Another thing to consider with LeeLoo is their f''ked up payout schedule. Basically, there's a cap on how much you can withdraw on your 1st, 2nd and 3rd withdrawals and they're spaced out 1 month between and a requirement of 30 trading days on the first payout. In effect, this means it will take you as long as 5 months to get out $10K of profits. Definitely something to keep in mind and definitely something they do NOT go out of their way to inform you about.
lol reminds me of a prop firm I was with years ago that used to keep 3 months of payout at all times and then pay subsequent months. M surprised these things still fly today
No idea. You can read the story here, though. https://www.forexpeacearmy.com/community/threads/funding-talent-prop-firm-scam.70762/ https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/is-funding-talent-a-scam.360599/page-3
Yeah, it's certainly a balancing act. Basically you need to play the game with them too. You need to do regular withdrawals from these companies to be safe, preferably in amounts under $1k and just bank as much as you can. Because I agree and if it wasn't general knowledge to people already, it should be obvious and clear now, how they make their money. Therefore logic follows they obviously aren't going to pay out amounts that bankrupt them.
In theory if I got to maybe $9k/mo MAX, just saying in theory, whether with Leeloo or Apex or Topstep or whatever, would that be enough to put a target on me you think? Apex for example their last give away that was open for about 3 weeks they had ~15k entries assume they were all resets(a extremely low average price paid) so 15,000*$80 = $1.2M Or would it make sense to make $10k, then withdraw all of it as soon as feasible, and go open my own account with NinjaTrader or someone else?
Leeloo and Apex are the better choices for longer term growth and scaling. If I had to wager, I'd say Apex would give you less trouble on withdrawing larger amounts, LeeLoo does pay out, but if you start producing more profits than the account size you purchased, you're likely to raise some eyebrows. Apex/Leeloo also do not have a very liberal withdrawal policy though. If you're worried about not getting fully paid out or having a target on you, I would just trade the account slowly and do regular withdrawals. For example building the account up to like $50k in profits quickly doesn't do much considering they have a max withdraw amount on your first four withdrawals anyways. So, you could sign up for multiple different companies and spread your winning out that way, would be safer. Have only heard of one story that I can't even confirm that LeeLoo capped a trader on pay outs. At the same time the largest withdrawal of someone I know from LeeLoo was $18k in profits. So, I genuinely don't know for sure if and when they will cap you. Just giving my best opinion on information I have for what it's worth.
While I do not endorse Earn2Trade or TST - these firms actually let you trade REAL money on a funded account. Effectively taking care of the conflict of interest that exists with the companies where you only trade in simulator. TST introduced some weird withdrawal rules (ask yourself why they would want to restrict you from paying you), but with E2T I believe there are no such rules and you can effectively withdraw your full amount on a weekly basis. In light of that it seems to me that E2T is the only viable choice if one chooses to go down this route.
Yeah I guess my concerns with Apex/Leeloo is I'm not actually trading the market. If it's all just pretend my losses/profits are just going to or coming from other pretend traders.
Of course the prop firms have risk IF their infrastructure has flaw. Funding talent and recently DT4X did both bust. https://dt4xtrader.com/ The model is that they generally bet against new traders until traders prove they are consistent winners.From there they change their bet and even follow winners.But according to prop firms statistics, the number of real winners is below 1/1000. https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/some-traders-statistics-about-prop-firms.364784/ So they bet against traders just like a casino, is it unethical for a casino to bet against customers? I don't think so. I do think prop firms like topsteptrader are unethical because they set the bar too high that even consistent winners can rarely pass the challenge. If you trade with topsteptrader, you are like betting against a casino whose house edge is 20% compared with other casinos' whose house edge is only 2%.