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I check lucid monthly earnings every month and every month there are people with crazy good profit factors with a decent enough sample size.
The number 4 guy has 14 profit factor with 290 trades.
Even the number 1 guy has 4 PF with 298 trades.
How is this possible? I have also started to noth 2-3 names that refularly makes it to the top earning boards.
My with 50% win rate only get 1.3-1.4 profit factor
wanted to document my experience with the firm, so anyone can go over it and draw their own conclusions.
Over about four months, I passed The5ers' two-phase High Stakes evaluation and traded the funded account up to a $3,000 payout. I requested that payout on June 4th. Roughly two weeks later, it was denied and my account was terminated. The reason they gave me was that during the risk interview, I hadn't disclosed my earlier use of an Expert Advisor, an open-source position-sizing calculator.
It's worth being clear about what that tool actually is. The5ers' own support confirms that on a High Stakes account, a position-sizing tool that sets your lot size and lets you drag visible stop loss and take profit levels is permitted, as long as it doesn't copy trades, or run other restricted automation. Its not prohibited software.
As for the interview itself, I was asked how I execute my trades, and I answered honestly that I trade from my phone, which is how I'd been trading throughout the funded account. I wasn't asked about the methods I'd used on earlier evaluation attempts, and I didn't think to mention a tool that I had stopped using from months earlier, because it didn't seem material to how I was trading at the time. The firm treated that as a failure to disclose. One can reasonably argue I should have volunteered more. But the tool was permitted under their own rules so what this really comes down to is a disclosure judgment about a permitted category of tool. The response to it was anything but proportionate, and that's the part I find hardest to accept.
The way it was handled only made things worse. I requested the payout on June 4th and my risk interview was scheduled for 2 weeks after, a day after which the termination notice arrived. Every request I made for the specific evidence behind the decision went unanswered, the risk team took days to reply and said little when they did. A clearer explanation didn't come until 19 days after my payout request. After a lot of back and forth with the risk team I got an opportunity to get on a call again, the only question they asked was whether I'd used an EA which I answered directly, and I even showed them where the tool came from because I didn't have it setup on any of my devices. No other discrepancies were brought up during the call.
To make matters worse, now that the account is closed, I can't review my own execution data at all. Only their risk team can see the logs the decision rests on. So I've been left in the position of being told my trading history contradicts what I said, while having no access to the very data they're citing, and no reliable way to reach the people who hold it.
When I add it all up, this is what it came to: a terminated funded account, a denied payout I had earned, no refund of my evaluation fees and, above all, 5 months of wasted time.
Does anyone regularly trade (or has traded) an FTMO funded account using a maximum 2 (or less) pip stop loss per trade?
I'm specifically interested in the funded account, not the evaluation phase, because some prop firms seem to have different trading conditions once you're funded. During the evaluation, everything can look fine, but after getting funded, spreads and execution sometimes appear worse, making it much easier to get stopped out.
I'd really appreciate hearing from traders with actual FTMO funded account experience, especially those using very tight stop losses.
I saw this for both lucid & tradify, why is this? They say you get a 90% profit split but basically you get 45%?
Makes no sense, now I get why they are cheaper than cfd firms
I wanna know how exactly prop firms make money? They almost certainly b book every account, all accounts are simulated/demo... so how come they make money and manage risk?
I haven’t researched much about it but how did these traders get this massive payouts if there is a maximum payout rule?
Obviously the bigger the account the higher the payout but to me even with the max amount of account you still can’t do it. How did they do it?
I’ve been working on a tool called EvalSynk for prop-firm traders.
The idea is not to replace TradeZella or build another full trading journal. I’m trying to build more of a command center for managing prop-firm accounts.
The goal is to track everything in one place:
Basically, instead of jumping between prop-firm dashboards, spreadsheets, payout screenshots, emails, and journals, you’d have one hub showing the state of all your prop-firm accounts.
I’m trying to figure out if this is a real pain or if most traders already solve it with TradeZella, spreadsheets, Notion, or the prop-firm dashboards.
For prop-firm traders managing multiple accounts:
Not trying to spam. I’m genuinely trying to understand if this solves a real problem before building too much more.
Quick question for anyone with FTMO experience: is the 1% daily loss rule tied to just one funded account, or does it carry over across all future funded accounts under the same profile? Like if you pass and get funded again later, does your previous risk behaviour still affect you or is each account treated completely separately?
