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Today’s interview features Trent Hoerr—ex-Chicago futures prop trader turned head of sales and operations at Forest Park FX—digging into the nuts and bolts most retail traders never hear about. It’s a live, straight-talking breakdown of how brokers actually work, why regulation matters, and how execution details like spreads, markups, and “market watch vs. chart” quirks on MT4 can make or break your P&L. If you care about keeping more of what you earn and avoiding avoidable headaches, Trent’s perspective is gold.
In this piece, you’ll learn how to read spreads the right way, why bid/ask drives stop-loss and take-profit fills, how “ECN” gets marketed to retailers, and what A-book vs. B-book actually looks like in 2025. Trent Hoerr also walks through practical wins—like when to use a VPS, what to ask for when requesting tick data, and how to choose a regulated broker that matches your strategy and size. It’s a clean, beginner-friendly guide to protecting your edge and lowering costs without changing the way you trade.
Trent Hoerr Playbook & Strategy: How He Actually Trades
Core philosophy and market focus
Trent Hoerr approaches trading like an operator: define edge, minimize frictions, and let position sizing do the heavy lifting. He prefers liquid FX and index futures where spreads, depth, and execution quality are measurable and negotiable.
- Trade liquid majors (EURUSD, GBPUSD, USDJPY) and top index futures; avoid pairs with average spread > 1.5 pips during your session.
- Only trade sessions where your pair’s top-of-book depth exceeds your intended clip by 5x or more.
- Pre-commit your playbook to two archetypes (trend continuation and mean-reversion fades) and ignore all other setups for 90 trading days.
Risk sizing and drawdown guardrails
He treats risk like a fixed operating expense. Small, consistent risk per bet plus strict drawdown brakes keeps the account in business—so edge can compound.
- Cap risk at 0.25%–0.5% of equity per trade; never exceed 1% even for A+ setups.
- Hard stop: daily loss limit at 1.5× your average green day; stop trading when hit.
- Equity-based circuit breakers: pause 48 hours at −5%, reduce size by 50% until back above previous equity high −2%.
- Maximum open risk across all positions ≤ 1.5% of equity.
- Increase size only after 20 consecutive trading sessions with positive expectancy and max drawdown < 2%.
Broker and execution setup (how fills really work)
Trent’s edge begins with the plumbing. Understanding A-book vs. B-book, markups, and routing options lets you cut hidden costs and improve average fill.
- Choose accounts with raw/ECN commission + tight spread; target total all-in cost ≤ 0.6 pip on EURUSD during liquid hours.
- Ask the desk in writing: typical markup (in tenths of a pip), primary LPs, median slippage for market/stop orders, and rejection/requote policy by symbol.
- Run the same strategy on a small “price check” account at a second broker; weekly compare average effective spread + slippage and move size to the cheaper venue.
- Use market orders for exits under stress; prefer limit-with-protection (or stop-limit) for entries to bound slippage.
- Disable “last look” venues when available; if not possible, widen your expected slippage budget by 0.2–0.4 pip during news windows.
Order placement and fill logic (bid/ask realities)
He plans orders around the fact that charts show mid or bid, but trades fill on bid/ask. Stops trigger on the opposite side; that changes where you place them.
- For long positions, place stop-loss using the bid chart low minus buffer; for shorts, use the ask chart high plus buffer.
- Minimum stop buffer = 1× average spread + 0.5× recent spread volatility (use rolling 50-tick std-dev of spread).
- Avoid placing stops/targets inside the top-of-book spread; shift by at least 0.2× ATR(14) on M15 to reduce micro-structure noise hits.
- If the spread widens > 2× your 15-minute median, cancel pending stops that sit within 1× the widened spread until it normalizes.
Spread, commission, and swap control
Cost control is a position’s third dimension. Trent tracks effective spread (spread + slippage + commission) and carry impact before sizing.
- Trade only when effective spread ≤ 10% of your stop distance; if not, either widen stop or skip.
- Record per-symbol overnight swap (both directions) weekly; avoid holding negative-carry positions into weekends unless R multiple ≥ 2.5 expected.
- For strategies with average hold < 2 hours, commission should be ≤ 30% of total cost; if higher, renegotiate or reduce clip size to improve matching.
- Exit 5–10 minutes before daily rollover if negative carry is material and no catalyst is imminent.
Data, platform, and VPS settings
He removes avoidable latency and platform quirks. Stable quotes and consistent server time beat fancy indicators.
- Host your platform on a VPS < 5 ms from broker server; benchmark round-trip latency weekly and switch nodes if > 10 ms.
