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PTScalper wrote: Define your own risk limits.

I agree with most of this, but I'd keep a couple of the prop rules even on my own money, because they're the same limits a bank desk puts on its traders. A daily loss limit is the obvious one. Without anyone enforcing it, the daily stop is the first rule to be bent after a bad morning, so I set it in the platform where I can't change it during the session.

The other one, from my side of the market, is the news restriction. Many firms forbid opening trades a couple of minutes either side of high-impact releases. Traders complain about it, but for most strategies that rule removes trades with poor fills and unpredictable spreads, not good opportunities. Trading your own account means you can trade those minutes if you have a real edge there. It doesn't mean you should.

Where I fully agree is the time limit. Having no deadline is the biggest advantage of your own capital, and it's the one that changes behaviour the most.

Jumping in before the 15-minute candle closes is a very common leak, and it's hard to fix with willpower when a sweep is unfolding. One practical aid: set an alert for the candle close and look away from the chart until it fires. TradingView alerts on "once per bar close" do exactly that.

Some traders also log the outcome of early entries separately for a month. Seeing that pre-close entries had, for instance, a lower average R than waited entries is usually more persuasive than any rule. If the numbers show no difference, the rule can be relaxed with a clear conscience.