Rafa Mendes
A Brazilian trader who buys prop-firm evaluations himself to review them in Portuguese, Rafa trades Nasdaq futures with Smart Money Concepts and gives his full course away free.
Compiled by MarketFramework editorial · Last reviewed Oct 24, 2026
▶ Featured video · Nov 16, 2025Editorial profile. Rafa Mendes is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by MarketFramework or MyFundedFutures, and this profile is not endorsed by Rafa. 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.
Rafa Mendes, known online as Rafa Gnomo, is a Brazilian trader and educator. He trades Nasdaq futures with Smart Money Concepts and reviews prop firms for a Portuguese-speaking audience. From Franca, São Paulo, he streams the New York open and runs the Brasil Trading Discord. Jornada Trader, his free course on YouTube, has more than 110 lessons.
Trades
Nasdaq futures
mostly MNQ · also gold, crude and CFDs
Style
SMC / ICT
round-number scalps after the open
Experience
Full-time trader
markets channel since Feb 2023
Based
Brazil
Franca, São Paulo
YouTube
20.2K
subscribers · Oct 2026
Language
Portuguese
every video, lesson and stream
LIVE FROM MYFUNDEDFUTURES
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Rafa's market, read from thousands of live MyFundedFutures evaluation and funded accounts.
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BEST KNOWN FOR
Testing prop firms himself, and teaching for free
Since 2023 Rafa has bought evaluations at prop firm after prop firm so Portuguese-speaking traders can see the dashboards, rules and withdrawals before they buy. His free Jornada Trader course runs to more than 110 lessons, from what a market is to ICT entry models. He trades the same method live on Nasdaq futures and runs the Brasil Trading Discord, about 8,500 members strong.
IN RAFA'S WORDS
“Mais importante do que comprar uma conta grande é entender quanto você realmente pode arriscar. [More important than buying a big account is understanding how much you can really risk.]”
YouTube, July 2026 (video description)
“Não escolha uma prop firm apenas pelo tamanho da conta ou pelo desconto. Compare as regras. [Don’t choose a prop firm just by account size or discount. Compare the rules.]”
YouTube, October 2026 (video description)
“É como se você estivesse operando ao meu lado, vendo exatamente o que eu vejo, entendendo meu pensamento por trás de cada trade. [It’s as if you were trading beside me, seeing exactly what I see, understanding my thinking behind each trade.]”
YouTube, September 2025 (Jornada Trader, Aula 0)
Rafa Mendes's featured video
“For Traders Futures – Cobrança de taxa única, sem mensalidade e sem taxa de ativação"” · published Nov 16, 2025 · 88.2K views
Who is Rafa Mendes?
Rafa Mendes, known online as Rafa Gnomo, is the Brazilian trader who decided the clearest way to explain prop firms was to buy their evaluations himself. Since September 2023 his series Desvendando Mesas Proprietárias [Unveiling Prop Firms] has opened one firm after another on camera: the dashboard, the rules, the prices, the withdrawals. By February 2025 his tally of firms tested had reached a hundred, each one documented in his Discord. He introduces himself as a father, a pet father, a husband and a full-time trader. Home is Franca, in São Paulo state, where he trades Nasdaq futures.
Teaching came long before the trading channel. He has taught computer classes, juggling workshops and skateboarding, he says, and later barista and coffee-tasting courses as a partner in a coffee roastery. His YouTube account dates to 2006 and followed his life through vlogs, gaming, fatherhood and coffee. In February 2023 he turned it to the financial markets because Brazilians, as he put it, get no financial education at school. He had plenty of people to talk coffee with, he said, but nobody to sit down and trade with. He calls himself extremely shy, except when he is teaching. "Conhecimento é para ser compartilhado" [knowledge is meant to be shared], he said in that first markets video.
