Should you trust FTMO?
The leader prop firm for forex retail traders.
Latest update: 2022–01–07
Let us immediately try to understand in this FTMO review how much trust can be given to this company: you would not start an important collaboration with a company you know too little about, right?
FTMO is a forex prop house: that is, a regulated company that provides you with a real account to manage by giving you 80% to 90% of the profits you will obtain once funded (they offered 70% until mid 2021).
Founded in 2014 in the Czech Republic, it is a reliable company with a solid foundation that has established itself as a leader in this sector year after year.
I already interviewed the co-founder Otakar Suffner in 2019, read the interview here.
Not many are so transparent about specific company details. FTMO provides you not only with a telephone number, but also the address in Prague where, they say, they will be happy to meet any trader in person.
Opletalova 1417/25, 110 00 Prague, Czech Republic.
It’s cool to see such transparency from a company!
If you are familiar already with FTMO click here to obtain the discount and visit FTMO’s website.
I am an affiliate to FTMO and other funders: thank you for supporting the Funded-Trader project and enabling me to provide you with honest unbiased reviews.
Find all my reviews for Forex and Futures traders.
Does FTMO pay punctually?
I’m sure that, after wondering what FTMO was, you thought: “will they pay?”
Whatever the amount of profit you generate you will be paid.
Payments are certified, tracked, and processed quickly.
I was amazed at how many confirmations can be found online about their proven deposits from other traders.
While most prop companies allow for a withdrawal at the end of the month, as long as the threshold has been met, FTMO now offers payments on demand.
You can set exactly when you want to get paid each month.
This won’t make a big difference to many traders, but it’s just proof that the company, once again, goes to great lengths to provide a true partnership with traders, rather than just a support company.
Let’s assume you have a total commission of 3,500$ and that you do not want to withdraw everything, but that you only need 2,000$ and you want to leave the rest in the account so that they can capitalize: you will simply have to create an invoice on FTMO’s trader’s area, where you will go to indicate that you want to withdraw and receive 2,000$.
Do not be alarmed, it is not a complicated procedure at all.
Within three working days they will check your invoice, and within a maximum of 10–15 days the money will arrive in the account you indicated.
Very important: the enrolment fee you paid to enter the challenge will be refunded to the credit card you used.
Total transparency: Another point in FTMO’s favor is that they offer anyone (upon request) to view a copy of the contract which will be offered to the funded trader.
Is it that hard to obtain capital to trade?
Let’s get to the heart of the review at FTMO by analyzing the rules of their challenges: first of all, FTMO offers a 14-day free trial on all programs.
FTMO evaluation programs require a single payment for a limited duration, thus obtaining a limited period but with costs that are easier to control.
While the majority of competitors demand a monthly subscription: recurring payments imply unlimited time to reach the goal and become a Funded Trader; you have to be careful in this model because you can easily spend too much on various “Reset”, ie the payments you make to restart the challenge after breaking a rule.
The accounts provided are simulated, before switching to a real account there are two phases: 30 days the first phase and 60 days the second, for a total of 90 days.
In both phases you will have to do a minimum of 10 trading days with 10 complete operations: this is to avoid that a trader is financed with only 1 or 2 particularly lucky trades; remember that the funder’s goal is to test you and finance only the traders who are profitable in the long term and best at controlling risk.
For both phases, the maximum daily loss allowed is 5%, while the maximum static loss threshold is 10%.
ATTENTION: with FTMO the minimum limit under which your account must never go down is fixed!
Unlike them, most lenders offer a “progressive” or trailing” maximum loss limit: that is, the amount below which your account must never go rises every time you make a profit.
The profit target in phase 1 is perhaps a little too bold at 10%, while going down in phase 2 to 5% becomes simpler, therefore equivalent to half the permitted risk.
The evaluation programs, or competitions, can be selected in various options: normal or aggressive, and swing.
Aggressive challenges cost more but allow you to manage greater risk on your account: in fact this doubles from 10% to 20%; but the profit target also doubles.