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I recently got moved to a live account at Lucid Trading. I know that's supposed to be a good thing, but honestly I'm feeling pretty disappointed with the timing.
I got a message saying I'd be moved after one payout on my current set of 5 Flex accounts. I only needed 2 more winning days of $100 to request another payout, but then I got moved to live so now I can't request it anymore.
I've had 2 payouts before on 5 other Flex accounts, but blew them right after. I also had payouts on direct accounts, although that was almost a year ago. Total payouts are around $37k with around $20k in expenses.
What also annoys me is having to rebuild my buffer again. And they let me trade these current accounts for 3 days before moving me, which makes it sting more because I was so close.
I know moving to live is an opportunity and I'm grateful for it, but I still feel kinda frustrated. Anyone else had something similar happen?
I'm funded with FTMO and have a question about payouts.
I had two separate periods where I lost around 3–3.5% in 2 separate trade ideas, but I recovered and never violated any FTMO rules. I never exceeded the maximum daily loss or the maximum overall loss.
At one point I was up 6.9% and was planning to request a payout two days later. Unfortunately, my psychology completely fell apart. I got greedy, started revenge trading, and ended up giving back all my profits until I was around -4% overall on the account.
During those two losing days, I lost around 4.7% in a day twice and also had several trades that were over 1.5% risk each. I know this wasn't good trading, and it was purely a psychological implosion that snowballed into more bad decisions.
I'm still on the same $100,000 funded account, and I've now recovered back to roughly breakeven. My plan moving forward is to stick to my trading plan, follow my system, only take A+ setups, and stop forcing trades. I know exactly where I went wrong, and I'm focused on trading with discipline again.
My question is: Assuming I continue trading consistently, make profits, and don't break any FTMO rules, is there any reason FTMO would decline a future payout because of those two bad days?
I'd really appreciate hearing from anyone who has had a similar experience and successfully received a payout.
Hey everyone,
I wanted to share a major warning about Alpha Capital Group and how they handle payouts on funded accounts. I just had my $650 payout denied and my $10k funded account completely closed due to a rule that was hidden in the fine print of my onboarding contract.
The Setup
I was trading a standard $10k Alpha Pro funded account. If you look at Alpha Capital’s standard rules, the maximum lot size allowed for this account is 5.0 lots.
I built up a profit of $650 and decided to submit a payout request. My largest trade during this time was a single 3.93, 3.42 lot position on NAS100/US500. Since 3.93, 3.42 is well below the advertised 5.0 lot limit, I expected everything to go through smoothly.
The "Gotcha" during the Payout Review
Instead of getting paid, my payout was rejected and my account was instantly deactivated.
When I reached out to their payments team, they sent me a screenshot of a document titled "Contract - Risk Group 2-4%." They told me that because my account was placed in this specific risk tier from day one, my actual lot limit was slashed in half to 2.5 lots. Because my NAS100 trade was 3.93 lots, they marked it as a hard breach.
Why This Is Highly Deceptive
No Dashboard Warning: My main trading dashboard never showed a 2.5 lot limit. It showed the standard Alpha Pro rules.
Burying Rules in the Fine Print: They advertise a 5-lot capacity to get you to buy the challenge, but then sneak a 2.5-lot restriction into the onboarding paperwork to trap you when it’s time to cash out.
Retroactive Enforcement: They completely ignore the fact that the trader is operating in good faith based on the platform's visible dashboard metrics.
They essentially closed the door on my appeal, stating that "the breach is correct and will remain."
Has anyone else dealt with Alpha Capital sneaky-assigning them to these "Risk Groups" right at the contract stage? Watch out if you are trading indices with them—they will gladly take your challenge fee, but they will dig through the legal fine print to find a reason to deny your payout the second you make money.
I am looking to but my next eval account. I am stuck between a 50k topstep account and a 50k tradeify select account for the daily payouts.
Thoughts?
Hey guys, I need to vent and warn everyone about Goat Funded Trader. These guys are straight up scammers.
I actually passed Phase 1, but then they came back saying I violated the 80% margin rule (claimed 83.39%) and failed me. Their email offered me either a new Phase 1 account or a full refund. I didn't even reply yet, and literally seconds later they already created and sent me a new account I never asked for.
