Planning a prop challenge around one setup only

[FXS London Scalper]

One way to approach a prop challenge: trade only one setup you know well, for example a London open pullback on EURUSD. No other pairs, no new ideas.

Why it helps:

• If you know the setup's statistics from your journal, you can estimate how long the challenge should take.
• Knowing its worst losing streak lets you size so that streak can't come close to the daily or total limit.
• It removes the temptation to try new things under pressure.

A worked example. Suppose the setup has a 50% win rate, a 1.6R average winner, about 3 trades a week, and a worst historical streak of 7 losses. Expectancy is 0.5 × 1.6 − 0.5 = 0.3R per trade, about 0.9R a week. At 0.5% risk that's 0.45% a week, so an 8% target takes around 18 weeks; at 1% risk, around 9 weeks. Seven straight losses at 1% is −7%, which is too close to a 10% total limit for comfort, so you might settle on 0.75%.

Plans like this tend to run longer than the arithmetic says, because real streaks can be worse than your history.

The downside is that one setup gives few trades, and a challenge with a time limit may not allow it.

Has anyone done a challenge with just one setup? How did you handle the slow periods?