Ah is see. Yeah so the first answer is yes they do actually give you a funded account. So I’ll probably go for the highest amount then.
I guess the question is what are the difficulties, is it geared for you to lose especially if only 8% pass. Or is it just a matter of strategy and good trade and risk management. It’ll be interesting to find out.
the thing is this: u trade on demo before and after u get funded, always a demo acount. so if theyr legit u should be ok just trading ur usual stuff no matter. i was actually doing a trial for the new ftmo lmax platform and datafeed. all good except high spreads, slippage and stop hunts that were shown only on theyr platform. now i ve been told that most of the brokers had those variable spreads few weeks back, which is true but they were actually higher on lmax. anyways, spikes on gold mini, that can t be found nowhere else, cos they don t allow u to trade gold. everything else might check out ok now that the crazy corona is out of the woods, but i m still a bit cautios. i d say do a trial for 2 weeks, see how things look, get aquainted with theyr risk parameters and then go for the challenge. i saw quite a few getting funded etc…but trust must be earned…and i have almost none to give(trust) specially in this bussiness. cheers
Yeah I need to get used to mt4 first. I’ve never used it!
I was interested in these kind of challenges, but too many constraints, and the entry fee is quite high.
Also, you can’t keep your trade open over the weekend if I recall correctly.
Lol the reason I’m doing this is because I thought the entry wasnt expensive for people. I’m a daytrader so I don’t hold over weekend anyway.
This step actually took longer than I expected.
All the partner brokers platforms are MT4 except purple trading which also uses ctrader. The leverage for them all is 1:100 except admiral which is 1:50.
The ctrader was not very user friendly so I had to choose to trade on MT4. I opened multiple demo mt4 accounts. However, because I’ve never used MT4 before I’ve had to learn it all from scratch! It’s been quite difficult as there isnt a comprehensive video out there with all the information in one place. Despite all that, there are a lot of things mt4 cant do eg easily manage risk, show how much margin you have left before you take the trade, show your SL/TP on the chart before you place the trade, close all trades at once etc.
The other thing I found hard was using lots. I’ve always traded with £ per pip which is so much easier to know what your risking. Also pips are counted differently on different mt4 platforms depending on if the price is 5 or 6 decimals! 
If you’re used to MT4 then you’ll get through this part much faster.
I’ll sign up for the challenge next week as Friday is a bank holiday in UK.
Third step: Familiarise myself with MT4 and start the challenge Monday 11th May 2020.
Hi All, I came across FTMO a few weeks ago too. I’d also watched the above video and a few more.
For anyone that’s wondering, they do offer demo accounts, that track their rules. only exception being they’ve half the Min % and days to achieve it in. (so 50k account, Max drawdown 10%, max daily draw down 5%)
I’ve been trading on their demo since the start of the week, averaging around 1%. I did have to change the lot size I was using though, to compensate for the max drawdown, compared to my live account.
It does seem that their funded accounts lean more to day traders and scalpers. I think they’ve tried to help swing traders more be removing the goal of half you trading days need to be in profit.
Although you need 10 active trading days a month to pass, but a position that is held across two days only counts as one active day. Seems a bit pants tbh, if your strategy involves higher time frames.
You can get around this by opening and closing a small position though.
I think the way their making getting the 90% fail rate is on their first verification phase.
So to pass the first test, you have 30 days ( so around 20-22 trading days) to gain 10% on an account without ever dropping more than 5% in a day and 10% overall. I personally think this knocks most people out. Though if you do pass all the other rules( 10 trading days, Max loss and Max drawdown) and end the month in profit.
They do let you take the test again for free. So if you are a profitable trader, eventually you will pass the test. and seeing as the next phase is 5% over 60 days(2.5% a month) once you pass the first stage you should be fine.
Also once you’ve made a profitable trade, you max drawdown increases based on that trade.
So if you’ve made 1% all ready today, then you can now loos upto 6% on the day and not fail the challenge.
Taking a daily 5% dip, is a lot to any account, so i can see why they set that. if you’re dropping 10% in a month that’s an extremely bad month.
I’ve looked at a lot of the prop firms, I think FTMO seems like a good one. They’re clearly making money from the tests though 90% fail rate and 540 eur for the 100k test.
if you dont fancy paying that, you could look at https://traderseed.io/ (this dude has a youtube)
He basically pays for a 10k account with FTMO and then you use that money(by growing the account) to fund the test fee for a the 100k ftmo account. you then split the 70% profit from FTMO with him on a 50/50 basis. you’d be worse off than doing it yourself, but this is 0 risk for you to prove you could pas the FTMO challenge.
