Big Char Trades
Big Char Trades has documented his Nasdaq futures trading in public since his first day in August 2024, and he teaches his ICT-style model free on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and Discord.
Compiled by MarketFramework editorial · Last reviewed Oct 17, 2026
▶ Featured video · Oct 1, 2026Editorial profile. Big Char Trades is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by MarketFramework or MyFundedFutures, and this profile is not endorsed by Char. MarketFramework is operated by MyFundedFutures, a futures prop firm. Compiled from public sources; performance figures are as stated by the creator and are not independently verified. Corrections & removal requests.
Big Char Trades is a Miami-based Nasdaq futures day trader who began in August 2024 and has posted his progress publicly from the first day. He teaches his ICT-style model of liquidity draws, SMT divergence and inverse fair value gaps for free. About 124,000 Instagram followers, 20,800 YouTube subscribers and a 10,800-member Discord follow along.
Trades
Nasdaq futures
NQ · ES on screen for SMT
Style
ICT concepts
liquidity draws · iFVG · SMT
Futures since
2024
August 2024 · first options trade at 18
Based
Miami
Florida, United States
YouTube
20.8K
subscribers · Oct 2026
124K
followers · TikTok 58.8K
LIVE FROM MYFUNDEDFUTURES
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BEST KNOWN FOR
Everything posted, from day one
On his first day of futures trading, Char decided he would post everything he learned, and he has kept that promise through good runs and hard ones. His free YouTube lessons, led by a Power of Three explainer with more than 23,000 views, now sit beside daily trade recaps on a second channel. He sells no course or mentorship. Instead, the live trading happens every day in The Narrative, his free Discord of 10,800 members.
IN CHAR'S WORDS
“Your feelings don’t matter. What matters is whether you let them affect your actions. If you can take losses without breaking your rules, you’ll last.”
TradeZella, September 2025
“You cannot look for the setup. You have to let the setup come for you because once the setup comes to you, you know it’s A+.”
YouTube, March 2026
“Honesty and transparency. It’s always been the most important thing to me and it always will be.”
YouTube, March 2026
Big Char Trades's featured video
“The Daily Trading Routine That Actually Makes You a Better Trader” · published Oct 1, 2026 · 11.7K views
Who is Big Char Trades?
Big Char Trades made one promise when he started trading futures: he would post everything he learned. He took his first Nasdaq futures trades in August 2024 and opened his YouTube channel that September. He has shown the work ever since, from backtests and A+ setups to the red days every trader knows. Two years on, the habit has drawn about 124,000 followers on Instagram, 58,800 on TikTok, 20,800 subscribers on YouTube and 15,900 followers on X. His X bio captures the spirit of it: "Talking to my younger self."
The road to futures was a long one, and Char tells it with candour and humour. At 18 he put his family’s graduation gift into options on Robinhood, multiplied it within two weeks and then lost it all. He spent two years in college, where he started an Amazon business. At 22, an inventory order that arrived months late and only half complete left him about $40,000 in debt. He bussed tables, taught himself copywriting and ad buying, landed his first client through relentless Instagram messages and paid off the debt in eight months. A few of his marketing agency’s clients were traders, and by August 2024 he had decided it was his turn.
He learned in public. His first system was built on the four-hour Power of Three, and his early-2025 tutorials on it are still his most-watched. "Full Explanation Of The Po3 (AMD)" has passed 23,000 views, and a live backtesting session has drawn nearly 17,000. When those setups thinned out that spring, he spent weeks backtesting without placing a trade. He rebuilt his approach around the daily draw on liquidity, SMT divergence with ES and clean inversions of fair value gaps. TradeZella told the story of that rebuild in its Process Over Profits series in September 2025. In March 2026 he gave the whole model away in a single video, telling viewers, "I don’t sell a course. I don’t sell a mentorship." In May and June he walked through it on two episodes of the Prop Firm Trader Podcast.
The community lives in The Narrative, a free Discord of about 10,800 members where he trades live every day. In June 2025 he opened a paid version, The Narrative Premium, then closed it in early August. On camera he explained why: he could not stay fully transparent about his own trading while members were paying him, and his own development had to come first. The free server stayed open, and a weekly newsletter now carries his A+ setups, reviews and outlooks. The Narrative’s Whop page holds a 4.9-star rating from 108 reviews.
The cadence never lets up. Thousands of short clips run across TikTok and Instagram, 2,389 on TikTok alone, and a long-form lesson lands on YouTube most weeks. In late September 2026 he began documenting every trade on his funded accounts, promising "the most transparent trading you’ve seen on the internet." On 1 October he opened a second channel, More Big Char, which has carried a recap of nearly every session since. That is the appeal: a young trader with a clear model, a strict rulebook and the camera always on. He shows the people a step behind him exactly how the work gets done.
How Char trades
Draw on liquidity first, then one clean inversion
Every trade starts with the draw on liquidity. On the daily chart, Char reads price as moving from external liquidity (the swing highs and lows) to internal liquidity, such as an unfilled fair value gap, and back again. He then targets a nearer level that agrees with that draw, such as an hourly swing high or the New York session high, rather than a daily extreme hundreds of points away. The economic calendar sets the pace: quiet days before CPI, PPI or FOMC call for patience or smaller size.
The entry follows a fixed checklist. Price must trade into a higher-timeframe PD array and sweep liquidity, and NQ must show SMT divergence against ES. Then the single fair value gap in the manipulation leg has to invert cleanly, with momentum, on a one- to five-minute chart. He enters on the candle close, sets the stop at the swing and targets at least 2R. The stop moves to breakeven at the first swing, and bigger winners are trailed behind one-minute order blocks or breaker blocks.
