sevensa 

To add to this, I don't think these programs should be treated as a regular accounts. The goal is to play their game and get to multiple funded accounts as soon as possible and use copy trading. I use Apex and only picked up my eval accounts when they were on 90% discount. This is about $17/month. 20 accounts, which is the max Apex allow, cost $340. Pushing your luck a little with higher risk, $150 a day is achievable during the eval which get you to $3000 on a 50K account in a month. Really pushing your luck, you can do that in 1 - 3 days, but should be prepared to blow up a few accounts doing that. Even if you pay for 40 accounts to blow up 20 to eventually get to the 20 funded ones, your cost will be $680. If you pick up the accounts at 80% discount which is almost all the time, your cost for 40 accounts will be $1360. After that, you have to pay the lifetime fee of $150 once you qualified for the funded account. That's 20 x 150 = $3000. So, you can be funded on 20 accounts for $4360 after a month. Then, you can go back to conservative trading with $50 average / day realistic and achievable, without hitting the $2500 drawdown. Also keep in mind that the trailing drawdown stop once your account go above $50,2600 on a 50K account. The trailing drawdown stop at $50,100 and you just need to keep your account above that. If you are more conservative, you can trade really small and only withdraw anything above $55K for example, leaving you a $5K drawdown buffer. Of course, this will take longer to get to the point where you can make withdrawals. After 3 to 4 months, you can start making withdrawals and if you average $50 a day, this is about $1000 a month, but since you are doing it over 20 accounts, this is $20,000 a month. Heck, if you average $25 a day, this is $10K a month. You can spread your risk by using 4 account groups for example and trade 5 accounts at a time so that a couple of bad trades or copy trading fiasco don't wipe out all 20 accounts. If you rotate amongst them trade after trade and risk $100 per trade then after 4 losing trades in a row, you are down $100 per account, instead of $400 on one account which is a lot easier to recover from. I don't think there are many other ways that you can use $4360 and turn it into $20K monthly returns in 4 - 6 months. Of course, this only work if you already have an edge and can be relative consistent with small average gains per day without large down swings. The issue comes when people are not consistent, have no trading plan nor methodology and swing for the fences during the eval to get qualified and continue to do so and keep blowing up accounts. But then, this is better and cheaper than opening a $2,500 account with a broker and blow it up in a month because you are still learning, or really have no plan other than swinging for the fences. With an eval account, you will only be out ~$33 in this case.

I really like this approach !! I'm funded with Apex and trade my own account I think I will do this on 90% off sales to really scale up my gains

If you don't bet, you can't win.

sevensa 

[...] Pushing your luck a little with higher risk, $150 a day is achievable during the eval which get you to $3000 on a 50K account in a month. Really pushing your luck, you can do that in 1 - 3 days, but should be prepared to blow up a few accounts doing that. Even if you pay for 40 accounts to blow up 20 to eventually get to the 20 funded ones, your cost will be $680. If you pick up the accounts at 80% discount which is almost all the time, your cost for 40 accounts will be $1360. After that, you have to pay the lifetime fee of $150 once you qualified for the funded account. That's 20 x 150 = $3000. So, you can be funded on 20 accounts for $4360 after a month. Then, you can go back to conservative trading with $50 average / day realistic and achievable, without hitting the $2500 drawdown.

Is that what you are doing or is this wishful calculating?

In your example you get $2500 to use/lose from the funded firm, and you can generate $50 per day on average with that. That is 2% per day...

Dmonz 

Is that what you are doing or is this wishful calculating? In your example you get $2500 to use/lose from the funded firm, and you can generate $50 per day on average with that. That is 2% per day...

$50 is about 3 NQ points after commissions and about 5 ticks in the ES after commissions. If you think $50 is too high, how about $25? This is 1.5 NQ points after commissions. If you do not think this is possible to make 1.5 to 3 NQ points or around 5 ES ticks average per day on a risk of $2,500 then for sure Funded Programs are not the best option for you and you should continue to do what works for you.

sevensa 

$50 is about 3 NQ points after commissions and about 5 ticks in the ES after commissions. If you think $50 is too high, how about $25? This is 1.5 NQ points after commissions. If you do not think this is possible to make 1.5 to 3 NQ points or around 5 ES ticks average per day on a risk of $2,500 then for sure Funded Programs are not the best option for you and you should continue to do what works for you.

How many people realistically can make 2% a day over a period of 6 months and longer (that is what you used in your calculation)? If that is what is needed to use a Funded Program, I think people would be better off without them...

Sure, if you do not see the 2500 as your account size because you can buy a new one easily so you take more risk on the account, then it could give you these results for a while. But the probability that you have to restart the evaluation becomes greater.

