FTMO vs Darwinex

[IlIlIlIlI]

In other words, I'd like to copy my prop account trades to a Darwinex account, via socialtradertools or similar, using the balance multiplier to scale the lot size down to the minimim Darwinex account size, which I think is $500.

Correct. And you have to pay fees if you wire only $ 500, so take one Cent more

Obviously I'd only make pennies from trading that on its own, but if it attracted investors and the performance fee then it might be worth it. However I don't know if the potential additional return from investors is related to account size, or is it strictly based on percentage? Indeed, I may have completely misunderstood how Darwinex works!

If you want to attract investorsand share the DarwinIA game, you should wire more than $ 1,000. DarwinIA is a hypothetical investor if you win a prize, and the conditions will be the same as on DarwinexZero in future.

For expecting investors you should be patient, there might be some early investors, but as I watched it, they are very nervous if you have a drawdown and leave very soon.

The main difference to a typical copy trading service and a Darwin is the so called VaR which reduces or increases the performance of your Darwin depending on the margin not used for trading. Investors can only invest in a Darwin, not your account.

The execution is made on LMAX or on SAXO depending on the assets you trade.

Slippage is called divergence at Darwinex, and you can have a positive or negative one mostly depending on the time when you execute your trades.

Are people happy with the trading conditions they provide? The ones at my prop are excellent as they have their own liquidity provider, and I don't want to be surprised with delays, huge spreads, slippage etc. when copying. I guess the answer is to open an account and see for myself...

That mainly depends on the speed of your trade copier and where it is running (Server/Home Computer).

At the end it is only your decision, whether you can be happy with such a construction and Darwinex, after you tried it.

 

[frugi]

Thanks very much for your comprehensive and useful reply. I'll do some more research before jumping in, but it looks quite promising. Is the leverage reasonable? I'm on 100:1 but rarely use more than 1:20.

 

[IlIlIlIlI]

Thanks very much for your comprehensive and useful reply. I'll do some more research before jumping in, but it looks quite promising. Is the leverage reasonable? I'm on 100:1 but rarely use more than 1:20.

The leverage depends on the asset you want to trade and you find their conditions here:

https://www.darwinex.com/forex-cfds/forex?pathPrefix=uk

The leverage was reduced by an EU regulation a few years ago, before a leverage of 1:50 or 1:100 was common also here.

 

[IlIlIlIlI]

Today I ran an EA on my DarwinexZero account and a FTMO trial account, type Swing.
The EA is price orientated only and uses a grid and martingale trading logic.
Parameter settings were identical, of course.
I downloaded it years ago for comparison test, never to use it on a live account.
Both accounts are comparable to the live environment as on DarwinexZero they use a live server (and the live data feed) while on FTMO also the challenge accounts are demo accounts.

They are comparable only for the currency trades as the EA has problems to trade the same sizes with the different notations of commodities, indices or metals.

Here are the results of the first 23 hours of today:

DarwinexZero:
No. of closed trades: 175
No. of open positions: 107
Max. of open positions: 122
Pips (closed trades): 1367.40
PnL of closed trades: $ 172.10
PnL of open positions: $ -510.76
Max. DD: $ -540.11
Equity change: $ - 338.76
Margin used: about 50% (as the leverage is very low on DarwinexZero)

FTMO Swing:
No. of closed trades: 192
No. of open positions: 111
Max. of open positions: 118
Pips (closed trades): 1366.60
PnL of closed trades: $ 205.45
PnL of open positions: $ -505.85
Max. DD: $ -552.91
Equity change: $ - 300.40
Margin used: about 10.5% (using the reduced leverage for an FTMO Swing account)

The pips on closed trades are nearly identical on both installations, but the PnL shows a significant difference after only 23 hours.
Of course that would affect the trading results.

 

[IlIlIlIlI]

Today I ran an EA on my DarwinexZero account and a FTMO trial account, type Swing.
The EA is price orientated only and uses a grid and martingale trading logic.
Parameter settings were identical, of course.
I downloaded it years ago for comparison test, never to use it on a live account.
Both accounts are comparable to the live environment as on DarwinexZero they use a live server (and the live data feed) while on FTMO also the challenge accounts are demo accounts.