From the four-hour Po3 to a two-trade day
His first system had six parts: a higher-timeframe PD array, a lower-timeframe change in state of delivery, SMT, the 9:50–10:10 am macro, one trade a day and a daily bias read from candle closes. He set it out in December 2024, with the four-hour Power of Three framing it all. The idea was to catch the manipulation of the 10 am four-hour candle into an hourly or 15-minute PD array, then ride the distribution. When those setups faded in spring 2025, weeks of backtesting produced today’s discretionary model. He told TradeZella that the backtest showed a win rate of about 66 percent and a profit factor of 2.79.
The rules matter as much as the setup. He focuses on 9:20–10:40 am Eastern, the window his backtests showed to be cleanest, and trades pre-market only when a setup is exceptional. If his first trade wins, he is done for the day. If it loses, he allows one more and then stops. Each session goes into his TradeZella journal for review, and daily walks of 12 to 13 miles reset his head after hard days. As with every trader profiled here, the approach is described from his own material and is not a recommendation; futures trading involves substantial risk of loss.
See how the wider prop-trading field is positioned in NQ while you study a method like this: MarketFramework's Positioning Edge shows live long/short splits across ES, NQ, MES and MNQ from real evaluation and funded accounts, and Prop Backtest scores strategies against prop-firm rules.
Big Char Trades's career timeline
Takes his first Nasdaq futures trades in August and opens the Big Char Trades YouTube channel on 10 September, posting what he learns from the first day. source
Publishes "Full Explanation Of The Po3 (AMD)" in January and a live Po3 backtesting session in February, still his two most-watched videos. source
Opens a paid community, The Narrative Premium, in June and closes it in early August to put his own trading first, keeping the free Discord open. source
TradeZella features him in its Process Over Profits series in September, telling how he rebuilt his model through backtesting that spring. source
In March he gives his full model away in "How I Trade Every Single Day | Complete Strategy Revealed" and tells his pre-trading story on camera. source
Appears as a guest on two episodes of the Prop Firm Trader Podcast, in May and June. source
Begins documenting every trade on his funded accounts on 25 September, then opens a second channel, More Big Char, for daily trade recaps on 1 October. source
Big Char Trades's videos
LATEST
How I Would Learn Day Trading FAST (If I could start over)
The Daily Trading Routine That Actually Makes You a Better Trader
I am going to be documenting every single thing that happens on my funded accounts
The Market Doesn’t Owe You Sh*t
I Found The Best Lucid Trading Account So You Don’t Have To
MOST POPULAR
Full Explanation Of The Po3 (AMD)
Backtesting The Po3 LIVE & UNFILTERED (You've Never Seen This)
Why You Can't Follow Your Trading Rules No Matter How Hard You Try
This Is How The Best Traders In The WORLD Trade NQ (30-Minute Backtesting Session)
ICT Po3 LIVE Backtesting Session
SHORTS
Prop firms Char works with
All five firms appear with code CHAR in the description of every long-form upload from 21 September to 13 October 2026 and on his Linktree. He is also a TradeZella partner (code CHAR) and reviews every session in its journal.
We list a firm relationship only with dated public evidence from the last 30 days, re-checked each editorial pass.
BIG CHAR TRADES: FREQUENTLY ASKED
What does Big Char Trades trade?
He trades Nasdaq-100 futures (NQ) intraday, with ES on screen as the correlated market for SMT divergence. He enters on clean inversions of fair value gaps at higher-timeframe levels and targets at least 2R. He focuses on a 9:20–10:40 am Eastern trading window and takes no more than two trades a day.
Who is Big Char Trades?
Big Char Trades, known as Char, is a Miami-based futures day trader in his twenties. He traded options as a teenager, then built an Amazon business and a marketing agency before turning to Nasdaq futures in August 2024. He has posted his progress in public from the first day. TradeZella featured him in its Process Over Profits series, and he has twice been a guest on the Prop Firm Trader Podcast.
What is The Narrative?
The Narrative is Char’s free Discord, where he trades live every day. It had about 10,800 members in October 2026. He also writes a weekly newsletter of A+ setups, reviews and outlooks, and he posts daily trade recaps on his second channel, More Big Char. He has said he does not sell a course or a mentorship.
What is Big Char Trades’ net worth?
Big Char Trades has not disclosed his net worth, and MarketFramework does not estimate net worth for the traders it profiles.
Which prop firms does Big Char Trades use?
He trades evaluation and funded accounts on camera, including five Tradeify 50K Select evaluations in September 2026. His October 2026 video descriptions and his Linktree carry code CHAR for Tradeify, Lucid Trading, Apex Trader Funding, MyFundedFutures and Alpha Futures. In September he also published reviews of the Tradeify and Lucid account lineups.
SOURCES
- Big Char Trades: YouTube channelaccessed Oct 17, 2026
- YouTube, 13 October 2026 upload (description with partner codes)accessed Oct 17, 2026
- YouTube: Before Futures Trading, This Happened to Me (2026)accessed Oct 17, 2026
- YouTube: How I Trade Every Single Day | Complete Strategy Revealed (2026)accessed Oct 17, 2026
- YouTube: I Killed My Trading Discord After 2 Months (2026)accessed Oct 17, 2026
- TradeZella: How Big Char Trades Became Profitable in Less Than a Year (2025)accessed Oct 17, 2026
- Prop Firm Trader Podcast with Big Char Trades (May 2026)accessed Oct 17, 2026
- Big Char Trades: Linktreeaccessed Oct 17, 2026
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