📅 February 18, 2026 ⏱ 16 min read đŸ·ïž Success Stories

$1M+ Funded Trader Shares His Story: How Blayn Marshall Built 30+ Profitable Algos

From broke university student to seven-figure funded trader. Blayn Marshall reveals how he built 30+ automated strategies, secured Darwinex funding, and now manages over $1 million in capital through algorithmic trading.

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Blayn Marshall shares his complete journey from manual trading struggle to seven-figure algo trading success.

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$1M+
Capital Managed
30+
Algo Strategies Running
0.05%
Risk Per Trade (Some Strategies)

The Beginning: A Wrong Click That Changed Everything

Blayn Marshall's trading journey started where many do—with stocks. At 18, his father gave him some capital with simple advice: "If you learn how to play the stock market, you'll retire early."

Like most beginners, Blayn bought stocks that resonated with him personally. As a gamer, he picked up shares in Gfinity. Within days, it doubled—up 100%. But without an exit strategy, he held through the crash back to breakeven.

The First Lesson: "I realized I needed an exit strategy. So I developed a simple rule: pick stocks, and if they go up 20%, sell out. That was okay, but it's very hard to keep picking winning stocks."

Then, during his engineering degree at university, fate intervened. His dissertation focused on wave forces on cylinder structures, requiring CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulations.

He clicked on the wrong article.

Instead of CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics), he clicked on an article about CFD (Contracts For Difference) and Elliott Wave Theory. From that moment, he was hooked on trading.

The Painful Lessons of Manual Trading

Blayn opened his first trading account and jumped in trading Elliott Waves. But there was a problem: he didn't understand short selling. He thought "sell" meant closing a position, not opening a short. So he only took long trades.

It worked—until it didn't.

The Crash: "One day there was news, and it wiped out all my gains. Almost the whole account gone. I didn't have a stop loss or anything like that. I didn't have a good understanding of these things."

This catastrophic loss forced Blayn to get serious. He dove into books, podcasts, communities, and research. He developed three mechanical strategies and started trading around the clock.

The problem? His main strategy required checking 4-hour charts every four hours. For over a year, he set alarms for 2 AM, 6 AM, 10 AM, 2 PM, 6 PM, and 10 PM. Every single day. No sleep. No life.

"Getting up at 2 in the morning to check the charts was a bit of a nightmare. Doing that for just over a year, two years, was quite painful."

Something had to change.

The Shift to Algorithmic Trading

Blayn asked himself a simple question: "How can I get my sleep back and my life back?"

The answer was automation. He researched algorithmic trading, took several courses, and began the painful process of learning to code trading systems.

The Turning Point: "It was very difficult to begin with because it's a completely new subject. People are scared because it's complex—you've got to learn code. That's probably the big hurdle. But once you dive in, get over that hurdle, you get used to it, pick it up, and continuously build on it."

His process was methodical:

  1. Build one algo at a time
  2. Put it on small capital
  3. Run it for 3-4 months
  4. Compare live results to backtests monthly
  5. If they match and perform well, scale up
  6. If they don't match or perform poorly, scrap it and move to the next idea

Critical Insight: "It's pretty simple to build a perfect backtest and then go trade it live and it collapses. I really watch to make sure that it's in line with what's going on. Some strategies look perfect in backtests, then you apply them to live markets and the opposite happens."

Where Strategy Ideas Come From

When asked how he develops strategies, Blayn's answer might surprise you:

"A mixture of everything. When you spend so much time looking at charts, you pick up your own theories on chart patterns or how certain currencies move. But also using every single online source possible."

His strategy sources include:

"There's an abundance of resources out there. You can just pull ideas from anywhere. Test them. Most won't work. But when you find one that does, you've got something."

The Power of Simplicity Over Complexity

In the beginning, Blayn kept things simple out of necessity—he was still learning how to build complex systems. But as his skills grew and he could add more complexity, he discovered something surprising:

Game-Changing Discovery: "Some of the simple systems have actually been some of the better systems over the longer run. The more complex, more filters that you add, the more you really cherry-pick and essentially over-optimize."

This is counter to what most traders believe. We think more complexity equals better results. But Blayn's experience proves the opposite: simplicity often wins long-term.

Why? Because complex systems with many filters are over-optimized to past data. They're curve-fitted. They look perfect in backtests but collapse in live trading because they're too specific to historical conditions that won't repeat.

Simple systems, on the other hand, capture broader market dynamics that persist across changing conditions.

Building an Uncorrelated Portfolio

As Blayn built more profitable strategies, he faced a new challenge: How do you manage 30+ strategies without taking excessive risk?

The answer: build an uncorrelated portfolio.

Portfolio Management Philosophy: "You could build 10 strategies on dollar-related things and there's going to be higher correlation. It might look good in backtest. But when it comes to live situations, there can be individual days where you are overexposed on one side of the market."

His portfolio construction process:

  1. Put all strategies into Quant Analyzer
  2. Check correlation between all individual strategies
  3. Aim to build an uncorrelated portfolio
  4. Ensure strategies trade multiple assets
  5. Balance long and short positions
  6. Mix strategy types (breakouts, trend-following, etc.)
  7. Avoid overexposure to single market direction

"If they're good and uncorrelated, combine them together. Keep doing that until you've got what I would regard as a good balanced portfolio that trades multiple assets, both long and short, breakouts and trend-following."

The Extremely Low-Risk Approach

One of the most surprising aspects of Blayn's trading is how little risk he takes per trade.

Risk Per Trade: Some of his strategies risk as low as 0.05% per trade. That's not a typo. Five one-hundredths of one percent.

Why so low? Because he's trading volume, not gambling on individual trades.

