Pretty much all path to live funding are terrible. In my humble and irrelevant opinion.
I sat on this for a couple of months but basically: A system where a trader has a choice to be offboarded and receive full reward without any true penalties or if they choose to stay in Sim they have stricter rules for the next few Reward systems.
This hopefully keeps gamblers and consistent traders a like without punishing them.
This is a very simplistic version, a more complex version of this I already designed as a prototype and now running through engine to see if it's viable if it's paired with the right challenge type and size in the CFD space.
Futures something like this could work too.
Thanks, I made one much more detailed, but this I kept for simplicity, smart cookies will be able to adapt this to their arsenal, but a challenge needs to be suitable for this, current challenges I've seen on the market cannot really be feasible due to so many restrictions already.
You know who is your friend and who is your enemy, by how they deal with you during disagreements, or when ultimatums are thrown.
Stay frosty out there folks and know your worth.
Props who had it good in 2022 - 2024, that era is over.
Most of the top props are losing talent to new upcoming firms or smaller shops who are daring to risk again.
Silent layoffs are happening, there are literal groups getting pinched by broker backed props and more.
Top props will continue to lose talent as they either move back to the broker side or work on new more exciting projects.
The analogy I would use is this:
Large firms = Oil Tankers
Small firms = speed boats
Which one would you rather be in when you are trying to escape the inevitable market slowdown?
Taking time off socials.
Fortunately managed to close out everyone that reached out with help on payouts denials etc.
if I will not respond from today you now know why.
Work mode is fully on, and socials were a massive distraction.
Peace.
Why 2 step challenge became the number 1 seller in the prop industry?
1)Price: 2 step plans became cheaper than 1 step alternatives
2) Trailing drawdown turned into Static and Balanced based
3) And most important created higher pass rates and opened up higher chance for people to get bigger payouts which turned into marketing and therefore further industry growth
What people do not tell you it's not only CFD market that's struggling, but a lot of the top props that are running Futures market are also in red, some pulling millions in revenue and not making a single $ in profit.
Trustpilot can be bought by having enterprise licence, you can then set up plugins to have reviews on customer support as every support ticket is a "new experience" large companies are then able to mask 1* reviews with a ton of 5* Bot like reviews.
It's smart.
With all the negative reviews about @FTMO_com lately on social media they are still most liked firm on Trust Pilot. I know that’s not the only criteria but seeing firms even paying firms have negative reviews above 5% FTMO doing well with TP reviews.
MY OPINION: 99% of these "path to live" programmes were a nice idea to offload profitable people, but most of them are now overly complicated, where props are trying to one up each other... going in the wrong direction.
Let me break it down:
Most "traders" don't have a fucking clue how to set proper stop losses.
They don't even understand pips or points.
99.5% of them didn't join the prop game to build a real live account.
They joined to turn a $500 challenge into a $10k payout in a few days of reckless trading.
Risk management? Non-existent.
They pat themselves on the back for risking "only" 0.5%, 1% or 2% per trade… but with a 5% daily drawdown limit, that means they're actually blasting 10%, 20%, or even 40% of the account's daily tolerance on a single bad day.
AND THIS IS FINE! For most it's dumb gambling, those who understand good principles and are disciplined it's an amazing industry.
At the start this was 100% by design.
You risk 2% per trade, take 2-3 losers, and boom, daily drawdown breached.
Most account blow-ups happen right there. Now throw the insane amount of rules that the props have added and no wonder why you see a sales slowdown across the board.
Yes, should there be more rules than in poker or blackjack? 100%, but I started to see some crazy limitations... FYI ... YOU ARE IMPACTING YOUR SALES MASSIVELY BECAUSE OF THIS.
Additionally they sell this amazing "path to live" like it's the holy grail every trader should chase.
What they don't tell you is you're better off just risking the $300-$500 on the challenge fee with its $5k drawdown buffer. Once you're on the live account, you're suddenly risking 5x to 10x more in real pressure, and sooner or later you blow it.
And when you do blow the live account?
Does that trader go back to the same firm? Fuck no.
There's zero incentive.
This is exactly the opposite reason why brokers and casinos became multi-billion dollar industries.
They have very low barrier to entry, quiet way of dealing with cheaters, and are simple.
Pick a number on a roulette or black or white and bet.
Get 21 in Black Jack to win
Poker is a mastery of bluff skill and genuine game knowledge (most comparable to trading)
Slot machines (well...)
AND lastly CFD live brokerages with unlimited leverage