FTMO - For serious traders

thanks for that maahome...

Cheers!

STRANGE
the only legit broker CMC
gone with the wind ...

perhaps most of the brokers did not know at all, what happened to their demo accounts

good idea,
we are chimps collecting the pips and doing all the work for the brokers, funders, banksters etc

No real money on brokers accounts? Even qualified traders continue trading on demo accounts as signals providers? If so then no win win here... brokers just pay for demo servers... therefore brokers not interested to partnership - brokers get nothing. And quite risky for FTMO to copy trades with tight sl/tp. There might be difference what trader earns in demo and what ftmo get on their live. How it is?

Hello everyone,

So this is my first post here and it'll be a little long but I want to be clear. My intention with this post is to help other people who are considering FTMO. Might teach you a thing or two about what happens behind the scenes as well. I am not endorsing FTMO, as you have to see if the restrictions work for you. But even though I'll lay down a few criticisms, I still don't think FTMO is bad, or a rip-off in any way.

So I failed my first challenge. I did not hit any of my max allowable draw-downs. Just didn't hit the profit target. I knew there was a chance this would happen. I have a few losing trading months a year. I don't worry too much about having a down month as my motto with my customers has always been, "we can have losing months, but we strive for profitable quarters". So I figured I had about a 75% chance of passing. It's what caused me to fail was the surprising bit.

1. LMAX rollover spreads

Before starting I knew that I was going to be stuck with LMAX as a US citizen. LMAX is known for having HORRIBLE Asia spreads. Ask any firm in Europe. It is no secret friends, lol. So this particular criticism is for LMAX only. When you trade with a liquidity provider (LP) directly in FX, you are stuck to that LP's own internal liquidity. Thats the difference compared to the outside US citizens model/clients for FTMO that get to choose a broker. Brokers will have multiple LP's and the ECN routes you to the best pricing. So you won't face this issue. But people who choose LMAX will.

For me, I didn't recognize this at first and it led to losses because, depending on your strategy, it can make the chart look like there is a set up building when there isn't. If you use any indicators, indicators usually use opening and closing prices of candlesticks to calculate how it moves, so it will change your bollinger bands, moving averages, and show a market that isn't actually happening. And it causes stop losses. I screen shot two pictures. Same pair, same time, two completely different price action which led to different market structure.


I saw some comments from several folks saying it shouldn't be a big deal. I'm sorry, it very much is! This is an hourly chart with big spreads shooting over S/R levels on daily rollover, not the weekend. And I had about 3 losses from something similar to this (wasn't this pair) before I said "hold on a minute". I figured volatile times but the last trade stopped me out on the FTMO but my other account was still running smooth. So that is when I knew something was up. I want to make note I do not think this is FTMO's fault. This is, on the non-retail side, a somewhat commonly known issue with LMAX during Asia. It's just my first time dealing with it personally. I didn't know it was that bad.

2. CFD mix up

This was my largest daily loss. There really aren't excuses in trading because being wrong is okay; as long as you follow your strat and risk management. But this wasn't entirely my fault. I saw some opportunities in CFD's, specifically the dow jones and SP. So I emailed their customer service this:

So I'm thinking to myself, okay, I know what the specifications page is. And I'm also thinking to myself, "both the WS30 and the WS.lmax have the same pricing...both say tick value 1, tick size 1", so I analyzed it more and saw the major difference was the time it opened. This led each one to have a different 4hr and daily candle. Now, the next part gets confusing, but afterwards is when I realized why their CS rep made the mistake, because I made the same mistake.

Because LMAX has multiple of the same CFD, just different 4 hour candle, after checking WS30, nasdaq, dax, seeing all the doubles still had the same tick values, one just assumes, same product, same value.


HOWEVER, lol, LMAX has a group called Ind/Comm, you can see these pairs but they can't be traded. So they aren't hidden, but they are disabled. So when I clicked on USCash500 cause i wanted to open a trade on SP, it shows me 'tick value 1, tick size 0.1'.


