Which prop shops allow non-employees to trade their backtested and paper traded strategies with the shops' money?
I'm not sure whether they'll necessarily fit into your definition of a "prop shop", but TopStepTrader will, if you can briefly demonstrate the reliability of your trading by passing one of their "Combines". They have some risk-management rules to be maintained, of course (as anyone putting up funding for someone they don't really know obviously would), but it's one of the fastest ways of achieving funding, if you can satisfy their parameters. They're well-established, reliable, responsive and ethical, and their profit-sharing terms are about as generous as you'll find.
After getting a funded account, you can trade some additional things not included in the Combine, but for the purposes of the Combine, it's CME futures only, including equity, forex, agricultural, interest-rate, Nymex (oil/gas), commodity, financial (bonds) and Comex (gold) futures. https://topsteptrader.desk.com/cust...bine-info#Permissible Products/Times to Trade
Yeah but what about the rule where you cannot go below $50,000 ? That means given the initial amount of $50,000, you are "out" if your first day results in a loss. Great rule. I wonder what % of the newbies are snagged by that one ?
It really doesn't. I suspect that it's "after the first ten days traded, post-Combine, with a funded account", if you've started with a $50,000 account, that you can't go below the $50,000? It's certainly not what you've stated above, anyway: that would make no sense at all, for exactly the reason you suggest. (They make their money by funding people successfully, not by trying to "catch people out"! Don't look now but there are a few hundred people whose videos and interviews attest to this fact.)
We want to trade our strategies without giving up ownership of the IP. We have track records. We want to use their money to make money for both of us, so we can strike out on our own. Recommendations for prop shops wherein we might fit.
My bad...I didn't read the "fine print". Ten days is definitely fair. So if you are below $50k after 10 days, then you need to ante-up another $100 ? If so, that's definitely fair.
We're talking about two different things, here: the Combine, and the rules for funded account traders who have already passed it. During the Combine, you need to ante up another $100 (reset-fee) only if you've failed it, i.e. broken one of the rules, such as hitting your maximum drawdown limit. With the $50k Combine, the maximum drawdown limit is $2,000, so you wouldn't need to pay a $100 reset-fee for an account anywhere above $48,000, you can just keep trading and trying to achieve the +$3,000 target. For funded traders, there are two different sets of rules, one for during the first 10 days, and one for everything after that, all explained on this page: https://topsteptrader.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/1950861-funded-trader-rules