FTMO

hefoba

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Hi,

As I understand correctly is that you need todo 10% profit in one month to pass FTMO challenge?
Sounds they search for traders pushing hard.

Is it correct?
 
Hi,

As I understand correctly is that you need todo 10% profit in one month to pass FTMO challenge?
Sounds they search for traders pushing hard.

Is it correct?
I think it encourages high-risk trading for newbies.
I think it also encourages day-trading, given FTMOs restrictions on holding over the weekend, and not having trades open over news-events.
Experienced traders would just trade lower amounts to control risk.

Also, some newbies might take lower quality trades at higher amounts just to pass the challenge, especially when nearing the end of the 20days of the challenge.
This sets a bad precedent.
Experienced traders would just finish the challenge not in a loss, and take the free retake.

I think its doable, but you have to trade a well defined plan with perhaps enhanced risk:reward rules, rather than gamble.

Its worth doing just for the experience.
 
I think it encourages high-risk trading for newbies.
I think it also encourages day-trading, given FTMOs restrictions on holding over the weekend, and not having trades open over news-events.
Experienced traders would just trade lower amounts to control risk.

Also, some newbies might take lower quality trades at higher amounts just to pass the challenge, especially when nearing the end of the 20days of the challenge.
This sets a bad precedent.
Experienced traders would just finish the challenge not in a loss, and take the free retake.

I think its doable, but you have to trade a well defined plan with perhaps enhanced risk:reward rules, rather than gamble.

Its worth doing just for the experience.
Hi,

Well Trade +10% in one month is high risk trading for sure.
Was just check FTMO challenge when some traders I know passed it

@trendie thank you for your reply
 
Hi,

Well Trade +10% in one month is high risk trading for sure.
Was just check FTMO challenge when some traders I know passed it

@trendie thank you for your reply
FYI - FTMO have just updated their offering. Now have Swing Trading option (max leverage 30) without restrictions on holding over w/e or news event restrictions. (I have no connection with them, just noticed the GUI on my free trial suddenly changed). They have a long thread over on FF for anyone interested. Details of changes are on this post:
 
Well, understandable.
First 5 frantic minutes can be good if you pick the right direction.
In some ways, this perhaps allays any fears that FTMO aren't a legit broker (assuming there were any), as it allows them to genuinely profit from good traders, rather than just encourage the buying of challenges, and mitigates slippage for both trader and funder.
Personally, I prefer to let 10-15 minutes elapse, just to let the market sort ofsettle.

ftmo-admin-jul12a.PNG
 
Although FTMO cite ForexFactory as its source for the news calendar, FTMO do not religiously follow the red/yellow importance of news events.

They are showing, today, some yellow CPI events as trading restricted, and a red PPI event as tradeable without restrictions.

All good fun.
 
My FTMO account is no longer the extra Balance line.
What happened to it?
I thought it was useful.
Did people complain it was showing their horrific inter-trade drawdowns? :)
 
Yes they require 10% to pass but also have a maximum loss figure which you should pay more attention to. If you pass the challenge they remove the 10% profit requirement and keep the risk parameters. Also if you fail to meet the profit target but meet the risk profile they want to see you will get a free retry.
 
I find FTMO a bit of an enigma. I know there are at least a couple of contributors (trendie and iiiiiiii and maybe others) who have had a go at the demo (any why not?) but I'm not convinced by the rest of it. Call it intuition but I find it hard to believe this is a genuine prop business. There are too many aspects which don't ring true.
 
How long have FTMO been running?
Are there many other properties firms in operation .
Great way to supplement your own trading
 
I have been mulling FTMO over for a couple of weeks.
I had started to have my doubts, but have concluded FTMO is a good leg-up for newbies.

Notwithstanding the early requirements of 10% gain, which I believe may encourage excessive risk-taking, and possibly pushing people to over day-trade, FTMO is a good starting point.

The issue of a "$100K account", which in truth, is a $10K account, is resolved in my mind.
If you lose the 10K, the account is failed, so you never had the 90K anyway.
The 100K account is a diversion.

Look at it this way; you can buy an account with 10K buying power (not counting further leverage) for the price of about $600.
I think thats a good deal, for a savvy newbie trader with a bit of an edge, and a lot of discipline. Obviously, its a trap for starry-eyed lazies, who want instant wealth. These sheep will always be with us.

The thing to contemplate is that the risk/reward is kind of skewed.
Since, if you lose 10K, you lose 10K.
But, if you win 10K, you actually take home 7K. FTMO takes 30%, although they seem to be changing the rules so based on their criteria, you can make more.