They are comparable only for the currency trades as the EA has problems to trade the same sizes with the different notations of commodities, indices or metals.

Here are the results of the first 23 hours of today:

DarwinexZero:
No. of closed trades: 175
No. of open positions: 107
Max. of open positions: 122
Pips (closed trades): 1367.40
PnL of closed trades: $ 172.10
PnL of open positions: $ -510.76
Max. DD: $ -540.11
Equity change: $ - 338.76
Margin used: about 50% (as the leverage is very low on DarwinexZero)

FTMO Swing:
No. of closed trades: 192
No. of open positions: 111
Max. of open positions: 118
Pips (closed trades): 1366.60
PnL of closed trades: $ 205.45
PnL of open positions: $ -505.85
Max. DD: $ -552.91
Equity change: $ - 300.40
Margin used: about 10.5% (using the reduced leverage for an FTMO Swing account)

The pips on closed trades are nearly identical on both installations, but the PnL shows a significant difference after only 23 hours.
Of course that would affect the trading results.

Today Darwinex made the run with $ 1,200 equity growth against $ 600 at FTMO.

 

[IlIlIlIlI]

Today Darwinex made the run with $ 1,200 equity growth against $ 600 at FTMO.

I close the 9 days comparison with the following results for the growth on equity:

1. FTMO: 3.0 %
2. Darwinex: 2.7 %

FTMO was behind Darwinex all the days until yesterday, where the EA could close significantly more postions there than on the DarwinexZero account.
If these positions can be closed also on the Darwinex account, the ranking might change again.

So it is proven that different brokers offer different markets.

 

[IlIlIlIlI]

I painted an excel to compare the potential of FTMO Swing account against DarwinexZero DarwinIA SILVER.

A comparision might be difficult, as the leverage at DarwinexZero is 1:10 to 1:3 and at FTMO they allow up to 1:30 on the swing account.
So I would prefer to compaare a 10k FTMO account against the 100k DarwinexZero account, but I calculated also a 100k FTMO swing account.

I used two static trading results with 3% and 1.5% against the deposit per month for the comparison and called them "Good Trader" and "Average Trader".

Here are the results for DarwinexZero including the fee:

And here are the FTMO accounts:

To Darwinex:
The allocation data are taken from this weekend and very every month depending on the competition with other traders.
The "Good Trader" will leave DarwinIA SILVER and go to DarwinIA GOLD where the Darwin is open for investors and the DarwinIA prizes are higher, but there is no guaranteed allocation in DarwinIA GOLD.
With DarwinexZero earning money can begin after the first months, the payout is after 3 months when the allocation ends. Depending on the drawdown, a 6% profit is usually enough to start earning.


To FTMO:
Earning money begins only after the trader made 15% on the challenge account (10%) and the verification account (5%).
Otherwise the fee for the challenge is lost.
Only 1% to 4% of the traders manage to get an FTMO account, the majority fails to pass the trading objectives of the challenge and the verification round or lose with the FTMO account.
There a a lot of illusions made by their marketing that a trader should believe that he can manage passing the ovjectives but mostly reality tells another story.
The deposit of the "Good Trader's" accounts will be scaled up after 4 month with the FTMO account (not the challenge or verification accounts) as there were more than 10% profit in 4 months. The scaling up rate is 25% of the initial deposit every 4 months.
The payout is fix with 80% of the trader's profit until the first scaling up and then it is 90% of the trader's profit.
The "Average Trader's" accounts will never be scaled up.
The first payout can be taken after 2 weeks with the FTMO account, after that it will be monthly.

Summary:
There's a special situation in Germany with their tax rules that the total of all losing trades are capped at 20k per year so it is not wise to trade a bigger account there.

If a trader is sure that he would lose less than 500 EUR on a real account per year, he could save the fees and make some more money with his trading profit.

So the fees to pay for the participation in DarwinexZero can be taken as part of the risk management of the trader for his real money.