Yeah that’s a good point actually. There is a free demo trial that FTMO provides on their website. It’s good to see what the client area will look like when you apply for the challenge. Also how the metrics change depending on your trade and it clearly shows you what objectives you’re passing and what you’re not. Also how far you are from each objective. It lasts 2 weeks, is for a 50k account and is on mt4. I did it for a few days just to see what the client area looks like and practise. Like you, I’d recommend people to use this trial for the whole period. You can apply for more trials so effectively they can treat it as a challenge practise and see if they pass over the 2 trials. As that would be equivalent to one challenge which lasts 30 days.
Yeah I watched his videos yesterday and checked out the website. It’s actually not a bad shout! Hes giving you a free 10k account so you cant really say anything bad. If you have a strategy, are patient and control risk then potentially you could pass the challenges he puts you through and you would get a free 10k account trial. Then using the profit from 10k after split with him and FTMO you buy a 100k account and build from there. Personally I didn’t like the amount of challenges he puts you through lol, its 5 seperate trials. And the first 2 are 10% profit in 2 weeks which is really 10 days. This is a bit steep. However it’s all free so no money upfront.
Yeah exactly, in all honestly if you think you can pass the challenge, then going through trade seed seems pointless.
As you’d then only really be taking home 35% of you’re monthly profit. For the ability of saving $610.
Seems like the tradeseed bloke is making a good return on this.
to me personally, doesn t look like a good option, he takes 50% of what u make after the 70 30 profit split with ftmo. u d be looking at pennies. but yeah, could be an option if u really don t have 1 cent to pay for the challenge. all u have to do is not trade or have trades open during their restricted events, i found that the more challenging thing for me, as i often like to pre position myself ahead of news if the footprint is there from the large operators, but i managed to work around that. and to be honest, it s better u have the 5% max daily and 10% maxx loss, teaches u a bit of money management. i heard that many passed the challenges and stroke out the first month on funded account, i guess they tried to make as much as possible and killed 1 of the rules. u can be a little more agressive during the challenge to make the 10%, but once u get funded u can only go for whatever u think it s a high probability trade, as there s not a profit target anymore, u don t have any days u have to trade etc…so the stress is less. i think these trials are good for newbies also or for people that do know how to trade but have issues with money management or being patient and overtrading.
I’m planning on joining again. Any advice?
Edit: 1st time, I reached their target in less than 3 days but forgot about one of their rules so money management screwed me…
my honest opinion would be to wait and do the trial few times and pass it, like few times in a row. that way u gain some confidence, and ur trades will be different. it s not about hitting the profit target as soon as possible, but about being able to stay afloat, cos u never know market conditions. and the good thing is, if after the time target ur in profit but still haven t reached their goals, and u didn t broke any rules, u get another free challenge at no cost. so being consistent in ur aproach and managing risk should be first 2 things imo u need to focus on, not profit target.
atleast that s what i d do.
cheers
But if you risk 0.5% per trade, leave it 2-3 weeks open and only win 0.25% if lucky is not a successful approach also. Plently of factors to consider (no longer go all or nothing in trading just saying…)
I have a strategy that requires a small stop-loss (20-40 pips, but most likely 20+ pips + spread) , but reward is small aswell (20+ net pips), and let’s say you pass on demo but on real you never know if you’ryou’re targeted for that. Just hypotheses.
I’m planning very carefully my enter anyway, but still afraid of stop-loss hunting hope is not the case
Not to say about spread alone that sometimes goes as far as 20-30 pips which is a lose game by itself
u can t leave the trade open for 2 much, cos if u do and some news event that s restricted comes along and hits ur TP or SL ur challenge is over. u can t swing trade.
wait for @tradeforex077 to do this challenge, see how he does and get some imputs etc… don t rush into things unprepared. backtest, that s the answer to ur fear of stop hunts, backtest, cos it means u still don t have enough confidence in ur trading aproach. u can t put the trade on and sweat like crazy while price wiggles around.
You are not allowed to specifically trade the news, if you are not trading the news but your trade happens to still be opened after 3 days and the news happens to appear thwt shouldn’t be a problem.
read their rules again, u have news that u can trade or have positions open, and u have news events that they have labeled as restricted. during those restricted news events, if ur stop or TP gets hit under that 2m window from before and after the news, ur challenge is terminated. ex natural gas event that isn t that high impact but for them is restricted. be 100% sure u understood the rules and the objectives etc and that u have a game plan before u put any money down. money doesn t grow on trees and apart from that it will kill ur mood, passion, grove, drive for trading.
If what you say is true I would have had a really great surprise (going unprepared to challenge thinking like an idiot I know all now…)
Great to have other traders here
