Arena Cup Winner's Trading Discipline Tips

Brian turned a single, fear-soaked trading day into a first-place finish. He won the NinjaTrader Arena Cup after returning to futures trading in October 2024, following a decade-long break to raise his family. He got there not by chasing every tick, but by keeping his charts simple, leaning on his family for energy, and treating discipline as a daily habit.

NinjaTrader's Arena Cup is a simulated futures trading competition, so traders can compete for cash prizes without putting real capital at risk. You can browse the current lineup over at the NinjaTrader Arena. For Brian, a part-time trader with a full-time job and a house full of kids, that risk-free format was the whole draw. "I had nothing to lose," he said.

A decade away from the charts—and back to first place

Brian's trading story starts well before the Arena Cup. Right out of high school in the early 2000s, he began trading the E-mini S&P 500 alongside his dad, using NinjaTrader even then. Money was tight, so every trade had to count.

"It was hard to get going. I'm not gonna lie," he said. But trading stuck with him even after life pulled him away from the screens.

"I made a deal with my wife that I would either make this a profitable thing, or I would put it on hold," Brian recalled. When it was time to start a family, he kept his word. "I took about a ten-year break and we raised our family."

A coworker eventually nudged him back toward the markets. After brief detours through crypto and some automated trading, Brian found his way back to what he knew best. "Futures is what I knew. Futures is what I loved, and I knew that I could use my old software, NinjaTrader," he said, marking October 2024 as his return. "I love trading. It is my happy place for sure."

That decade away from trading turned out to be an advantage: Brian came back with perspective, patience, and a clear reason to trade. It's the same steady mindset you'll see in another Arena Cup champion, Jeff, and it set the tone for everything that followed.

How Brian prepared for a one-day Arena Cup format

The Arena Cup ran as a single-day event, and Brian treated NinjaTrader's competition like the high-stakes session it was. His prep wasn't about adding tools; it was about tuning in to what the market was already telling him.

Reading the market's mood before the open

Brian pays attention to how a market feels before he ever places a trade. "I kind of watched the feeling of the market to see where we were at," he said. A big selloff a few days earlier had left its mark.

"I could feel that it was a very fearful style market," Brian said, adding that he expected "a down day, if not a choppy day." That read shaped how aggressive he was willing to be once the bell rang.

Trading bigger swings instead of small scalps

Brian normally describes himself as a conservative scalper, taking small, quick profits. Scalping means entering and exiting fast to capture minor price moves, and for a one-day contest, he knew that wasn't going to cut it.

"In order to win a competition like this, you definitely have to go big," he said. So he watched for the larger swings and the key levels rather than nibbling at every wiggle. Today he mainly trades Micro Nasdaq futures and steps up to E-mini futures when his conviction is high, while still keeping an eye on the S&P 500.

Adjusting his approach to fit the format, rather than trading on autopilot, is what let Brian make the most of NinjaTrader's Arena Cup. That came down to two things: reading the mood of the market before the open, and rethinking how big he was willing to trade.

The trade that turned the tide

Brian's confidence clicked into place with his first trade of the day. "The trade right out of the gate, right at the open, I decided to take the long, and it was beautiful. It was green candle after green candle after green candle," he said.

When price stalled at one of his high-volume price pivot levels, he waited for a red candle to confirm, then flipped his position and rode the move the other way. That early win told him everything he needed to know. "That first trade made me realize, okay, I can do this," Brian said.

The bigger surprise was the market itself. "We had a catalyst this day, which means the markets don't act rationally," he explained, and holding through that turbulence took nerve.

What made it click wasn't a secret indicator; it was the room around him. As Brian climbed the leaderboard, his kids came running. "They started celebrating with me. Every little move up that I made, they were there cheering me on. It was like a party, which in a way took all the fear out of trading."

"Everything just clicked. I was spot on mentally, and I think it was because I was having so much fun with my family," he said. One well-timed trade, plus a calmer state of mind, moved him to the front of the pack.

Why simplicity became his edge

If there's one theme that runs through Brian's trading, it's that less is more. The turning point in his consistency came when he stopped adding to his NinjaTrader charts and started subtracting.

