Been looking into very simply having a dual-passport, not giving up my US passport. Couldn’t that be a valid option for those of us who can be relatively nomadic? I’m sure you would need part-time residency, but I’m OK with that (re: beaches, cold beer, friendly locals, etc) You would still pay US taxes (get a C corporation for that), and also taxes with your 2nd home, but wouldn’t that be good enough for an offshore broker if you could prove you live there for several months out of a year?
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When I was searching earlier, I found it could take 2 to 10 years depending on the country to get the 2nd passport. Some countries offer citizenship by investment, usually $100,000+.
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I still say the best way through all this is with FTMO or similar offshore prop firm. You can trade how you want, it’s a large trading account, and you literally don’t own an account with an offshore broker.
Then you use that prop firm as your base, and optionally copy trade to any personal broker. And if they go away, just swap them out as needed.
But your base stays the same, ideally. You give up some profit, but you gain in peace of mind.
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FTMO might work for some people but for people who use AI/ML with tuned ALGO’s it will not work. Anyone using databases or code outside of MT4/5 FTMO or similar is not a option. It’s very stupid of FTMO or similar firms to say no EA. If you use EA that limit risk you can take a bad trader and make them a good trader just by using EA that control risk.
Did everything crappy get started in 2010? I just found this…
The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) is law passed in 2010 regarding taxation of foreign assets of American citizens. Essentially, it allows the United States government to tax its citizens on all income earned and all assets owned, regardless of where that income was earned or where those assets lie. It is taxation based on citizenship, as opposed to taxation based on residency. The United States is unique in its approach to taxation in this way. Almost all other countries in the world tax their citizens based on their residency, meaning that if you are a Canadian citizen but live and earn income in New Zealand, you will not pay Canadian taxes on that income. If you are an American citizen living and earning an income in New Zealand, however, you will pay American taxes on that income. FATCA requires that foreign banks must report all American income and financial assets to the IRS. What this means for those banks is that it is significantly more expensive now to do business with American citizens, and as a result, many foreign banks will make it extremely difficult for Americans to open accounts with them, or even flat out deny Americans the ability to open accounts, simply based on their citizenship. (Thanks a lot Uncle Sam). [Source: https://www.escapeartist.com/blog/banking-in-nicaragua/]
pterodactyl,
Please edit your post to show the source of your quote. Thanks.
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Alright this is my last post about this stuff. I found the following deep in the forums at ForexFactory.
It’s their money. If they want actual traders and not robots, it’s their choice.
Hey, if the prezident can incorporate himself and pay $750/year in taxes, so can we. If they want to enforce rules, we need to use those rules back against them
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you can only try that if you are self employed
Bitcoin worth $244 million transferred for just $2.73
https://www.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-worth-244-million-transferred-133102554.html
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that’s another bonus to trading as an independent contractor with a prop firm 
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that is a shame FTMO doesn’t allow EA. Total deal breaker.
Not sure where everyone is getting incorrect info.
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They do allow the use of EA’s. The problem they have with some is they are borderline HFT systems.
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I mentioned earlier, I moved to a hybrid approach because of this. IMO FTMO’s criteria is really geared towards manual trading best practices, waiting for the best setups, having a sound RM plan etc.—the triangle of success: an edge in the market, sound proven RM, and discipline to stick to your trading plan.
I use to think 100% Algo was the way to go, but after doing a lot of research on this IMO, EA programmers lose touch of price action, and EA algorithms can become obsolete as markets change. Once the EA stops working you could be left without a chair when the music stops, but a seasoned manual trader has a better chance of getting onto a new chair (the game musical chairs) they are better at adapting to markets as they are continually refining their process with journaling, reviewing their trades, manual back/forward testing, and optimization after 100 trades or so—continually directing, refining, and re-directing. Manual traders have a much intimate and profound grasp and understanding of their strategy—how it has adapted over the years; they continually see what/why/how they got stopped out or why something didn’t work or why something did work. They’re able to do more of what is working and less of what is not working.
The most successful automated systems started as well-oiled manual systems. I have tested a lot of EAs most don’t work for long term, and if they do it’s likely the coder is not making it public. I personally would not invest with someone running an EA, too risky. The EA is only as good as the person that coded it; there is a very high chance it has bugs and is not based on proven trading methods or has a solid risk management plan built in. The only EA I would invest in is the one I wrote myself because I know exactly how it works. I’m probably going to get a lot of haters because of what I’m saying here; I would have disagreed with this several months ago as I used to be 100% Algo. I have listened to webinars where a seasoned pro went to a programmer to have his system automated; the programmer told him, “the reason your system works is you.” The trader now has his system about 70% automated, keeping the ‘you’ part manual.
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So i open account with a FCA UK register broker im the back office but they ask a billion questions, here is the website, i got them from FPA who say they accept U.S. Traders
I’d love to know what type of crypto stuff FTMO has going on, namely leverage.
A couple points about FTMO tho,
You couldn’t really do much with the capital. You’re real trading capital is your risk, and that is about 5 grand. I would probably only trade 1 to 3 lots on an FTMO.
It’s a lot of idle capital. As far as EA go, I fully agree with the above. You can design algos yourself though based on lower frequency systemic trading, though that does not mean simple algos. The one I have is based on intensely quantitative metrics and complex laddering and an ultra aggressive active conservative risk engine.
Take your risk and multiply it by six, 800 dollar loss x 6 in a row on an FTMO account, about 4800 a day. Can put in a max loss per day circuit breaker.
Now this is a dumb question but I want to make sure, is the 10,000 total loss just == keep the account above 90k at all times, or is it just total ever ?.
I do trade aggressively, very. 200% drawdown on a single lot and the algo is designed to be liquidated about 2% of the time. Attrition statistics essentially,. all easy to change in a risk engine though. I do this to keep capital low on shady exchanges.
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i have a question about FTMO. le’ts say you have a 100k account and grew it to 150k with in a month and within that same month you break one of the rules, do they still pay you your 70% on the profit you already made or do they just keep it
An even more classical conservative number is being able to go 5 days unprofitable, which really caps daily losses at like 1900 dollars. At that point I don’t think you could be much more conservative while being profitable. I know I whine about bitcoin and ethereum sideways ranging for 2 days, but if I went into drawdown more than 48 hours in a row I start redesigning the algo, which I’ve done countless times. So the challenge is admittedly hard for any algo designer.
The evidence points pretty hard to keeping the leverage very very low. FTMO clearly implicitly screens out risk junkies, because 90 days with such conservative drawdown is going to require some very conservative settings that are reproducible and systemic. I know I have the turnover and profit, but it requires deleveraging.
That said I hold trades for 12 hours at a time. I know commodity traders that don’t trade a position longer than an hour if that.
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