However, if you get paid, say 10K, you might be better off opening a small SB account, and shadow-trading that.
That 10K could now be used to trade as an adjunct to the FTMO account. The relative return would be as good. And you get to keep all of it.

Once you have over 20-30K or so in actual cash trading, FTMO loses any appeal, I believe.
Thats why I think its a good leg-up to build an account, but after a while, you just trade your own money and keep all of it.
Unless you want to use your trading account as a sort of resume/CV.

Even if you reach the giddy heights of having 3 x 100K accounts, the most you can lose is 30K, so its just a 30K account!

EDIT: I shouldn't say lose, I mean trade with.
 
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I have been mulling FTMO over for a couple of weeks.
I had started to have my doubts, but have concluded FTMO is a good leg-up for newbies.

Notwithstanding the early requirements of 10% gain, which I believe may encourage excessive risk-taking, and possibly pushing people to over day-trade, FTMO is a good starting point.

The issue of a "$100K account", which in truth, is a $10K account, is resolved in my mind.
If you lose the 10K, the account is failed, so you never had the 90K anyway.
The 100K account is a diversion.

Look at it this way; you can buy an account with 10K buying power (not counting further leverage) for the price of about $600.
I think thats a good deal, for a savvy newbie trader with a bit of an edge, and a lot of discipline. Obviously, its a trap for starry-eyed lazies, who want instant wealth. These sheep will always be with us.

The thing to contemplate is that the risk/reward is kind of skewed.
Since, if you lose 10K, you lose 10K.
But, if you win 10K, you actually take home 7K. FTMO takes 30%, although they seem to be changing the rules so based on their criteria, you can make more.

However, if you get paid, say 10K, you might be better off opening a small SB account, and shadow-trading that.
That 10K could now be used to trade as an adjunct to the FTMO account. The relative return would be as good. And you get to keep all of it.

Once you have over 20-30K or so in actual cash trading, FTMO loses any appeal, I believe.
Thats why I think its a good leg-up to build an account, but after a while, you just trade your own money and keep all of it.
Unless you want to use your trading account as a sort of resume/CV.

Even if you reach the giddy heights of having 3 x 100K accounts, the most you can lose is 30K, so its just a 30K account!

EDIT: I shouldn't say lose, I mean trade with.
I think you didn't get the last update of the conditions.
You can trade a maximum of two 200k accounts, which is 400k in total.
They pay 80% of the account profit.
They also have a scaling plan: if you stay in the game for more than 4 months with 10% profit in this period, they add up 25% to the account balance. That is repeated every 4 months until the trader reaches 2 million.
If you got an account increase by the scaling plan, they pay 90% of the account's profit.

For the account size you also have to regard the broker's margin requirement.
With a margin requirement of 50%, you really trade an 80k account which they sell as a 400k account.
 
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I did get the updates, but paid no heed to them.
Had a quick look, and your notes are a succinct overview.
Didn't really look too deeply into the scaling.

The thing that I didn't consider is the controlled downside.

For $600, you have 10K to play with, with the downside covered by FTMO themselves.
If you trade your own money, you take the full 10K hit; with FTMO, you walk away unscathed.

Apart from the 2-stage unpaid incubation period where you have to prove yourself, losses are limited to the initial fee.
Perhaps I should consider the FTMO cut as a worthy price for them taking the downside risk.

Maybe FTMO has value beyond the initial phase.
I shall re-energize myself with this.
 
Sure, people will argue might as well use the $$ to trade your own account. However, if you trade peanut, you gonna get peanut size return too.

It is all about leveraging your initial capital esp. for new trader. I would rather treat the challenge fee as a tuition fee than blowing up my account. Btw, I did it the hardcore way back then when prop firm isn't as popular yet.

On the R/R side, the advantage of scaling and capital leverage given by prop firm far outweigh the con of the profit sharing % .

Even if I have 1mil in my own trading account. I don't see the harm of having additional 40K(FTMO ) and 72K (MFF) next to my own acc. Right?
 
suddenly switching into a bigger account would be too overwhelming.
it isn't really that big actually, you gotta look at the Max DD allowed (FTMO) or max Daily DD (MFF) and NOT the notional full amount of the acc.

Take MFF for example. 100K acc with max Daily DD of 5% and 12% overall DD, in fact, you are just trading a 5K acc daily & 12K acc overall . Merely a 10 times leverage with the $500 fee you paid which i think isn't really that overwhelming.
 
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