When I told them I want the refund they promised, their support guy Joseph hits me with "we do not offer refund, what is your complaint sir". Like bro, you literally just offered it in the previous email. Live chat is useless, all bots. If you ask to tranfer to a human, it'll close the conversation.
I had no choice but to trade the new account. That's when it got even worse. The manipulation was obvious my take profits wouldn't fill no matter what because of crazy spreads. Stop losses getting hit even when the wick was nowhere near them. On GOLD, normal spread is already 40-45 points, but suddenly it would spike to 250-500 points right when it was about to hit my SL.
It felt 100% rigged. Price moves perfectly toward my TP then spread widens so it never hits. My SL gets hunted every single time. This isn't bad luck, it's deliberate.
Goat Funded Trader is one of the worst prop firms out there. They bait you in, make up reasons to fail you after you pass, force a new account, then manipulate the platform so you lose. And good luck getting your refund.
Stay away from these clowns. Share your experiences.
I was up 7,000 usd yesterday trading gold I had a capital of 100$ and losses it right after a pullback happen whats your advice and how should I go on thinking about it and Giving a pay check to myself I wish I took profit whats your advice?
Hi all, I’m planning to get a prop firm account but I have a hard time choosing which to go with.
I was wondering which of these other people prefer (cfd or futures & 1-step or 2-step) and why.
Which do you usually go with?
So Just got the dreaded payout rejection email.
It's on a free 5k account that they were doing on a promotion. I did really well and managed a growth of 44%.
The rules are a bit crazy tbh and anyone looking to trade with them should read them carefully. Negative RR is one i've only heard with this firm. They said 10% of my trades were negative RR. So basically meaning your not allowed to take profit early.
So my explanation for the martingale is I trade from zones with tight stop loss. Sometime the stop loss gets hit, but doesn't invalidate my trade idea as the zone is still active. They do not want this type of trading and honestly feels like it's geared toward the trader losing.
Anyways make of it what you will, was a good opportunity to see what the firm was like before spending any real money but hope it helps anyone who's looking around.
My suggestion is look around at reviews for firms with good rules that are geared for your success and look for payout proofs.
My question (which I got different answers to from Tradeify 's AI Bot and Gemini) is: for a Tradeify Select FLEX payout, is there a MINIMUM payout?
I know you need 5 days of so much profit and that you can only withdraw up to 50% of your total profit up to a certain amount based on account size, but is there a minimum you must have to request a payout?
So if I have a 50k and profit 5 days x $200 for a total of $1000, can I request $500?
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I am giving eval on topstepx and lucid.
Topstep is web based whereas for lucid I use quantower.
Is there any way i can copy trade evals of different companies?
Six years of QQQ opening-range-breakout data, 112 raw trades, a filter waterfall, a loss autopsy, and a stress test aimed at the exact failure mode that gets backtests torn apart here. Posting the whole thing because I'd rather get this checked before real money touches it than after.
Setup: Solo build, systematic ORB on QQQ/NQ, no ML, deterministic rules only (regime gate, day-of-week filter, signal grade, opening range breakout). Going live on a funded futures account shortly, which is why I spent this weekend trying to break my own numbers before someone else did it for me.
Original claim: 3.50 Sharpe. Sounded great. Turned out the annualization method was undocumented and effectively assumed daily trading frequency on a system that fires roughly 10 times a year. Recomputed properly:
3.50 was fiction. 1.54 is defensible. Retired the old number everywhere, including my own notes, and documented the methodology so it's reproducible.
| Stage | Trades | Win Rate | EV/trade | Sharpe | Max DD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Raw | 112 | 48.2% | +0.888R | 0.27 | 6.8R |
| + Calendar guard (FOMC/NFP/CPI) | 109 | 48.6% | +0.912R | 0.27 | 6.8R |
| + Friday blocked | 80 | 53.8% | +1.246R | 0.33 | 4.0R |
| + Wed BULL blocked | 70 | 58.6% | +1.479R | 0.37 | 4.0R |
| + Wed BEAR retained only | 61 | 62.3% | +1.539R | 0.38 | 3.0R |
| + Signal grade filter (4-confirmation alignment) | 59 | 57.6% | +0.987R | 0.49 | 3.0R |
Biggest single lever: the Friday filter alone accounts for ~38% of the total edge improvement from raw to final. Friday trades averaged -0.042R across 30 occurrences, essentially free money to remove. Everything else (day-of-week regime interaction, signal grading) matters, but nowhere near as much as just not trading on Fridays.
