They wanted him to use the firm's method because if he continued to use his own method he would eventually have no need to give them 50% of his profits. When up enough he would leave and trade his own account and keep 100%.
I have noticed that the hard press of selling education has increased in the last few months, and I get an email almost daily about getting "$600 off", etc. While I don't think they are about to go under, it certainly seems as if they might be on a declining path. I could be wrong, and quite frankly I hope I am, but if it walks like a duck....quacks like a duck.....its probably a duck.
The tryout is still on their web site. The advantage of SMBU is that after 6 months of consistency they increase the amount you can trade. "SENIOR TRADER After 6 months of consistency as a Level II Junior Trader: Custom daily loss limit $25,000 max drawdown" _________________ They start you with a $3,000 max drawdown but apparently you can trade size after something more than 6 months. I was in the slack room for over a year and Merritt's results were so,so. He would have some good winners but there were days I wondered what he was doing. Last I heard they want a huge fee for the foundation course and you can be sure there will be follow on courses. The SMBU Options team has several courses that you can purchase for $1,400 or so. It seems to be another source of revenue. Would like to hear if anyone has continued on with them. After a year in the slack room my trading had not improved. I am still considering attempting the SMBU tryout but Oneup is less expensive and has a lower target . Something I had not seen before is it appears if at SMBU you draw down and stop and then wish to start again you have to dig out of the hole vs just starting fresh. Anyone with experience with this? Quote from SMBU page: "If you cancel your Tryout, then sign back up within 6 months, your account balance will be exactly as you left it when cancelled. Any account lock due to a risk rule violation will also still be active. You will be required to pay the account reset fee if you want a fresh account balance and unlocked account."
And THAT my friends, is the carrot. I once asked about trading conditions once funded, and Merritt was really vagus about the whole thing.
They seem to be leaning towards becoming a school more than anything else. Something isn't right to say the least.
Would be interested if anyone passed their Tryout while having full-time job? Seems very difficult when they require you to "put in the work each day with preparation & review" and when having very limited time for trading each day
I passed, they are solid, it's not easy, u have to put in the work, u will learn a lot. They are NOT like TST or Oneup. I passed both 2, but their one and only goal is to collect combine fees. Once U are in ==> especially TST, they want to make your life difficult so you fail & go back into the rat wheel. They don't deliver on their scalingplan neither once you go live : I was 5k up live & still trading 3 lots on the 150k plan. (150k account up +4.5k = 15 lots )
In my opinion anyone seriously considering SMB Capital should take a hard look at FTMO instead In my opinion FTMO offers a better program I could be wrong but my understanding is the SMB Capital currently only allows you to have 1 funded account only and that account only starts off with a $1,000 daily loss limit and a $3,000 fixed drawdown and SMB Capital takes at least 50% off the profits. I am not sure but I have heard other traders mention that SMB Capital also has something like a risk reserve that could allow them to set aside part of your 50% so if they did something like that then you may only get paid the difference between what is is deducted for the "risk reserve" and your 50% (again I dont know if true or not you would just have to ask SMB for a copy of their funded trader agreement to see whatever "fine print" might be there). For right now we will continue the analysis and assume that there is no addl risk reserve that they have and its just a straight 50-50 split VS FTMS 70-30 split in your favor VS FTMO currently allows you to have up to 3 funded trading accounts at the same time - each one starts off with a $5,000 daily loss limit and a $10,000 fixed drawdown. The reason someone might want to have multiple trading accounts is that if they blow up 1 account they still have 1 or 2 more they can switch trading to immediately - and/or they might want to trade all of the at the same time and trade different strategies in each one - one might be day trading and the other one swing trading, one could be based on order flow and volume profie while another is based on other technical indicators, one could trade longs only and the other couldf trade shorts only, one could trade S&P500 and 1 trades Nasdaq 100 and a 3rd one trades Dow 30--etc - FTMO also gives you 70% of the profits and they keep 30% whereas SMB Capital is 50-50. For purposes of this analysis though we will just assume that you only want to have 1 funded account with FTMO So you start off with 5x the daily loss limit that SMB Capital offers and you also start off with 3.3X the fixed max drawdown than SMB capital offers. Also FTMO offers to increase your account size (and also daily loss limit and max fixed drawdown) by 25% every 4 months if your trading meets certain criteria such as earning 10% profits over the 4 months - so as an example if you have a $100,000 account you would need to earn $15,000 in total profits over the 4 months (so an avg of $3750 per month) and you have to have 2 of the 4 months be profitable - ---meaning you wouldnt get the increased funding after 4 months if you earned $15,000 in net profits in the 4 months but you did it by having 1 month with a $20,000 profit then the other 3 months you lost money but you would get the increase even if 2 of the 4 months you lost money -such as made $8,000 month 1 and $9,000 month 2 and lost $1,000 month 3 and lost $1,000 month 4. at this time there appears to be no cap on the amount of 25% increases you can earn over time year over year at the rate of 1 increase every 4 months (3 per year) So a possible 25% increase every 4 months --what does that translate to over time? Lets assume that every 4 months you qualified so that is 3 increases of 25% per year Start off Year 1 with a $5,000 daily loss limit and a $10,000 max fixed drawdown You earn 3 increases over the course of Year 1 (1 every 4 months) At the end of year 1 you now have a daily loss limit of $9,765.00 and a max fixed drawdown of $19,531 Start off Year 2 with a daily loss limit of $9,765.00 and a max fixed drawdown of $19,531 You earn 3 increases over the course of Year 2 (1 every 4 months) At the end of year 2 you now have a daily loss limit of $19,072.00 and a max fixed drawdown of $38,146 Start off Year 3 with a daily loss limit of $19,072.00 and a max fixed drawdown of $38,146 You earn 3 increases over the course of Year 3 (1 every 4 months) At the end of year 3 you now have a daily loss limit of $37,250 and a max fixed drawdown of $74,503 Start off Year 4 with a daily loss limit of $37,250 and a max fixed drawdown of $34,503 You earn 3 increases over the course of Year 4 (1 every 4 months) At the end of year 4 you now have a daily loss limit of $75,753 and a max fixed drawdown of $174,516 Start off Year 5 with a daily loss limit of $75,753 and a max fixed drawdown of $174,516 You earn 3 increases over the course of Year 5 (1 every 4 months) At the end of year 5 you now have a daily loss limit of $147,955 and a max fixed drawdown of $340,851 So in total you have earned 15 increases over the 5 year period (at the rate of 3 per year) - even if your trading was not consistently good enough to earn a 25% increase every 4 months at the rate of 3 per year and your trading was only good enough to earn 1 increase per year in any 4 month period and you only earned 1 increase per year - in 5 years you would be at a max daily loss of $15,258 and a max fixed drawdown of $30,517 and remember FTMO is a 70-30 split in your favor and SMB Capital is only 50-50