- Lock platform time to New York close for FX; backtests and live charts must use the same session template.
- Log tick data for traded symbols; compute weekly median spread and 95th-percentile spread to refresh buffers.
- Disable “auto-close on connection loss”; enable “close on confirmed fill only” to prevent ghost positions.
Trend-continuation entry/exit rules
Trent’s continuation play leans on higher-timeframe structure and precise pullback entries. The goal is clean alignment and cheap risk.
- Framework: trade only when H4 trend and M30 structure align (both above/below 200-EMA and making higher highs/lows or lower highs/lows).
- Entry: limit order at the 38.2%–50% retrace of the last impulse on M15, only if spread < 1.2× its 50-tick median.
- Initial stop: beyond the swing by 0.25× ATR(H1); move to breakeven after +1× risk achieved and spread remains within median + 0.2 pip.
- Scale out 50% at +1.5R; trail remainder with H1 swing-based stop or 2× ATR(H1) chandelier, whichever is tighter.
- No trade if a higher-timeframe structure is within 0.5× ATR(D1) of a major session high/low from the same week.
Mean-reversion intraday rules
His fade play is a session-bound scalp that relies on range statistics and strict time windows to avoid trend days.
- Trade only during London late and early NY (e.g., 9:30–11:30 London, 9:45–11:15 NY); skip when economic calendars show tier-1 releases within 30 minutes.
- Entry: fade 2.0× ATR(5m) extensions from VWAP with confluence at prior session high/low; require a one-minute rejection wick and spread ≤ median.
- Stop: 1.2× the extension beyond the wick; target back to VWAP first, then 0.5× ADR for runners.
- Hard rule: no fades when H4 trend strength > threshold (ADX(H4) > 25) or when cumulative delta shows heavy one-sided aggression for > 15 minutes.
News and liquidity windows
He respects that liquidity vanishes and costs explode around data. The fix isn’t prediction—it’s scheduling.
- Flat 2 minutes before to 3 minutes after tier-1 releases (CPI, NFP, central bank rate).
- If holding swing positions, reduce size by 30–50% ahead of unscheduled risk events or widen stops by 0.5× ATR(H1) while disabling add-ons.
- First and last 5 minutes of each session: no new orders; observe spread/volatility normalization before engaging.
Scaling, hedging, and account structure
Trent separates strategies and uses simple hedges only to neutralize event risk. Clean books reduce operational errors.
- Run each strategy in its own account or sub-account; never co-mix trend and mean-reversion positions.
- Scale size non-linearly: increase clip by 10% after every +5R net month, revert after any −3R week.
- Temporary hedge allowed only for event gaps: micro-lot offset or correlated index hedge; unwind within 30 minutes of normalizing spreads.
- Withdraw 25% of equity after every new equity high month to a reserve account; trade from the working float.
Record-keeping and improvement loop
His process is data-first: measure what matters (costs, slippage, R, time-in-market) and make one change at a time.
- Journal every trade with effective spread, side, time-of-day, and slippage (in pips and $); tag by setup.
- Weekly: drop the bottom 10% of location qualities (by R expectancy) from eligibility for 2 weeks.
- Monthly: re-estimate stop distances so the average stopout rate sits between 38% and 55% per setup—too low means stops are too wide, too high means entries are noisy.
- Run a “no-tweak week” after any parameter change to validate stability before iterating again.
Psychological safeguards and discipline triggers
Execution discipline turns the plumbing into profits. Trent formalizes behavior to avoid revenge trades and platform tinkering.
- If two consecutive losses occur in under 30 minutes, enforce a 60-minute cooldown—charts open, trading disabled.
- Pre-commit a one-page checklist (spread within limits, session open, HTF alignment, news clear) and require a verbal read-through before clicking.
- Cap total screens to two layouts: trend and mean-reversion; disable additional indicators during live sessions.
- End-of-day: rate each trade A/B/C based on setup compliance, not P&L; only A-rated trades count toward size increases.
Size risk like rent: fixed cost per trade, no exceptions
Trent Hoerr treats risk like a monthly bill—you pay a fixed amount every trade, regardless of how confident you feel. That keeps emotions out and position sizes consistent when markets get loud. Pick a small, repeatable fraction of equity and stick to it through wins and losses. If the setup doesn’t justify that fixed outlay, you skip it rather than stretch your stop or your size.
He pairs the fixed risk with hard brakes so a bad day doesn’t become a bad week. Set a daily loss cap before the session starts and stop trading the moment it’s hit. Keep total open risk bounded so multiple positions never stack beyond your limit. Only scale the fixed amount after a defined period of clean execution, not after one big win.
