FTMO - For serious traders

FTMO free trial has become my favorite training ground to test my strategies... alongside trading my own live acc. Keep up the good work FTMO....and thank you for the free services.

Hi! I was reading your FAQ and it was written that one could double their capital through successful trading and increment algorithm after 16 months. But 25% out of $125,000 is >$30,000. And 25% of $155,000 is >$27,000. It means that after 12 months one could have more than $182,000.

And 25% of $182,000 is greater than $45,000.

Ok, I have been watching this thread for quite some time now. Being a trader with years of experience, I just want to give a few insights of what I think. Firstly, I believe anything that has to do with money, there is a need to have transparency between the client and the company. I see users "NotAtrader" and "here2there" getting shoot down for asking questions which I feel there is nothing wrong with it. I myself am curious about those questions too. At least if those questions are answered, newcomers to the thread will get to know the knowledge as well.


When I came across funded trading accounts, FTMO is one of the companies that caught my attention. When I start researching the website for the rules I have to say the requirements of the DD, profit target but most importantly, the timeframe allowed is what shocked me the most. What does it take for a Prop Trading Firm to earn while bringing in more investors? To show the clients they can make money consistently in the long term. If I own a hedge fund with over a million funds and I am looking for traders to trade my portfolio, I will want them to last not double the account overnight and lose it the next day. To "TraderOtakar", one thing I do not understand is when you say, "We are a proprietary firm and before we allocate someone to manage our money, we definitely need to see their real commitment and responsibility. Would you give your own money to a stranger based on promises? I think you wouldn’t." I want to ask are you more confident in giving someone access to your fund who got lucky doubling his or her account or someone who has a low DD but has consistent profits in the long term? I even saw your shop selling a poster with the quote "trading is a marathon" which I strongly abide by, but that conflicts with how you are recruiting traders to manage your funds.


I understand how you are managing your business. I agree with the need for a fee to be enrolled, you want serious traders. As a boss, you want to hire people who know what they are doing and help your business grow. I just find the fact if you want to hire the top traders to trade your funds, the approach is wrong. Warren Buffett who is one the best investor out there achieves a consistent yield of 20% per year, while your hiring process is like finding gamblers to manage your funds. Unless you want gamblers so in the times they lose and you gain. In "TraderOtakar"'s defense, the company is not forcing anyone to sign up, hell there is even the option of free trial which is good for someone to test the difficulty of completing the challenge, kudos to that! End of the day we cannot force our idea on someone, that is just my personal view with a pinch of salt.

If you want to trade for FTMO as your soul source of income, I think you would be looking to target 10% each month anyway.
Assuming the max 300k allotment, 70% of 30k is 21k..
Then I would have to check with an accountant if FTMO would be classed as an employer, or profits are classed as capital gains which may be as high as 45%.

So if you were a complete gun trader pulling 10% from the markets month after month, it's possible to make 10k a month in pocket.
But how long is this sustainable? And I assume if you have a negative month you lose funding, so the income security leaves something to be desired.

LOL
why worry about the rocket fuel prices if owning a bicycle currently?
sure, dreaming is good, and i get that!

on a more serious note,
when you will find yourself in the situation outlined, then probably you will get a bit more creative than the 45% tax bracket.
i believe i read something that dividends are taxed 30% in Australia, that 33% savings should take care of a shell company costs that also partly deductible from income.
more, it doesnt have to be an Australian company....
plenty of options out there. the yearly income you outline there can buy you a residency permit in countries!

but then again, why not create first that painfully sweet situation of 10k a month trading income?!

however there is nothing to disagree about the closing part: the income security in retail sucks. private trader, prop, or a mix of it, doesnt matter.
it isnt a cushy job at a fund or bank or brokerage, with salary and optional bonus.
but hey, that isnt the topic ppl want to discuss in details, cos it may be a hard landing for some who think 100$ and an excel spreadsheet is enough to make a living!

PS.
just above there was a W.Buffett reference about gambling or not. would be a fun topic to discuss, but then again... why to shatter the dreams?
well...let the picture speak!


happy trading!

Hi Folks:

Onward to the verification phase:
https://ftmo.com/en/metrix/11179517/?sharer=7474007fd


PEACE
Jess

Let us know how it goes Jess! I've been trading for a year now between paper trading and live and I'm excited for the possibility of a reliable prop trading firm such as this since I just graduated from college and have limited capital to start with.

For anyone reading this with questions, I have taken the free trial and it seems like a decent program that tries to limit the traders' losses but before I take the challenge, I am interested to hear from someone with a live funded account who has already received a profit split.

There is so much negativity on this thread (surprise surprise), I thought I'd hop on here to let anyone who's interested know that I just passed the Challenge and will be starting the Verification after a relaxing weekend.

Really impressed with FTMO; super-efficient comms, professional and the fairest deal for traders out there (I've had a good look at similar offerings online and this is the only one I've been interested in).

FTMO now have an arrangement with LMAX. That sounds promising.

Why?

Was actually really excited about the lmax addition... Till I saw this:

LMAX provides two different data feeds.
For Live trading accounts they provide a live data feed which is the actual market data.
For their Demo trading accounts, they provide a Demo data feed which is not actual market data and will not exactly reflect the Live market data update frequency as it is running under a pricing robot.
In our experience, when the market is active there are significantly less price updates with the Demo data feed compared to the Live data feed. When the market is less active, the price updates could be the same or the Demo data feed could have a higher number of pricing updates compared to the Live data feed.



Could ftmo please clarify this.... To use volume properly I would need the live data feed....

Curious what broker did you go with? And are you sticking with the same for verification?

I see ICmarkets has been removed.
If we chose IC broker when paying for challenge, then passed challenge and almost complete verification with IC, can we still continue with IC when/if funded.
Personally have not had any negative issue with them.
And if I want to pay for another challenge, IC is no longer possible option? Can we make special request?

I'm in... starting the $100k evaluation on Monday...

How reliable has the IC feed been?

I trade London open up to NY open and it's been fine during those hours

IC continued to drop out a while back. Shame they just don’t use the standard ‘Live’ but that would make testing closer to reality... can’t have that.

Also FTMO.. why not offer exactly the same ‘practice account’ parameters as the standard evaluation packages?
If you are looking for the best traders to work with then the least you can do is ‘show’ the real playing field.

I went with Purple Trading STP MT4 (I started before FTMO LMAX became available). Had a quick look at the spreads comparison but I don't think it matters which broker I choose tbh, I don't scalp.

No problems during the challenge so will stick with the same during the verification...

Thx, good to know! Incidentally I also chose Purple

I was thinking of trading equity CFDs. But my only experience with CFDs is Gold and Crude.

What instruments are you trading?

I dont understand why would anyone chose a Standard account over a ECN or RAW.

You pay so much more with higher spreads than with lower spread + commision.