the attempts that preceded it. Haunted keeps payout history per account, so you can see which firms actually paid you, how long the path from purchase to first payout took and whether a firm's rules suit your style. If one firm's trailing drawdown keeps catching you while a static limit elsewhere does not, that is a reason to change the firm, not the strategy.

One trade copied across several accounts

Prop traders often run the same idea on two or three accounts at once, manually or through a trade copier. Logging it three times as three separate trades distorts the statistics: one decision turns into three wins or three losses. Haunted lets you split one trade across several accounts, so each account's balance, drawdown and target progress update correctly while the trade itself is counted once in your analytics by session, pair and model. Add the chart screenshot by pasting it, write a short note on why you entered and how you managed the position, and the review at the end of the week takes minutes instead of an evening of scrolling through history.

FAQ

Which prop firms can I track in Haunted?

Any firm. You create an account, enter its starting balance, drawdown limits and profit target, and log trades against it. Traders track FTMO, Funding Pips and other firms this way. Haunted has no official partnership with any firm, so the rules are the ones you enter from your firm's rulebook.

Does Haunted sync with my prop account automatically?

No. There is no broker or MT4, MT5 or cTrader connection. Trades are entered manually, which takes under a minute with a pasted screenshot, or imported from CSV or Notion. Manual entry also works as a short review of every trade while it is still fresh.

Can I see how close I am to the drawdown limit?

Yes. Each prop account has its own drawdown limits and target, and Haunted tracks drawdown and progress against them as you log trades. How exactly your firm counts the daily limit, from balance or from equity, is defined by its rules, so set the account up to match them.

Can I track several attempts at the same challenge?

Yes. Challenge stages and repeat attempts are kept per account, so you see the whole path: purchase, phase one, phase two, the funded stage and payouts, including the attempts that failed and the phase where they failed.

Is the prop firm journal free?

Yes. Haunted is entirely free, with no paid tier for the journal and no trial period. Prop accounts, analytics, payout history, backtests and public share links are all included, and no card is needed to sign up.

Can I show my prop results to someone?

Yes. You can create a read-only public link to a single trade or to the whole journal, choose what it shows, set an expiry date and revoke it at any time. It is a simple way to share progress with a mentor or a trading group.