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Any long term success stories from funded traders in these get-funded programs?
Hello again. Yes, I did cash out of OneUp. No problem with them. But since then I've been studying and comparing the funding companies. Here's what I found: LeeLoo has the best opportunity even with their lousy withdrawal policy. Here's why: The trailing drawdown goes away when you pass the evaluation. That means you can increase your size without a fixed drawdown. It's that trailing drawdown that's the killer with all these programs. For instance, if you have a fixed $4,000 drawdown, whether it's intraday or end of day, that severely limits the size you can trade. Essentially, everything over the $5,000 threshold which is required in the $150,000 account (they all do this), is your money. At the fifth month, you can take out whatever profit you've accumulated over that threshold.
"How does the max drawdown operate in a Performance Account?
As stated. During the Evaluation Account phase, the trailing drawdown NEVER stops trailing during the entire test. This is not true of the two Performance Account options.
The Investor - the trailing drawdown works the same way as the Evaluation HOWEVER it stops trailing at Initial Balance plus $100. It will no longer trail or ever move from Initial Balance plus $100 again. Example. A 12 contract / $100,000 Investor Performance account has a trailing drawdown of $3000. When the open equity of the account ever reaches $103,100.. the trailing drawdown will stop at $100,100 and never rise again."
They had a special last week - $136 for a $150,000 account. I bought it. I've traded 5 days so far and am up $157,200. Next Friday will be 10 days. Then starts the miserable withdrawal period. The first withdrawal can't be made until you've traded 30 days. After that, it's every calendar month until the fourth month. Anyway, I'm going to see how it goes. The average in my own account is about $5,000 per week after commissions and fees. I'll see if I can double or triple that trading bigger size with them.
That's great news. Great job on your personal account as well.
So, did you quit with OneUp or what happened?
Personally, I'd say the payout structure with LeeLoo is a dealbreaker, but that's me personally. Imagine investing all that work, racking up profits and then the firm declares bankruptcy or come up with some explanation of why you violated a rule or why they can't pay you. I spoke to Apex personally and I did not get a good vibe to be honest. Their website clearly spells out that you're trading on a simulator, but also that LeeLoo can mirror the trades in a master account.
Did you check out Earn2Trade? Here's what I was told in support:
As far as I know, E2T does not have any restrictions on payouts either and you're actually trading live, i.e., they actually have money to pay you.
The above could seem a bit confusing as I mentioned LeeLoo and Apex simultaneously, but I did so because they have the exact same business model. It seems like they may even be run by the same people.
I just cashed out my profits with OneUp - no problem with them. E2T has a fixed trailing drawdown EOD. I think you really have to sit down and do a spreadsheet to see why that trailing drawdown is a killer. You need to do the calculus - take your last 90 days of trading (assuming you're using the same strategy), calculate the impact of your stop for each lot traded and then start adding lots with the FIXED drawdown. You'll see very rapidly, that there's a limit as to how many lots you can trade. You will hit the wall at "x" number of lots because the trailing drawdown doesn't scale with absolute value of your stops. I found that out with OneUp. As I scaled up, I could see that I was going to hit the wall and be cancelled. It was inevitable.
So that's why I think LeeLoo offers the best opportunity to build up. If your statistics remain relatively consistent, you'll be able to scale up to the max lots. The withdrawals are lousy, but not a deal breaker IMO. Once you bite the bullet at the fourth month, you should be home free.
[B]"Your minimum allowable account balance limit will be moved up from $99,375 to $100,100. Everything else remains the same, including your profit which remains intact.
Your max loss minimum account balance limit of $100,100 will never change or increase regardless of the amount of realized or unrealized profit earned. Example.. you grow the account to $165,000.. you would need to lose $64,900 in profit before the $100,100 minimum account balance is met and the account forfeited. (There is no trailing drawdown)"
[As far as I'm concerned, the only value of these funded accounts is to be able to grow to the maximum level. Otherwise, you may as well just trade your own account. For my personal account, I calculate 3x margin per lot. So for 15 lots, I would need a minimum of $45,000 in the account. With LeeLoo, the $5,000 threshold is all that's at risk.
I really recommend that you do a spreadsheet of your trading. Pay particular attention to your stops/exits. Average them out, then scale up the number of lots, increase your stops/exits proportionately and see where you hit the wall with the trailing drawdown. /B]
Tried to unbold last two paragraphs - doesn't work - so that's my text, not theirs.
You know that's strange about the trialing drawdown with E2T because I checked on their chat this morning - as far as I can see, that trailing drawdown stays in place. But I may be wrong.
I fully agree that the trailing drawdown is a dealbreaker for long term success, but the quote I shared with you was just given to me today in chat as I couldn't find it written on their web page (although I think it's there some place).
I talked with them once more to make sure I got it right. Please double-check with them to make sure what I say is correct.
1. The trailing drawdown trails on unrealized profits for the amount of the trailing drawdown, but then stops trailing higher. In effect, this means that once a 150K account hits 154 500 - it stops trailing higher. Your new loss level now is 150K. No matter how high your account goes, you won't lose unless you hit 150K.
2. Once you hit 154 500 - you can request the prop firm to remove the daily loss limit.
As I understand this it should be very much possible to scale up the number of contracts as soon as you have built a cushion. The maximum is 15 contracts, though. If you can increase that more in the future, I don't know?
As for the snapshot you provided it shows the difference between LiveSim and Live where it's up to you what you choose. My hunch is they prefer LiveSim since it's easy to set up and requires less paperwork and they figure the average trader will blow up before taking out money. Note that once you have $5K of profits you're automatically transferred to a Live account. So, if the trailing drawdown worries you, then you can just start with the LiveSim and transfer your $5K of profits to the live account.