In standard and aggressive valuation programs it is forbidden to trade during important economic news and on weekends (if you leave the positions open they will be closed automatically).
But how do we know which news is relevant and which are not? You will find here on my website the calendar with all the news to avoid in order not to lose the challenge with FTMO.
It is while I was researching for this review that FTMO also entered Swing accounts: here you can keep trades open overnight and weekends and you can also trade during financial news.
Leverage on the Swing account type is 1:30, which is lower than 1: 100 on the standard account.
Whatever type of competition is best suited to your trading style, you can choose based on starting capital: find below all the available programs with detailed rules and information, and the exclusive 5% discount for Funded-Trader.com readers.
Remember that the enrolment fee is REFUNDABLE: it means that if you reach the third phase, passing the first two smoothly (therefore staying within the required timelines, reaching the desired objectives, and not breaking the permitted loss thresholds), what you initially paid will be returned to you.
FREE REPEAT: FTMO understands that the time limit of the program can create difficulties for traders, for this reason, they give a second attempt for free to the best traders; this opportunity is offered to traders who, despite not reaching the profit target, do not break any rules of the tender and have a positive balance in their account.
To analyze and compare all the evaluation programs available by FTMO visit my Fundsfinder (for free, no registration required).
Are you trading on the proper platform?
The trading platforms accepted by FTMO are: MT4, MT5, CTRADER.
It is not possible to change platforms during the challenge.
If you are not satisfied with the trading platform you have chosen, you can ask for a change at the end of one of the evaluation phases: either after phase 1, the Challenge, or after phase 2, the Verification, or once you are funded.
How to grow your trading account.
It is important that I underline in this FTMO review the fact that they allow you to participate in multiple programs simultaneously, this can be useful for testing different strategies in the same market, but also because FTMO is willing to merge your funded accounts into one, and finance you with up to 400K$.
FTMO also rewards its best traders by increasing the capital of the funded account based on their performance.
Every quarter you will regularly receive a CAPITAL INCREASE BONUS of your fund equal to 25%: if you get at least 10% return on your capital.
Pay attention however to the fact that in each cycle you can lose a maximum of 2 consecutive months, or the bonus vanishes. So if you lose for 3 consecutive months out of 4? No bonus!
The daily loss limit of 5% and the maximum loss of 10% remain the same: therefore the permitted risk also increases as the capitalized account increases.
However, if you exceed these parameters, the bonus does not simply fade: but the entire funded account! And yes, you have to start over.
Since they will be the ones to increase your capital, you do not need to leave too many profits in your account to capitalize it and the margin of error, as your capital increases, can grow in an equivalent way.
It is at this point that your share of profit rises from 80% to 90%: after 4 months of trading with the real account and + 10% of the profit obtained.
See in the table how quickly your funded account can double.
Never risk your savings!
The capital is of FTMO therefore you do not risk anything, except when you fail the challenge because you will have to enroll again: consider it an investment in the profession of your future!
Most traders fundamentally lack emotional strength and discipline, as well as a solid risk management plan; for this reason, unfortunately, many do not reach the goal.
However, if you are consistently positive in your trading there is no reason for you to fail.
FTMO can make you a better trader as you are forced to abide by the rules and, as a result, they induce you to make only high quality trades.
It is important that you can test and refine your trading strategy for as long as possible with a simulated account, and only sign up for a competition when you feel ready.
Investing in participation in an evaluation program with FTMO will always consist of a negligible amount compared to the risk of losing your trading account: do the right thing!
Taxation for the prop trader.
The responsibility for declaring profits lies with the trader himself according to the laws of the country in which he resides: you may declare this income as retribution for work done with FTMO, not as capital gain, therefore be liable for a much lower tax rate; you must check with your accountant first of course.
FTMO admits anyone, from anywhere in the world without exception, no qualifications are required other than being 18 years old.
I invite you to look for detailed and recent information regarding taxation in your country.
Does FTMO truly want you to win and get funded?
FTMO truly wants you to be successful as a trader, and it is precisely for this reason that they offer a large number of tools.
