In my experience, OUT's support team is laughably worse than TST, but because OUT seemed to have a better "leave you alone" attitude toward funded traders, I leaned toward them more. I understand their need to not let traders cash out 100% of profits on new accounts, because of what someone posted on this site about the newly funded accounts actually being demo accounts at the very beginning. They're taking losses if we withdraw out of these when we make demo money but honestly I don't give 2 fucks about their losses in this situation since they're lying about the funded accounts in the first place. With that said, if they do allow 100% withdraws past the $1500 threshold, I'm okay with it. That original $1500 can serve as the buffer for losses while I'm above it, since the aim is to bring the drawdown up to $0 (from -$1500) anyway. I figure if you're a legitimate trader and want to make good money off this system you should stick around til you make $10k anyway, and that would take many new traders a few months at least. My question though, is about what you suggested regarding treating withdraws as losses. Is withdrawing $8k considered breaking your $500 daily loss limit or something, is that what you mean by considering it a loss? That sounds too dumb to be true (not calling you the dumb one here). If I am up $2500, can I not withdraw $1500 and keep $1000 in the account as my remaining buffer against future losses? Or would they give me 100% of the $1000 and 50% of the 500? It seems like a good way to circumvent the scammy aspect by just withdrawing 100% of profits above $1500 and keeping the $1500 there for when you might break a rule or something. That way you at least don't give up 50% of the total profit. Correct me if I'm wrong here.
Is there a website for SMB? The only one I found is a training website, and I am not interested in that. Is there a way to directly trade with them like pass an evaluation?
Hi - What do you think of TraderDock's TT platform? It's really cumbersome - no one-click execution with profit target/stop loss, information is scattered all over the place on different windows, can't see your current P/L on the DOM. Seems like a good firm - but strange that they use such an inferior platform.
I don't think their platform is user scalp friendly like NT or even the best imo T4. They like you said "seem like a good firm". Thinking from a business perspective, one might need a contractual agreement to supply clients with different platform like amp futures for example. I will look at SMB again but my gripe is 50% payout does not work well with me unless you are withholding my taxes also benefits like fee massage and gym like those wall street traders not to mention health insurance benefits too.
UPDATE on my experience with traderdock. It's been one month since I passed the challenge, and still no live account yet. They are telling me that they are looking for a solution to get my live account up and running, and I do believe them, however all of their kyc hoops have been a major time consuming and costly pain. It has been a great setback for me personally as I am needing to make money quickly. It seems they are going through some growing pains and for the time being I am giving them the benefit of the doubt and expect to hear some good news next week. I am hoping they get my account up by next week and that I will have some good things to say, but in the mean time if you are in a hurry to get trading real money, it OUP might be your best bet. If I had the money to run with smb futures I would go that route as they offer the best and fairest opportunity, but I just can't afford their fee right now. I am tempted to try OUP while I wait for my account a tdock, but I'm not sure if they will have me now after I exposed their emails here on elitetrader, but I might give them a shot anyways. As for TST, never again with those lying scumbags. Hopefully will have good new to post here next week regarding my experience with traderdock.
I'm not sure about the treatment of withdrawls as losses or what that means exactly, I think someone else mentioned that. Maybe you can ask them as they sure as hell aren't going to respond to my questions again...
Because they are good fucking people for one. The people running TST are a bunch of shceisters, always have been. In their early days it was just disgusting all the cons and tricks and lies they pulled. The team at smb has always been about developing traders and making money from trading. TST has always been about how can we generate more combine fees. At OUP AND Traderdock they subtract unrealized gains from your equity. That is not fair in my book, and to be hoenst I did not know traderdock did this before I signed up with them as it was on a page of the site I didn't read. So as an example, if you do five perfect trades in a row and miss your target by a few ticks and perhaps end up with a small gain, they are going to take the unrealized profit out of your account, treating it like a loss. That is not how real trading works. SMB does not do this, nor does topstep. At oup and tdock, once you make your first 2500, they pull their initial 2500 out of your account, so you still have only 2500 behind you. At smb they start you with 3000, if you make 3000, you know have 6000 behind you, they don't pull their capital out, and they don't treat unrealized gains as losses. Granted you can pass the tests at at oup and tdock faster as the profit target is lower than smb, and you they don't have all the bullshit second test daily become weekly ll at tst, so while their test is a lot more difficult, you can get it done faster if you are good. Anyways, I have tried out with all of these firms but to be fair I will wait until I have completed my experience with traerdock before posting my complete review of these companies. I am still trying to get my account open at traderdock and will keep the community posted as to how that goes. I appreciate that they are new to the remote/online trading game and I might be the first person to have passed their online challenge, and as such they may just be going through some growing pains. I hope to have more good news to add soon.