There is a reason why people don't take huge risks on their accounts, so why throw that overboard when using the funded programs?

While I don't understand why people use these funded programs, I'm at least beginning to understand why there are so many of them.

I was always the first guy to stand up and call these prop firms out as being absolute scams. And by "these" prop firms I mean the latest wave of pay for a monthly evaluation for an account called something like "$50k Account" when in reality it's a $2,500 account due to maximum loss limits, etc. I do not mean a real prop firm.

However I changed my attitude about 6 weeks ago. The only reason to use one of these prop firms is to try and beat them at their game - I still 100% will argue that these type of prop firms do not have any benefit or will give you any assistance in learning how to trade. You should only try and pass their evaluations and get funded only if you know how to trade already, and only if you know how to have exceptionally good executions.

Why did I change my tune? Because they allow you to copy trade (up to 3 with TST and 20 with Apex), and when they have sales on then you can get to the funded accounts for a pretty low investment. However the caveat is you must treat this as a game and you're playing to beat them. I don't think anyone should use these prop firms as an alternative to trading with your own capital, which is that you should only try this if you're financially secure enough that a few grand loss will not dent your financial situation.

I'll provide my recent experience with Apex when I bought 10 x "$50k" accounts for $17 each with one of their promos. I passed these in 1 day when sized up to 5 contracts. Would you do this on a real account when you only have $2500? Hell no, I wouldn't even trade 1 mini with that balance. But I kept stops tight and, crucially because of how the rules are designed, do not let profits run. The prop firms game the system with their trailing drawdown so that if you try and maximise profits with an open trade, you will get punished and blow the account because unrealized profits cause the DD to go up.

The end result is I've spent $1570 to get 10x Apex accounts ($17 each + $140 funded activation fee) that I will only try and get about $200-300 a day out of. It will take about 6-8 weeks to carve out the balance needed to make a withdrawal and by then it will be $2000 x 10 in a withdrawal request.

While I do think some firms have predatory rules (unrealized trailing drawdown), and you pretty much have to take on too much risk to make it worthwhile as stated earlier in this post, I do think these firms are good. Buyer beware though.

If you're an aggressive scalper, maybe unrealized trailing works for you, and you can load up on inexpensive Apex accounts on sale and potentially make a killing. However, if you're more of an intraday swing/position trader, stick to end of day drawdown, otherwise you'll have to modify your style to suit the rules which is not wise IMO.

There are more and more firms now offering static accounts, which is more like a broker account from the get-go, but remember, all of these accounts become akin to a regular broker account once the trailing drawdown is met.

These essentially are a 3 step evaluation:

Pass evaluation stage
Make the drawdown
Make a buffer above the drawdown to withdraw from

Only advice I can give is read the rules carefully, and ask questions. Make sure the eval fits your trading style and these could be an excellent supplement to your trading income.

Also, there are several firms out there that have a clear path to a live brokerage account. These are the firms I'd recommend.

Another word of advice, in Rithmic based platforms, you can set your own daily loss limit in RTrader Pro. Highly recommend doing this

Someone needs to mention the rithmic 'glitches' on the SIM and their data feed that is giving incorrect prices and ' fills' (probably on the livesim as well)

This is a BIG problem, as some of these companies are not honoring or gaslighting traders into believing that their fill was correct, where there is proof that the fill would be impossible and so far away from the market.

Its been happening for years, and is going to be a big problem if not solved for very soon. They are literally taking peoples money in the sims and accounts away due to these unrealistic fills.

Has anyone asked why it is happening so frequently, and if there is a way it is being gamed, or why it is so widely accepted as ' normal'?

There is also one other issue.

Evaluation accounts are SIM, so when one places a trade with a lot of size (50+ contracts or whatever), it does NOT move the market the way a real trade on a live market would.

sevensa 

This is about $17/month.

Thanks for adding the detail. I would just note that the first month may be discounted 90% and is $17, but I think the renewal will be at an 80% rate, so, subsequent months after the first will be $33 per month.

My experience with funded accounts was at first exciting, to think $25K and up to trade, free money! It wasn’t long before that excitement vanished.

Two evaluations, two funded accounts later and having hit liquidation on both I realized it had made me a nervous wreck. When I went back to trading my own account the nervousness I had once lost while trading had returned.

14 total days of fearing loss from both my accounts, I feel, caused poor decision making on my part when entering a trade. What I’ll say about the rules, for me to restrictive. I was only able to pass Evaluations by scalping out at one point on every trade and your entry better be spot on and with a tight Stop.

It was to much stress, Besides the fact that the odds are not in our favor. I’ll leave it with been there done that.