A service that I think is five stars is the possibility of being joined by qualified mental coaches to manage those unwanted behaviors or bad habits that could harm you.
Through one-to-one conversations, you can learn to manage stress and emotions, develop psychological tools and strategies to be a winning trader, and achieve your goals.
The psychologist Michael is a trader and therefore knows exactly the dynamics related to this profession.
I think this service is a great enhancement.
On his FTMO website he presents his mental coaches, here they are.
There are many other tools available, all accessible in the website client area once a paid challenge is launched, and they are all free!
These include:
Metrix: examines every executed trade, drawdown, profit, loss, trading time, pairs and compiles all the statistics. Much like MyFxbook but, well, good.
Statistics App: this app examines the odds of different scenarios occurring on different pairs, to help you build a profitable trading advantage
Account Analysis: just like the Metrix app, but in much more detail! This can definitely help you understand your trading, your behaviors and increase your profitability in the markets.
Trading Journal: This is how it sounds, a trading journal where you can upload pictures of the trades you have made. This really helps to understand the settings, hone your lead, and get closer to that $ 100,000 funded trading account
Mentor App: This app works on MT4 and MT5 and forces you to follow your trading plan and rule set, with a clever EA on the screen. It’s not the most useful tool for disciplined or professional traders, but for your new traders just starting out, this is a really great idea!
Equity Simulator: Just as it sounds, this allows you to test different win rates and risk to reward averages to find out how your accounts would increase. Definitely a really useful tool to have on hand.
A negative aspect of FTMO is that it does not offer training, other than a free course called Price Action Trading which explains the basics, the trading alphabet.
There are no right or wrong strategies, there is rather the strategy that works for you, but to be able to discover it you need to know the techniques of the markets and be able to read the charts: precisely the notions that this mini course will teach you.
However, FTMO offers discounts and partnerships on some of the most popular forex training courses in the industry.
Can we guarantee for FTMO?
FTMO’s online reputation is practically flawless!
Trustpilot is a platform founded in 2007 that has a reputation in the field of reviews for being transparent and trustworthy.
It was on this platform that I found valid FTMO reviews with a highly appreciated reputation score (4.7 / 5).
You will find many, you can indulge yourself, here below I publish two examples:
My goal for this and every review is to also find negative opinions but I have found very few and none worthy of note: below are the ones I have recovered, but which I consider false or scam, if not irrelevant:
Another platform I checked out is Forex Peace Army.
This was born with another name in 2005 and immediately became an online reference point for traders with the aim of being honest and transparent in everything related to this field.
Here too FTMO is considered reliable and serious.
Personally, I particularly like FTMO’s interviews with funded traders.
There is a large amount of content on the web about this prop company. Many well-known forex traders for example have shown the entire process of signing up, accepting a challenge, billing and actual payment from FTMO.
My opinion about FTMO.
If you are looking for an opportunity with a legitimate and reputable company to trade with, FTMO is the company for you.
They have an incredible reputation in the industry for paying and honoring their word, along with great customer support.
It is no coincidence that it is a leader in the sector and they have achieved notoriety in a short time thanks to their reliability, which is not easy for a company based in Europe and not in the USA;
The downsides of FTMO that I have to point out in this review are:
- the presence of two stages of tender to obtain funding, while other lenders require only one.
- the fact that phase 1 only lasts 30 days.
What I find positive in FTMO, and which leads them to be above the majority of the competition, are:
- the use of a STATIC maximum loss limit, not progressive like the majority of lenders.
- the high profit rate for the trader: from 80% to 90%.
- the right to have up to 3 funded accounts at the same time.
- capital growth of 25% every quarter.
- possibility of swing trading.
Their desire to expand and provide more and more content to traders continues to increase over time. Their main goal is to give their traders the best chance of success.
However, this isn’t a miraculous way to get rich — the FTMO challenge is no joke and is certainly hard to pass and hard to maintain once funded.
Your opinion.
Your opinion matters! Come visit my Instagram or Facebook page, leave your comment: I post every video about the funders on my Instagram TV, let’s have the conversation over there so to include as many people as possible.
