How to Become a Successful Prop Trader in 2025
- Ankit Gupta
- July 16, 2025
If you are already trading and looking for ways to grow, you must have come across the term ‘prop trading’. This is a type of trading used by traders for exponential growth in their trading careers. In this blog, we will help you understand how you can become a Prop trader and what the advantages of becoming one are. Before getting on to how to become a prop trader, let’s discuss in brief what prop trading is.
What is Prop Trading?
Prop trading, also known as proprietary trading, is a form of trading where traders use a prop firm’s capital to trade in the market in exchange for rewards with the firm. With the technological advancements, the way prop trading works has also changed significantly. Earlier, prop trading firms used to hire traders who would trade in the market on behalf of the firm. Nowadays, prop trading firms have also gone digital and provide a digital platform to traders where they can participate in the prop firm’s challenge and start earning rewards upon clearing the challenge.
Who is a Prop Trader?
A prop trader is a professional who trades with the prop firm’s capital rather than his own funds. Before starting trading with a prop firm’s capital, traders have to clear the challenge, generally called a prop firm challenge. Depending on the prop trading firm, the challenge may have 1 to 3 steps, which a trader can pass using their trading skills, experience, and knowledge.
To be a successful prop trader, you need to have a well-defined and tested trading strategy that can help you sustain a long-term trading future. Well, along with the technical and fundamental skills, there are different traits that can help you in becoming a successful prop trader. Let’s take a look at those characteristics.
Characteristics of a Successful Prop Trader:
1. Analytical Skills
Whether you are trading with your own capital or with the capital of a prop trading firm, you need to have good analytical skills, as you would be doing a lot of analysis in trading. If you have excellent analytical skills, you might be able to analyse and figure out the profitable setups that an ordinary trader might not be able to do so.
2. Risk Management
Trading majorly involves two things: making profits and managing risks. Hence, to be a successful trader, you need to have a good risk management strategy. This gets even more important when you are a prop trader because you would need to pass the prop firm’s challenge, i.e., achieve the profit targets while staying within the maximum daily loss and maximum overall loss limits.
3. Decision Making
There are times in prop trading when you have to make very quick decisions, or you lose the opportunity to earn a reward. Thus, if you are good at decision-making, it would definitely be helpful in your prop trading journey.
4. Emotional Stability
In prop trading, not all days would be green, and it is essential that you keep your calm and don’t make impulsive decisions. If you have emotional stability, you will be more planned in your trades, and it will be easy to avoid chasing to cover losses instantly.
5. Coachability
Many prop trading firms have different types of coaching programs to help traders learn and improve their trading skills. It is important that you have a learning attitude so that you can take advantage of the resources available. There are firms, like Hola Prime, which even provide 1-on-1 coaching to traders by expert mentors.
Many of these traits are learnable; even if you think you lack something, you can use the resources available to you to learn these skills. Moreover, just like any other domain, you get better at trading with time. The more you trade, the more experience you will get about what works for you and what doesn’t.
Now that you have an idea about what skills you need to become a prop trader, let’s talk in detail about how to become a prop trader.
How to Become a Successful Prop Trader?
1. Learn the Basics
The first step for becoming a successful prop trader is to learn the basics, such as how prop firms work, crafting your trading strategy, getting familiar with the prop firms’ interface, and other important things. If you do not have a clear idea about what is to come, you may end up failing the prop challenge.
2. Using Free Trials
Before jumping into taking the prop firm challenge, try getting yourself familiar with the prop trading environment using free trials provided by firms. In prop trading, you would be trading in a simulated environment; hence, you should get an idea about how it works before buying a challenge.
3. Choose a Prop Firm
After you get a clear understanding of how prop trading works, it is now time to choose a prop firm. For this, you need to compare different prop firms and figure out which one aligns well with your trading strategy. While comparing different firms, you should pay close attention to the cost of the challenges, leverage, payout time, and reputation of the firm.
4. Get Familiar With the Challenge
Once you have selected a prop firm, it is now time to get familiar with the challenge. Different firms have different rules and conditions for their challenges. The major things you need to consider are profit targets, daily loss limits, and maximum loss limits. When you have knowledge of the rules and conditions of the challenge, you can create your prop trading strategies accordingly.
5. Develop a Trading Strategy
The most important step is to develop a trading strategy that would work according to the conditions of the challenge. While developing your trading strategy, you should take into account the market volatilities and other scenarios that may arise when you are trying your trading challenge.