But USCash500 isn't tradeable, you have to open SPX500. Well, since all the other doubles have the same value, you automatically assume USCash500 would be the same. I went and opened up two lots, but the tradeable SPX actual value is "tick value 10, tick volume 0.1". This is the same mistake their CS rep made. He looked at 1 disabled pair and 1 non-disabled pair and came to the conclusion they were differently priced for WS30, but thats not correct, lol. So it even confused FTMO. Heres my trade.

Thought process is I have the SP going up to the 20ema, sell off the 20ema, SL above the 200ema with TP being the 161.8, 1:3 RR at 1% risk. And as you can see I was right. But, I opened two lots under the value shown by USCASH500, it was 20$ a tick. And I don't sit and baby my trades. So when I came back a little over an hour later I was like "WTF?!?!?", I got back to my chair on the second green and when I saw it going up and I was negative 1600$, I couldn't take the chance that it would keep going to the 50/200 death-cross, I would exceed my 2500$ daily max loss, and I was already down 450$ from getting stopped out due to #1 on the same day. So almost 2200$ on that one day, I didn't trade the rest of the week cause I was quite annoyed. I felt like their CS rep didn't know wtf he was talking about and the spec values lied.

Now, I never sent FTMO any email annoyed about this cause I figured they would've thought I was like any other noobie who didn't know what he was doing. So, I just dealt with it. For those of you that don't know, there is a program called MT4 Admin, and when you want to make a change to certain names and values, sometimes the software requires the original instrument name remain so the new created instrument, in this case SPX.lmax still has its source to draw from cause it can't auto-recognize. Then the original is just disabled so it can't be traded and appears faded out in your market watch. So it's not entirely FTMO's fault, but it is VERY sloppy to still name the group Ind/Comm when it can't even be traded.

I actually have two more things I want to post about but I'll post it in the next reply or it'll be TOO LONG. lol

Part two

3. Micro Gold
Micro gold screwed me over a bit. The following week after the CFD mix up loss, I saw some opportunities in gold. LMAX has more than one gold as well. One is disabled though. Anyway, their gold should be normal priced as it has two decimals, not 3, so I don't know why they turned it into a micro contract. I think they did it cause they wanted to bring the value down on silver, and since they are in the same group, in MT4 Admin, the change you make to one group affects all the pairs in that group alone. So its in LMAX3 with silver. That is the only thing I can think of.

Anyway, small story. I opened up a trade on gold, just bought 1 lot cause ranges are wide and being cautious as already down. Even on 1 lot my TP area would be enough to make back all the losses and bring the account positive again. Jump in the pool with the kids. Later on I check on gold and I was disappointed to see 1/10th of the profit I should've had on this FTMO account. They changed it so two decimal gold is worth 10 cents per point. My exact words were "I just can't win with these guys". haha. Talk about some shitty luck!

4. News trading

Having traded at previous firms, I can tell you the rule on trading before and after isn't all that crazy. One firm I was at, you had stay out even 5 or 10 minutes before news. What gets me is the condition where even if it hits your SL or TP within that 4 minute window, its a violation. Thats a bit much because if the SL and TP are set, even a wide spread wouldn't cause a larger loss on the main account. The spread would cause the ask/bid lines to widen, it would just hit the SL or TP at the same calculated monetary risk. On top of that, funded accounts are required to have a SL and TP set. I'd personally increase it to 5 before and 2 after, and separate opening and closing by market execution vs stops getting hit. Sometimes you WANT to bring in a stop before news if you are letting a trade ride and want to minimize how much floating you give back to the market. And this can be seen by Mt4 manager. It's the scalpers that make this tricky

Price, structure, and technicals already show you the direction of the market. All soft data does is move the market in that direction anyways. And sometimes you can open a trade off a doji, set your TP, your SL, and then the momentum of news drives it right towards your TP, especially if its like the 200ema or something that attracts price but still acts like a brick wall. Why penalize potential profits when the risk is already predefined?

My main suggestions if you want to trade with FTMO is.

1. Open the free two week account under the broker you plan to choose. Really check to see if the news spreads, LP rollover, and pip values, and general market conditions are what you expect.