Cutting the clutter from his charts

Early on, Brian loaded up on everything he'd picked up from videos and other communities. "Things got over-cluttered. The screen did not look pretty," he admitted. Trimming it down changed his trading.

"When I started subtracting stuff off my screen, it changed so much for me, because I don't have so many things telling me go this way, go that way," he said.

Using ATR and pivot levels to read exhaustion

During the competition, Brian used average true range (ATR) on a daily chart to judge how far the market had already moved before deciding whether a reversal was likely. ATR is a volatility indicator that measures how much an instrument typically moves over a set period.

"The ATR was a big helper in this one, especially after the market had taken such a big dump," Brian said. "I had the ATR on the daily just to see the range extension, to see if maybe we had reached a point where we could possibly return."

He paired that with high-volume price pivot levels, the spots where heavy trading activity tends to stall or reverse a move. When a market runs out of steam near one of those levels, traders call it exhaustion. "With the exhaustion of one and the signal to enter for another, it was almost a perfect setup in my mind," Brian said.

Simplicity didn't make Brian's trading less sophisticated; it made his decisions clearer, and that kind of clarity can help when a competition like the Arena Cup moves fast.

The habits that keep him mentally sharp

Brian is the first to say that trading is as much mental as it is technical. A big part of his NinjaTrader Arena Cup run came down to routines that keep his head clear, the same territory we cover in trading psychology and building a futures trader's mindset.

Therapy, hydration, and a pre-market breathing routine

Brian is open about seeing a therapist. "I'm not ashamed to say it at all. I think it has been the best thing for my mental state in trading," he said. "Therapy has definitely stabilized my extremes," so his wins and losses no longer swing him from one emotional edge to the other.

His pre-market routine is almost comically simple, and that's the point. Water comes first. "Your brain works so much better when you're hydrated," he said, only half joking that "my reward for water is coffee."

Then he breathes. "I take a moment. I sit and I take a breath," Brian said. "If I don't breathe, I don't do well. The better I do with that, for some reason, the better I trade."

Knowing when to sit out after a big win

Winning first place was thrilling, and Brian knew that was its own kind of risk. "It's an emotional event winning first place," he said. When he sat down to trade again, he recognized he was riding too high.

"My emotional and mental state are not here," he remembered thinking, so he stepped back. "I took a few days off. I still hung out with the community, I still watched the charts, but I didn't actively trade." Knowing when not to trade is a discipline of its own, and it's central to smart risk management.

These habits won't guarantee a win, but they can help you show up steady, and steadiness can go a long way in a competition.

His advice for traders eyeing the next Arena Cup

Ask Brian how to get ready for NinjaTrader's next Arena Cup and his answer is less about indicators and more about the trader behind them. Brian's top advice for traders entering the next NinjaTrader Arena Cup is to find a trading community, master one set of tools instead of constantly switching, and treat discipline as a daily practice.

He credits sizing down his position size and simplifying his chart setup, rather than adding more indicators, as the mindset shift that made his trading more consistent. "Little wins definitely add up to big wins," he said.

If you're planning to compete in the Arena Cup, consider these five takeaways from Brian:

• Find your community. Trading can be lonely, so Brian says to do your due diligence, shop around, and settle in with like-minded traders instead of jumping from group to group.
• Master one set of tools. "Stick to one thing, master it, or realize it's not working and move on," he says. Constantly swapping indicators just adds noise.
• Size down to build consistency. Smaller positions lower the emotional stakes and let small, repeatable wins compound over time.
• Read the market before the open. Get a feel for sentiment and volatility so you can match your aggression to the day's conditions.
• Treat discipline as a daily practice. Hydrate, breathe, and step away when your head isn't in it. Brian says if you realize you're over-trading, back off and size down.

More than any single tactic, Brian's edge is his reason for trading. "I can nail it in one word: freedom," he said.

Winning didn't change everything overnight, but it gave Brian a taste of the life he's building toward. And through it all, he felt his late father right beside him. "He has passed a few years ago, and I like to think that he was right next to me cheering me on the whole time."