6. Pass the Challenge
In the final steps, when you feel confident with your trading strategy, you can go ahead and buy the challenge. If you achieve the set profit target without hitting the loss limits, you will pass the challenge.
7. Get a Simulated Funded Account
At last, after you pass the challenge, you will get your simulated funded account where you can trade and earn rewards. Even though you can call yourself a prop trader when you get a simulated funded account, you still need to perform consistently to become a successful prop trader.
You must have an idea about how to become a prop trader. You must also know why prop trading is gaining a lot of popularity and what its advantages are.
Benefits of Prop Trading
1. Access to Capital
One of the biggest advantages of prop trading is that you get access to huge capital, which might not have been possible otherwise. Prop trading firms provide you with leverage, which you can use to trade big. For example, at Hola Prime, you can get leverage of up to 100x leverage if you choose the Pro Challenge.
For example, if you buy the 2-Step Pro Challenge by paying $48, you will get an account with $5000 for trading upon passing the challenge.
2. Favourable Rewards
As we discussed above that in prop trading firms, traders share a percentage of rewards earned with the prop firm. However, these rewards are generally favourable for traders as they get the majority of their simulated profits. At Hola Prime, you can get rewards up to 95%.
3. Coaching and Learning Resources
When you start trading with a prop trading firm, you get access to many learning resources such as 1-on-1 coaching, live sessions, market analyses, and more. These resources prove to be invaluable for traders in learning new techniques and improving their trading skills.
4. Flexible Working Conditions
Another benefit of choosing prop trading as a career is that you get a lot of flexibility. Once you master the technique and become a successful prop trader, you can enjoy a lot of autonomy and flexibility. Unlike traditional jobs, you don’t need to go to an office every day to make a living. Hence, all these pros of prop trading make it an attractive career choice.
Difference Between a Prop Trader and a Retail Trader
We know choosing a career can be overwhelming, especially when you are considering trading as a career option. Even if you are not planning to become a full-time prop trader, it is still important to make an informed decision. Let’s walk through the difference between a prop trader and a retail trader.
Prop Trader | Retail Trader | |
Capital | Prop trader trades with the capital provided by prop firm. | Retail trader trades with his own capital. |
Evaluation | Prop trader has to pass an evaluation in the form of a prop firm challenge to start trading. | Retail trader does not have to pass any evaluation to start trading. |
Fee | Prop trader has to pay an upfront fee to buy the challenge. | Retail trader does not have to pay any fees. |
Risk | Risk of a prop trader is limited to the challenge fee only. | Retail trader’s whole capital remains at risk. |
Rewards | Prop traders share their rewards with the prop firm. | Retail traders keep 100% of their rewards. |
Conclusion
There you go, we have covered in detail what traits a trader needs to be a successful prop trader and also what things you need to take into consideration. In all this, Hola Prime continues its commitment to helping traders become successful by providing extensive learning resources and coaching programs. Looking forward to getting trading coaching? Feel free to join Hola Prime’s Discord channel and chat with our expert trading mentors
Frequently Asked Questions about Prop Firm Challenges:
1. Do I need academic qualifications to become a prop trader?
No, you just need to have trading skills. There are many traders who don’t have a direct academic background related to trading, but they are successful prop traders.
2. Do I have to pay to become a prop trader?
Yes, you have to pay a small fee to buy the challenge and get started. This fee is generally refunded when you pass the prop firm challenge.
3.What are the rewards in prop trading?
Rewards generally range from 60% to 100%. The reward split generally depends on the challenge and payout frequency you choose.
4. Is prop trading a good career?
Yes, prop trading is considered a good career as it has huge earnings potential. If you have the trading skills, you can make a good living with prop trading.
5. Is prop trading legal?
Yes, prop trading is legal in most countries. Hola Prime provides prop trading services in over 175 countries.
Disclaimer: All information provided on this site is for educational purposes only, related to trading in financial markets. It is not intended as financial advice, business or investment recommendation, or as an opportunity or recommendation to trade any investment instruments. Hola Prime only provides an educational environment to traders, including tools, materials and simulated trading platforms which have data feed provided by Liquidity Providers. The information on this site is not directed at residents in any country or jurisdiction where such distribution or use would be contrary to local laws or regulations.