The prop-firm work became the channel’s backbone. Hundreds of uploads now cover evaluations, payout rules, platform changes and promotions, from futures firms to CFD and crypto desks. A newer strand, Revisitando [Revisiting], returns to firms he covered earlier to see what has changed. Before he buys an account, he compares firms on sites such as PropFirmMatch, which he introduced to viewers in October 2026. His advice starts from the trader, not the firm. "Uma empresa pode ser ótima para o meu gerenciamento e completamente incompatível com o seu" [a firm can be great for my risk management and completely incompatible with yours], he wrote that month.
The teaching arm is Jornada Trader [Trader Journey], a course of more than 110 lessons in monthly modules. It was created in partnership with the broker XTB, and every lesson is taught on XTB’s xStation platform. The course starts with what a financial market is and moves through technical analysis, price action and Wyckoff to Smart Money Concepts and ICT models such as the Silver Bullet. Each lesson works through real market examples, with analysis and trades demonstrated live. In 2023 he said he hoped to teach for free one day. Since September 2025 he has done exactly that, releasing the whole course free on YouTube, lesson by lesson. He asks only that students who get something out of it give back, to him or to someone in need. Course questions go to a separate Discord, the Clube de Alunos [students’ club].
He goes live around the New York open, and in October 2026 his numbered sessions passed 260. Between streams the community gathers in the Brasil Trading Discord, which has about 8,500 members. Zero to Hero, planned as forty live sessions from December 2025, put the course into practice with a public spreadsheet of his accounts that viewers could audit. Operação Ascensão [Operation Ascension] ran from 24 September to 24 October 2026. That month he traded only partner-firm accounts on camera, with the dashboards and his trade journal on screen, while the firms put up accounts for viewer giveaways. For Portuguese-speaking traders weighing up a prop firm, his reviews offer a look inside before they buy. And the promise he made in his first weeks covering the markets still holds: "Não vou vender sonhos" [I won’t sell dreams].
How Rafa trades
Smart Money on the Nasdaq, at round numbers
Rafa trades Smart Money Concepts, the framework built on ICT’s ideas, mostly on the micro Nasdaq contract (MNQ) after the 9:30 am New York open. The sequence is consistent. He waits for price to take liquidity on a higher timeframe, often the London session high or low. Then he wants a break of market structure, confirmation of that break, and a return into an imbalance such as a fair value gap or an inverse fair value gap. Time of day matters to the model, so the clock is part of every setup.
The entry itself sits on a round number. On the Nasdaq he enters, sets his stop and takes profit at levels ending in 00 and 50, and he shares a free round-numbers indicator for NinjaTrader through his Discord. "As minhas entradas são feitas nos números redondos e as minhas saídas são feitas nos números redondos" [my entries are made at round numbers and my exits are made at round numbers], he explains. Each level still has to fit the wider model. A self-described scalper, he trades every instrument the same way, at any hour. Gold and crude oil futures share the screen, along with CFDs at prop firms.
One risk model for every account
Risk is set before the trade. In a July 2026 NinjaTrader tutorial built on a prop-firm futures evaluation, he laid out the template he uses. The stop is about 20 Nasdaq points, always somewhere between 10 and 25, with a target of at least 50. Risk per trade is roughly 0.3% of the account, and size comes down whenever the stop has to widen. An ATM strategy in NinjaTrader handles the orders, because a scalper who thinks too long loses the timing. The aim, in his words, is "algo objetivo, automático e menos emocional" [something objective, automatic and less emotional].
In that plan he takes one trade a day and usually sits out Fridays. During Zero to Hero he kept his trade journal and account list public. On the Operação Ascensão streams, rotating between partner accounts, his rule was two stops and done for the day. In August 2026 he described a different kind of stop, the "stop de mercado" [market stop]: stepping away from trading for a while when tiredness, anxiety or pressure cloud judgment. 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.