"It sounds crazy to most people. But what it means is in difficult times, if a strategy is going through hard times and struggling for a period, it's not going through a crazy drawdown. It can take a lot of punches before it needs to be taken out of the portfolio."

How he determines risk per strategy:

It depends on trade frequency over a 10-year backtest:

This way, each strategy gets approximately equal risk exposure over time, despite different trade frequencies.

The psychological benefit: "I use such a low-risk approach that every given day there's not too much volatility within the account or balance. It doesn't phase me too much at all. I can make good decisions with a clear head."

The Path to Seven-Figure Funding

As Blayn built more strategies, he faced a new problem: he was running out of personal capital to deploy them all effectively.

"I was building so many strategies. I was running out of capital myself to actually apply these strategies to run effectively. Trying to find external capital definitely helps you grow the portfolios you can build and test more."

Step 1: Darwinex Track Record

Blayn's first move was Darwinex. He built a portfolio of his best strategies and traded them on the platform to establish a public track record.

"I put all these strategies together on Darwinex to see if I can get capital. And that's essentially what happened."

Step 2: Private Investor Connections

As his track record grew, something unexpected happened: investors started reaching out to him.

"Naturally as you progress in Darwinex and you've got that track record up there, I started getting messages and connecting with outside investors. Finding a way of being able to trade outside Darwinex as well so I can support them personally and also try and build new things with them."

Step 3: Building Relationships

When asked how he built connections with high-level investors, Blayn's answer was simple:

"Just naturally messaging people. You just message people, reach out, and naturally connect. People put the perspective that people are above them, but at the end of the day, we're all the same. It's easy to just reach out and speak to someone."

The Reality of Networking: "If you do it across quite a lot of people, most of them might not reply. But you will get a couple that reply. And as long as you've got something to back yourself up, to show that it's worth their time to speak with you, that definitely helps."

Blayn emphasizes: "To begin with, I had no connections. It's not as if I could go down the street and knew a bunch of people that would give me money to trade. It's hard to begin with, but just speaking to people, you start getting in the rhythm of reaching out."

The Mental Game of Trading Investor Capital

Trading your own money is one thing. Trading millions for investors is entirely different.

"Initially it was challenging mentally. But I think this is where definitely years of trading, building up that stronger mindset, definitely helps."

How he manages the pressure:

"At the end of the day, if you've got the data, you're doing well, you're successful—and one of the things I do is I use such a low-risk approach—every given day there's not too much volatility within the account. It doesn't really phase me too much at all just for the fact that I keep it such a low-risk approach, meaning I can make good decisions with a clear head."

"Initially it was challenging, but now it's just part of the everyday."

Managing 30+ Strategies: The System

Blayn doesn't just run 30+ strategies randomly. He has a systematic approach to portfolio management.

Main Portfolio: 10-15 Strategies

"For my main portfolio, I've kept it pretty much the same for the past year and a half. I've only changed like two strategies out and brought new ones in."

This core portfolio is stable because it works. It's producing consistent returns with manageable drawdowns.

Background Rotation: 30+ Strategies

"On the background, I run loads of different ones, just sort of like in the background running just in case I need to bring them into play at any point. I've got about 30 running in the background just in case one of the main ones isn't performing as well."

The replacement system:

  1. Monitor main portfolio strategies continuously
  2. Set max drawdown thresholds for each strategy
  3. If a strategy hits its threshold, pull it from main portfolio
  4. Move it to small "back burner" account to see if anything changes
  5. Replace it with a backup strategy from the rotation

Why This Matters: "I'm always running loads of different ideas and strategies just to make sure these are working. For my own portfolio, I put the ones that are performing the best overall and have been consistent."

The Truth About Edge Erosion

One of the most important concepts Blayn emphasizes is edge erosion—something rarely discussed in retail trading education.

The Harsh Reality: "Some of the algorithms I've built look good for like 10 years, and they fall off. Edge erosion is real. Nobody's really taught that in the retail space."

This is why the "once you're profitable, you're profitable" mindset is dangerous. A strategy can work for a decade and then suddenly stop working.

Blayn's solution: Never rely on a single strategy. Always have multiple strategies running, with dozens more in rotation ready to replace underperformers.

"Building a portfolio, not just relying on one strategy—that's what's not spoken about or taught. You see people online saying once you're profitable, you're profitable. Well, I can tell you that's not true."

Handling Market Volatility

With recent market volatility—tariff announcements, unexpected geopolitical events—how do Blayn's algos handle chaos?

"It all depends on the individual strategy. Some of mine are performing great, some are struggling with it. But the whole point is you build these strategies so when volatility or times like this come into play, it can handle it."

The low-drawdown insurance policy:

"If you run a low drawdown, some of these strategies are running 0.05% risk—in difficult times, if it's going through hard times and struggling for a period, it's not going through a crazy drawdown. It can take a lot of punches before it needs to be taken out of the portfolio."

"There's always going to be good periods and bad periods for any strategy. That's why I'm building portfolios. Some of them are performing well, some of them are not. But overall, as long as the equity curve is going to the top right corner, I'm happy with it."

Key Takeaways from Blayn Marshall's Journey

What's Next: The 100-Algorithm Experiment

Blayn isn't resting on his success. He's currently running an experiment that sounds crazy even to him:

"I'm building a portfolio on Darwinex Zero of 100 algorithms to see what happens. It's more of a fun series just to see how crazy can trading get with 100 systems running at one time."

His main objective? "Just to scale, but also build other portfolios that are completely different. See how far I can take it. If I'm constantly building systems, I've constantly got ideas that are working, it means that hopefully I'm in this game for as long as possible."

"It's just about scaling, building, and continuing the same momentum and philosophy that I've got right now."

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