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Justin Hertzberg—CEO of Forest Park FX and co-founder of FPFX Tech—sits down for a straight-talk interview about what actually helps retail traders win: starting with safety. Known for championing “return of capital before return on capital,” Justin explains why working with regulated, reputable brokers matters, how his team matches traders to the right setup (jurisdiction, platform, leverage, holding time), and why multi-asset access is now table stakes. You’ll also hear how MT5, TradingView, and cTrader fit into today’s platform landscape—and why more brokers are dropping proprietary platforms in favor of what traders already use.
In this piece, you’ll learn Justin Hertzberg’s practical framework for broker selection (so your deposits, withdrawals, and pricing are handled fairly), what’s really happening with regulation across regions, and why many traders should avoid unregulated offshore shops. You’ll get a clear explainer on the funded-account/prop model, how modern risk dashboards enforce rules in real time, and why automation is letting lean teams scale prop programs to thousands of traders. If you want a beginner-friendly path to safer brokers, smarter platform choices, and a trader-first strategy you can act on right away, you’re in the right place.
Justin Hertzberg Playbook & Strategy: How He Actually Trades
Core Philosophy: Protect your bankroll first
Justin Hertzberg builds everything around one simple hierarchy: protect capital before chasing returns. That’s why he insists traders anchor their decisions to regulation, fair execution, and clean funding/withdrawals—because your strategy only matters if your account is still alive tomorrow.
- Never place funds with a broker you “couldn’t point to on a map.” If you can’t verify jurisdiction and oversight, walk away.
- Prioritize regulated venues where client funds are segregated, pricing is consistent for all customers, and execution is supervised.
- Treat “return of capital” as your daily KPI; only pursue setups where the downside is explicit and capped before entry.
Broker selection that actually fits the trader
Hertzberg doesn’t push a one-size broker; he maps the trader’s profile to a brokerage stack. The goal is alignment: products, platform, leverage, and holding time all match the way you trade, so you aren’t fighting your infrastructure.
- Choose a jurisdiction to match your residency and risk tolerance; avoid mismatches that complicate funding and recourse.
- Pre-decide leverage bands by strategy (e.g., intraday mean-reversion vs. swing trend) and insist broker settings enforce your ceiling.
- Select platforms and product lists you actually use; don’t open accounts where your core markets aren’t natively supported.
- Confirm deposit/withdrawal rails before funding live; test a small round-trip to validate speed and fees.
Why you should avoid unregulated offshore shortcuts
When leverage limits bite, it’s tempting to jump offshore. Hertzberg’s take: that move often trades short-term flexibility for long-term account risk—because no one’s watching the store.
- If no regulator is “looking over their shoulder,” pricing games and slippage asymmetry become your hidden cost.
- Favor firms that expand via other regulated entities when home rules change; they typically carry over segregation, banking, and pricing standards.
- If you need higher leverage, solve it with capital and position sizing—not with jurisdictional hopscotch.
Funded accounts: a cleaner path to scale than over-leveraging
Hertzberg frames prop funding as an audition: pass objective rules, get access to larger capital, and keep the lion’s share of profits—without nuking a tiny personal account.
- Expect a paid assessment with hard rules (profit target, daily loss, max drawdown); pass it and trade firm capital.
- Use firm capital to lower account-level leverage and smooth your equity curve; that’s the point.
- Typical profit splits range ~50–80%; model payouts vs. your historical expectancy before signing.
- Prefer props that partner with multi-asset, regulated brokers on the back end; product scope and execution quality matter.
Real-time rule enforcement and behavior feedback
Modern prop tech automates account creation, rule checks, and risk actions—so traders get instant feedback and firms stay consistent. That feedback loop nudges better habits and prevents catastrophic errors.
- Trade only on platforms where rules (daily loss, max position size, news filters) are monitored in real time with alerts and auto-liquidations.
- Use dashboards that surface open risk, unrealized P/L vs. limits, and margin trajectory—before and during the session.
- Treat breaches as data, not drama: tag the cause (over-sizing, revenge trades, news) and adjust plan constraints immediately.
Execution standards every retail trader can copy
Whether trading personal or prop accounts, Justin’s baseline is the same: fair pricing, consistent execution, and transparent operations. Bake these checks into your pre-funding routine.
- Demand consistency: spreads and fills should be comparable across customers and times—outliers are red flags.
- Verify operational hygiene: segregated funds, reputable payment providers, and established banking relationships.
- Stress-test your strategy during scheduled news and low-liquidity windows to see how slippage and spreads impact expectancy.
Position sizing and drawdown math that keep you in the game
Hertzberg’s worldview implies sizing rules that survive variance. Think in risk units, not lots, and design for return of capital through inevitable cold streaks.