Rafa Mendes's career timeline
Opens the YouTube account that later becomes his trading channel. source
Turns the channel from coffee and family videos to the financial markets in February and opens a free Discord for traders. source
Launches Desvendando Mesas Proprietárias in September, buying evaluations at as many prop firms as he can to show their dashboards, rules, prices and withdrawals. source
Announces 100 prop firms tested in February, each one documented in his Discord. source
Begins releasing Jornada Trader free on YouTube in September. The course, first created in partnership with the broker XTB, reaches lesson 111 in March 2026. source
Starts Zero to Hero in December, a run of live sessions that put the course into practice with a public spreadsheet of his accounts. source
Launches Operação Ascensão on 24 September, a month of live trading on partner-firm accounts with account giveaways for viewers. source
Presents PropFirmMatch in October as one of the sites he uses to compare prop firms before buying an account. source
Rafa Mendes's videos
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🟡Bem vindos ao jogo mais difícil do mundo | #forex #ICT #smartmoney
SHORTS
Prop firms Rafa works with
The Operação Ascensão stream descriptions (24 September to 24 October 2026) list 30 partner firms across futures, forex and CFDs, crypto and options, plus the Thor trade copier. The futures partners are Earn2Trade, Funded Futures Family, Lucid Trading, MyFundedFutures, NextProp Trader, Phoenix, Savius, Tradeify and Traders Launch.
We list a firm relationship only with dated public evidence from the last 30 days, re-checked each editorial pass.
RAFA MENDES: FREQUENTLY ASKED
What does Rafa Mendes trade?
Nasdaq-100 futures, mostly the micro contract (MNQ), intraday after the 9:30 am New York open. He uses Smart Money Concepts, waiting for a liquidity sweep and a fair value gap, with entries and exits at round-number levels. He describes his markets as US futures, commodities and CFDs, so gold and crude oil appear on his streams too. His focus is US markets rather than contracts on Brazil’s B3 exchange.
Who is Rafa Mendes?
Rafa Mendes (Rafael Mendes), known online as Rafa Gnomo, is a full-time trader and educator based in Franca, São Paulo. He reviews prop firms in Portuguese, streams his Nasdaq futures trading, runs the Brasil Trading Discord of about 8,500 members and publishes the free Jornada Trader course. Before the markets channel he made coffee videos and taught barista courses as a partner in a roastery.
What is Jornada Trader?
Rafa’s free Portuguese-language trading course of more than 110 lessons in monthly modules. It runs from what a financial market is through technical analysis, price action and Wyckoff to Smart Money Concepts and ICT models. Created in partnership with the broker XTB, the course has been free on his YouTube channel since September 2025, with a students’ Discord, the Clube de Alunos, alongside.
What is Rafa Mendes’ net worth?
Rafa Mendes has not disclosed his net worth, and MarketFramework does not estimate net worth for the traders it profiles.
Which prop firm does Rafa Mendes use?
Several, and he reviews many more. His videos from late September and October 2026 carry partner code RAFAGNOMO for MyFundedFutures, FXIFY (whose futures arm is now called Futureify) and The Trading Pit. NextProp Trader’s code is RAFAGNOMO40. His Operação Ascensão streams list 30 partner firms, Lucid Trading and Tradeify among them. His July 2026 risk tutorial was built on a futures evaluation at The Trading Pit.
SOURCES
- Rafa Mendes: YouTube channel, about pageaccessed Oct 24, 2026
- YouTube: Jornada Trader, Aula 0, course introduction (September 2025)accessed Oct 24, 2026
- YouTube: channel change to the financial markets (February 2023)accessed Oct 24, 2026
- YouTube: ten reasons not to subscribe, channel principles (March 2023)accessed Oct 24, 2026
- YouTube: Desvendando Mesas Proprietárias project launch (September 2023)accessed Oct 24, 2026
- YouTube: 100 prop firms tested, channel update (February 2025)accessed Oct 24, 2026
- YouTube: risk management and NinjaTrader ATM setup (July 2026)accessed Oct 24, 2026
- YouTube: Operação Ascensão launch (September 2026)accessed Oct 24, 2026
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