2. Pay for a tradingview account. Even though #4 is super annoying, I'll probably do the challenge again. But I'll be doing my analysis in tradingview and market execution in MT4. LMAX creates trading set ups that don't actually exist cause of the spread distortions.

Not pointing fingers or blaming anything. I've met a lot of people over the years that can get clients but not trade. Most coders I know don't trade at all. Just view things from this engineering perspective. I get the feeling FTMO is like that. They aren't really traders, but they have the thing most need, capital. So at the end of the day its a symbiotic relationship. They've made changes before, so at least their listening to the feedback.

-AnRan

I suggest you use a VPS with an efficient Trade Management EA that contains modules that control trade operations near critical news events as well as trailing stops if required.

I think 80% is going a little too close for comfort ... haha.

Masterrmind........

70% profit split and refund of challenge fee... I'd take that anytime...

This is actually true, the profit split is based on their Live Account's balance and not your demo account balance which is sometimes confusing, because spread may differ, and as we all know, high lot size, more spread is taken in consideration. So scalpers are in a disadvantage ... at least for FTMO.

I hope they can add more partner brokers, I for one like icMarkets, never had an issue with them in using cTrader and copy. I prefer to use live accounts in trading so that I can see the real spread and spikes. But it's just me..

Hi slappymove,

"the profit split is based on their Live Account's balance and not your demo account balance"

I understood from reading FTMO replies in this thread that the above is incorrect.

Are you a funded trader with them & know this statement to be true from experience?

Hi there, good thing you asked, I probably jumped to conclusion before reading and investigating. I stand corrected here, they will pay you out based on your "demo" account's profits.

I actually found this from their website at page 11 it's mentioned that 70% of the profits of your demo account will be paid out.
https://ftmo.com/downloads/ebook_how...TMO_trader.pdf

I just find it confusing.. let's say I'm a scalper, and we all know brokers tend to give more favorable spreads for demo accounts than live accounts (or am I wrong again on this one?). There's a chance their live account/s will have less profit because of execution time and spreads. Probably they have a good margin and the remaining net profit after you get your split is still substantial?

So I've been a long time lurker of FTMO, but never actually joined before as it would have been difficult for me to adhere to their strict trading conditions with the strategy and MM I was using at the time, but recently after making some strategy adjustments and with some scaling down I think I can do it, so I went to their website to sign up for a free trial to see if I can do it.

When I tried to create my account it says my email is invalid which is incorrect as it is my main email. I tried a few times and then decided to contact live chat which they have available apparently. I opened the live chat and its now been more than one hour and nothing, no response. I have also sent an email which I doubt will get a timely reply. Not the best first impression for a new potential client. If they can't get their customer service right then that's a no no for me.

They show on the main saying that they have dedicated customer support which is false advertising, and they list FF on the main page as a place for positive feedback, yet there is no dedicated personal who are active here to respond to questions?

Yeah they not doing well in my book so far..

In my personal opinion, I will tell you why LMAX is the only broker for USA citizens.

It is most likely that FTMO have a contract with LMAX, splitting spreads revenue(rollover and trading spreads), i .e making money on the large spreads, while you losing money on it. I bet it is part of the main revenue for FTMO. They will never admit it.

friends why is everything in forex so rational and linear, why we can not have the simple strategy, the management also simple, I see some longer stories than the British encyclopedia

Put them on your Ignore List...You will never see their messages again.

Despite several Red Flags I decided to go ahead with the challenge. I paid them over 24 hours ago and still have not got my login details after also spending 2 hours in 2 different calls with their live chat and I also sent 2 emails.

Terrible Support so far

I agree. Their "dedicated customer support" is non existent.

4 hours waiting and counting...

have you gone into the client portal. when i paid i had no e-mail but my challenge was sitting in my client portal within few hours

I am not able to ignore any person, I just have fun

First one took a day, afterwards I received my id's within 15 minutes.

I believe it is automated (old platform not sure in new one). Sometimes PayU use to take time. It may be Detca.com which is new one.