- Define a fixed % risk per trade (e.g., 0.25–0.75%) and a hard daily loss cap (e.g., 1–2× your per-trade risk).
- Impose a “three-strike” stop: hit your daily cap or three consecutive losses—close platform, journal, and return next session.
- Use volatility-scaled position sizes (ATR-based stops) so risk in dollars stays constant as markets speed up or slow down.
- Maintain a rolling max drawdown limit (e.g., 8–12%): if breached, auto-halve your size for 20 trades before re-evaluation.
Product and platform scope: choose the breadth you can actually manage
Props may offer FX-only, FX+CFD, or multi-asset menus; some exclude crypto entirely to control risk. As a trader, select just enough breadth to express your edge without diluting focus.
- Start with 1–3 instruments that fit your setup cadence; expand only after 100+ risk-unit trades with stable edge.
- If your playbook hates weekend gaps and high beta, avoid products with 24/7 risk (e.g., crypto) until your rules handle it.
- Confirm your platform/broker combination supports the products and order types (stop-limit, OCO) your strategy requires.
Professional process: consultative planning for retail traders
The “secret sauce” is often planning, not prediction. Hertzberg’s approach mirrors a consult: define the trader, then design the environment and rules to fit—before risking a dollar.
- Write a one-page plan covering markets, sessions, triggers, entries, exits, risk, and exact broker/platform settings.
- Run a live-funding checklist: KYC passed, funding/withdrawals tested, leverage set, platform permissions locked.
- Review quarterly: if regulation or broker terms change, re-validate execution quality and adjust your stack—no set-and-forget.
Industry reality check: who you partner with matters
From tech providers to brokers, incentives shape outcomes. Hertzberg’s companies lean into compliance and will cut ties when counterparties undermine trader trust—your edge compounds faster in clean ecosystems.
- Vet partners with a track record of enforcing rules and terminating bad actors; ask for concrete examples.
- Prefer tech stacks recognized by industry bodies and events; awards aren’t everything, but they signal diligence and scale.
- Keep your own standards high: if a firm’s marketing claims don’t reconcile with your due diligence, step away—there’s always another venue.
Protect Capital First: Broker Choice, Segregated Funds, Fair Execution
Justin Hertzberg hammers home a simple rule: your strategy means nothing if your capital isn’t protected. He pushes traders to treat broker selection as risk management, not an afterthought, starting with regulations you can actually verify, and client money held in segregated accounts. If the venue can’t clearly show who oversees them, how funds are safeguarded, and how complaints are handled, Justin says you’re gambling with counterparty risk, not trading. He wants traders to think “return of capital before return on capital,” then let every decision flow from that mindset.
In practice, that means picking a broker with clean execution standards and proving them before you size up. Justin Hertzberg suggests you run a tiny round-trip: deposit a small amount, place a test trade during normal liquidity, withdraw, and evaluate speed, fees, and slippage. Compare spreads and fills across times of day to catch widening or asymmetry that could quietly erode expectancy. Confirm that your platform, products, and order types are fully supported so you’re not forced into sloppy workarounds. And when leverage limits tempt you offshore, remember his baseline: higher flexibility isn’t worth it if pricing, custody, and recourse get murky.
Size Like a Pro: Fixed Risk Per Trade, Daily Loss Cap
Justin Hertzberg treats position sizing as the backbone of survivability. He recommends locking in a fixed percentage risk per trade—something small enough to survive variance, like 0.25–0.75%—so a losing streak can’t wreck your month. That fixed risk turns into a simple number: if your stop is farther away, you trade fewer lots; if it’s closer, you trade more—but the dollars at risk stay constant. By converting every setup into uniform “risk units,” you can judge performance cleanly instead of getting fooled by random big wins or losses.
To stop the daily spiral, Justin Hertzberg pairs fixed per-trade risk with a hard daily loss cap—typically 1–2× the per-trade risk. Hit it and you’re done for the session, no exceptions, which blocks revenge trades and “make it back” spirals. He also suggests a three-loss brake: after three consecutive losses, step away, journal what broke (timing, news, or execution), and return with a smaller size if needed. When volatility spikes, scale position sizes down so each trade still risks the same dollars; when volatility contracts, scale up carefully but keep the cap sacred. Over weeks, this rhythm compounds discipline: small, controlled bets, a firm stop to the bleeding, and no heroics on bad days.
Volatility-Based Positioning: ATR Stops, Dynamic Sizing, Smaller During News
Justin Hertzberg wants traders to size to volatility, not vibes. He favors ATR-based stops so the distance to your exit expands when markets run hot and tightens when things calm down—your dollar risk stays constant while lot size flexes. That keeps you from getting woken out by random noise on fast days and from over-sizing when the tape is sleepy. He also stresses pre-session calibration: check current ATR vs. your backtested baseline and adjust size before the first trade, not after the first loss. If the spread-to-ATR ratio looks ugly, skip the instrument or cut size again.
