01
Structure before setups
You learn to read what the market is doing before you learn any pattern to trade against it. Setups without context are coin flips with better marketing.
About the academy
Built from a journal,
not a marketing funnel.
Ashcroft Trading Academy exists because students kept asking one trader for the process behind his numbers. Everything taught here — the curriculum, the playbook, the discipline — comes from seventeen years of timestamped trades, including the ones that went wrong.
Marcus Ashcroft
Founder & lead instructor · Chicago, IL
- 17
- Years trading
- ES / NQ
- Market specialty
- 1,412
- Trades journaled, 2023–2025
- 2,417
- Students since 2019
The story
Seventeen years, one thread: show the work.
-
2009
The prop desk
Marcus joins the equity-options desk of a Chicago proprietary trading firm straight out of a maths degree. Four years of tape, tickets, and the most expensive education available: watching what actually moves price, and losing money on everything that doesn’t.
-
2014
Going independent
He leaves the firm to trade his own book full-time, narrowing to US equity index futures — ES and NQ. The specialty that still defines the academy today: market structure, liquidity sweeps, and the opening drive.
-
2016
The journal becomes the system
After a −18% quarter, Marcus rebuilds his process around one rule: no trade exists unless it’s journaled — entry thesis, invalidation, and outcome, timestamped. The three-setup playbook taught in the Method is what survived three years of that filter.
-
2019
The academy opens
Traders who followed his public journal kept asking for the process behind the numbers. The first cohort was nine people in a rented conference room. 2,417 students later, the curriculum is still built from the same journal.
-
Today
Still at the desk
Marcus trades every session, publishes his pre-market plan at 8:15am ET, and personally teaches every Inner Circle cohort. The academy has never sold a course he isn’t actively trading.
How we teach
Four principles. No exceptions.
Every module, signal, and mentorship session runs on the same rules Marcus trades by. If a lesson can’t survive these four, it doesn’t make the curriculum.
02
Risk before ambition
Position sizing and invalidation come in module two — before a single entry technique. If you can’t define where you’re wrong, you don’t have a trade.
03
The journal is the proof
Every claim in this academy traces to a timestamped journal entry. Students are held to the same standard: 100 backtested trades before a single live one.
04
Losses are curriculum
Losing months are published next to winning ones. A track record with no red is either very short or very edited.
The honest part
What this academy is not.
Trading education has earned its reputation. The clearest way to be different is to say plainly what we don’t do.
Not financial advice. Marcus Ashcroft is not a registered investment advisor. Nothing published by this academy — courses, signals, or mentorship — is a recommendation to buy or sell any instrument. You make your own decisions with your own capital.
Not a shortcut. The Method requires 100 backtested trades before you go live. Students looking for a signal to copy without understanding it are refunded, not retained.
Not a promise of profits. Past performance is not indicative of future results, and trading involves risk of loss, including loss of principal. The full framing is on our risk disclosure page — read it before enrolling.
Ready when you are
Read the curriculum. Check the journal. Then decide.
The March cohort opens March 16, 2026. Full statement history is available on request — we’d rather you verify than trust.