Ran a structural post-mortem on all 59 filtered trades, winners and losers, looking for taxonomy rather than a magic filter (I know curve-fitting a "what-would-have-avoided-this-loss" rule off 25 losses is how people fool themselves, so I explicitly didn't do that, see below).
25 losses broke into three types:
The 52% figure was the interesting one. Half the losses weren't bad entries, they were good entries the market later took back.
I'd already built a two-tier exit (bank 50% at +1R, trail the remainder) but never backtested it, it was execution-layer code, not signal logic. Ran it against the loss autopsy as a historical counterfactual:
| Backtest (no engine) | With engine | |
|---|---|---|
| 13 target-miss losses | -13.0R | +9.75R |
| 11 slow-bleed losses | -10.8R | -10.8R (unaffected, as expected) |
| 34 winners | +82.0R | +75.8R (gives back ~0.19R/trade insurance cost) |
| Total EV/trade | +0.987R | +1.266R (+28.3%) |
The mechanism is boring and mechanical, which is exactly why I trust it: locking half a position at +1R structurally can't be curve-fit to 13 specific historical trades, because it's a rule about R-multiples reached, not about any feature of those particular trades. It generalizes by construction.
Saw enough "smooth equity curve = look-ahead bias" callouts on posts here to specifically check my own backtester for it. The risk: when a bar's high and low both contain the stop and target level, does the backtest assume favorable sequencing (target hit first) when live execution could easily have hit the stop first?
Audited all 93 grade-A trades (pre-final-filter set) for this exact condition:
Worst-case stress test — force stop-first resolution on all 14 ambiguous trades:
It's not zero-impact, and I'm not pretending it is. But the edge survives an assumption that's actively hostile to it, which is a meaningfully different claim than "the backtest looks clean. " I've now wired live trade tracking to flag these same-bar-ambiguous trades going forward and compare real fills against this worst-case floor if, live underperforms +0.449R on this specific cohort, that's the signal something in the backtester's sequencing assumption was actually wrong, not just theoretically risky.
Did not go hunting for a rule that would have "saved" the 25 losses. That's the classic move that always works and always means nothing, with enough features you can always draw a line around your own losses in hindsight. The asymmetry engine passed a higher bar: it existed before the autopsy, has a mechanical justification independent of these specific trades, and its cost side (what it gives up on winners) was measured with equal rigor. Anything that only showed up as "add this filter, get 15 more percentage points" got treated as a red flag, not a discovery.
Going live on a funded account shortly. Wanted this checked here first rather than finding out about a hole from a blown drawdown limit.
Genuinely interested in where this is still wrong. What would you attack first, the calendar guard's negligible impact (only removed 2 trades, is that suspicious in itself?), the grade-filter methodology, or something in the intrabar sequencing check I haven't thought of?
Just posting this so other people know what can happen.
After many ups and downs, I finally had 5 XFAs and was expecting to request $3K from each one, so $15K total. Instead, right around my first payout, Topstep called/moved me up to a Live Funded Account.
Once you move to Live, the XFAs close, so I couldn’t take those payouts anymore. I got $0 upfront. Then I had to wait for the Live account to be created, which their policy says can take 7–10 business days. After that, I still have to get 5 more winning days before I can even request a Live payout.
And even then, it’s not the same payout. From what I understand, only 20% of the combined XFA balance is available right away and 80% goes into reserve. That reserve unlocks in 25% chunks after hitting more profit targets.
So this isn’t just “congrats, you’re Live.” For me, it turned a $15K expected payout into $0 upfront, more waiting, more targets, and more risk.
The risk part is what people should really pay attention to. Live has daily loss limits and scaling rules, and if the Live account drops below Topstep’s minimum balance requirement, the account can be closed. So if you lose the Live account before unlocking enough reserve, the money you thought you earned might never actually become available.
They explain it as helping traders build consistency, longevity, and scale. I get the idea, but traders should know what it actually means for payouts.
Not saying this happens to everyone. Some people do get XFA payouts without being moved to Live. Just make sure you read the Live payout/reserve rules before assuming you’ll be able to withdraw what your XFA dashboard shows.