News is its own volatility regime, and Justin Hertzberg treats it that way. Go smaller—or flat—around scheduled releases that routinely spike slippage, and avoid the first few minutes after a big print until spreads normalize. If you must trade, widen stops mechanically and reduce size proportionally so the same dollars are at risk; never keep a tight stop and normal size in a storm. Trail winners with a fraction of ATR to lock progress without choking the trade, and reset your ATR inputs each week so they reflect current behavior, not last month’s pace. Over time, this volatility-first approach converts randomness into rules, letting your strategy breathe when markets move and conserving capital when they roar.
Diversify Smartly: Underlying, Strategy, and Holding Duration Drive Stability
Justin Hertzberg pushes diversification beyond “more symbols” and into true uncorrelation. He suggests splitting risk across underlyings that don’t move together—think mixing FX majors with an index CFD and a metal—so one theme can’t sink the day. He also separates playbooks by behavior: a steady trend setup, a quick mean-reversion scalp, and an event-aware breakout each earn their own risk unit and rules. Cap exposure to any single theme (e.g., dollar strength) and avoid doubling up on near-identical pairs when correlations spike; trade one, bench the cousin. When heat rises, he limits total open risk units so portfolio drawdown can’t snowball while you’re focused on a single chart.
Duration is its own layer of diversification, and Justin Hertzberg treats it deliberately. Pair an intraday strategy with a slower swing system so your P/L doesn’t depend on one tempo of market movement. Stagger entries rather than firing all signals at once, and scale exits independently so you’re not forced to close everything on the same headline. Track each system’s stats separately—win rate, average R, and drawdown—then size them based on current performance bands, not gut feel. If two systems start behaving like clones, pause the weaker one until correlation cools. This way, your account is powered by multiple edges and clocks, not a single bet wearing different tickers.
Prop Funding Discipline: Obey Drawdown Rules, Scale Size Only After Consistency
Justin Hertzberg frames funded accounts as a responsibility test, not a shortcut. The rules—daily loss, max drawdown, and news filters—aren’t suggestions; they’re the operating system. He wants traders to pre-calc their “R” size so any single trade can’t trip a daily breach, and to stop trading the instant a hard limit is hit. If you miss an alert and cross a rule, treat it as a process failure: journal the cause, reduce the size, and rebuild before taking another evaluation or payout.
Scaling is earned, not gifted, and Justin Hertzberg ties it to sample size and stability. Hold your risk per trade flat until you’ve logged at least 50–100 trades with positive expectancy and controlled variance; then bump size in small steps (e.g., 20–25%). Pair each scale-up with a stricter behavior rule—no adding to losers, no trading after two consecutive losses, and a mandatory cool-off after any slip in discipline. Keep payout cycles regular to de-risk the account and to verify the firm’s operations under real money flow. Over time, this approach turns the prop program into a structure that reinforces good habits—clean rule compliance first, measured size increases second, and no hero trades ever.
Justin Hertzberg’s through-line is simple and relentless: protect the money, then earn the right to grow it. Across the interview, he keeps circling back to “return of capital before return on capital,” which shows up in everything from broker due diligence to platform choices to how you scale. Work with regulated, reputable shops you can actually verify, test deposits and withdrawals before you size up, and insist on fair, consistent execution rather than headline spreads that vanish in fast markets. He’s frank about the offshore temptation when leverage rules tighten, but his stance is clear—flexibility isn’t worth it if custody, pricing, and recourse get murky.
From there, Justin Hertzberg pushes a builder’s mindset: design the environment to fit the trader. Pick jurisdiction, leverage caps, and platforms that match how you trade—whether that’s MT5’s ecosystem, TradingView’s social/charting pull, or cTrader’s loyal base—and make sure the product menu covers what you actually execute, not what looks cool on a brochure. He treats prop funding as a professional pathway, not a cheat code: pass objective rules, obey daily loss and max drawdown without exceptions, and scale size only after a meaningful sample of consistent trades. Under the hood, real-time risk tech and dashboards are your guardrails; let them stop the bad day from becoming a bad month.
Finally, his risk mechanics tie the whole playbook together: fixed dollars at risk per trade, volatility-aware stops and sizing, and portfolio risk spread across underlying, strategy style, and holding duration. Stagger entries, track systems separately, and cut correlation when two ideas start moving like twins. If rules are breached, don’t negotiate—downgrade size, journal the cause, and re-earn trust with clean execution. Put it all together and Justin Hertzberg’s message lands as a complete operating system: clean broker and platform foundations, disciplined risk math, tech-enforced guardrails, and patient scaling. Do that, and the “strategy” part finally has room to work.