Trade the liquid hours; let volatility dictate entries and buffers.
Trent Hoerr keeps his trading to the windows where depth and spreads are in his favor, not when the market is sleepy. Focus on London open, the London–New York overlap, and the first hour of New York when spreads are tight and fills are cleaner. If spreads are wider than their typical median, he waits—no setup is good enough to fight poor liquidity. He sizes stops and targets only after checking current ATR and recent spread behavior so his risk isn’t built on yesterday’s conditions.
Trent Hoerr also tightens execution rules when volatility spikes, adjusting entry precision and stop buffers to the day’s realized range. If the ATR expands, he widens stops proportionally and reduces size so his dollar risk stays constant. When volatility contracts, he narrows buffers and demands a cleaner structure to avoid chop. He avoids new positions in tier-1 announcements and rechecks spreads after the print before engaging again.
Build two playbooks—trend continuation and mean-reversion—and ignore everything else.
Trent Hoerr keeps his universe small on purpose: one playbook for trend continuation, one for mean reversion, nothing in between. That split clarifies intent before the click—either you’re joining strength after a clean pullback or you’re fading an extension back to value. Each playbook has its own entry trigger, stop logic, and management rules so there’s no mixing and matching on the fly. By committing to just two archetypes, Trent cuts decision fatigue and keeps stats clean enough to trust.
Trent Hoerr also quarantines the playbooks so results don’t contaminate each other. He tags every trade by playbook, trades them in separate sessions or accounts, and reviews metrics separately so sizing changes are earned, not guessed. If a chart doesn’t qualify for one of the two, he passes—no “hybrid” trades, no exceptions. That discipline turns the market into a simple question every time: is this a continuation setup, a mean-reversion setup, or a no-trade?
Respect spreads and slippage; place stops using true bid-ask mechanic.s
Trent Hoerr reminds traders that charts often show mid or bid, but fills live on bid and ask—so your stop placement must respect that reality. For longs, your stop is hit on the bid, so place it beyond structure using a buffer that includes average spread and recent spread volatility; for shorts, it’s the ask. Avoid parking stops inside the current spread or within a whisker of the top-of-book because micro widening will tag you out. Trent also watches for spread spikes around session opens and data prints, canceling or re-arming orders after conditions normalize.
Trent Hoerr budgets slippage like another cost of goods sold and won’t take trades when the effective spread (spread + slippage + commission) eats more than a small slice of his stop distance. He prefers limit-with-protection or stop-limit entries to cap worst-case fills, using market orders mainly for exits under stress. If the spread jumps above 2× its recent median, he widens buffers or stands down entirely. After each session, he logspreadsad and slippage per symbol to refine buffers and avoid repeat stop-outs from mechanics rather than market intent.
Process first: sessions, checklists, drawdown brakes, then size up slowly
Trent Hoerr builds the day around structure before touching the keyboard. He defines the trading session in advance, sets the windows he will engage, and reviews a short checklist that covers spreads, news risk, and higher-timeframe context. If any box fails—he doesn’t trade, period. That keeps impulse out and makes every click a repeatable action inside a known environment.
When losses cluster, Trent Hoerr leans on drawdown brakes to protect the account and his headspace. A pre-set daily loss cap ends the session the moment it’s reached, and a multi-day cool-down kicks in at deeper thresholds. Only after a streak of compliant execution and positive expectancy does he allow size to inch up, never immediately after a big win. The result is boring by design: process first, risk contained, and size earned—so the strategy can survive long enough to compound.
In the end, Trent Hoerr’s edge isn’t a magic indicator—it’s a tight operating system. He treats risk like a fixed bill, trades when markets are truly liquid, and sizes buffers to today’s volatility instead of yesterday’s assumptions. Two simple playbooks keep decisions clean: join strength after structured pullbacks, or fade stretched moves back to value—nothing in between. Costs aren’t an afterthought; they’re engineered down by respecting bid-ask mechanics, planning stops around the side that actually triggers, and tracking effective spread plus slippage like a KPI.
What makes this durable is the process shell around it. Sessions are pre-defined, checklists gate every click, and drawdown brakes stop the bleeding before it gets emotional. Results are reviewed by setup, not by vibes, and size only steps up after a long stretch of compliant execution. If you apply Trent Hoerr’s playbook as written—fixed risk, volatility-aware entries, ruthless cost control, and a boringly consistent routine—you’ll spend less time firefighting and more time letting a real edge compound.
