Prop firm research
Rules, firm comparisons, expected value simulations and EA automation,
written by a trader who buys the challenges with his own money.
![FTMO vs. FundedElite: Which Should You Buy? | A 1-Year Simulation of 5 Plans Under the Same Assumptions Puts FTMO 1-Step on Top, With FundedElite's Lite Putting Up a Good Fight [September 2026]](/og/en/ftmo-vs-fundedelite-2026-09.png)
FTMO vs. FundedElite: Which Should You Buy? | A 1-Year Simulation of 5 Plans Under the Same Assumptions Puts FTMO 1-Step on Top, With FundedElite's Lite Putting Up a Good Fight [September 2026]
A 1-year Monte Carlo comparison of FTMO (2-Step / 1-Step) and FundedElite (2-Step / 2-Step Lite / 1-Step), run strictly to the official rules of each. Covers expected value at 0.5%/1%/1.5% risk per trade and 50โ58% win rates, plus the differences in EA rules, refunds, free retries, and coupons.
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138FTMO vs. FundedElite: Which Should You Buy? | A 1-Year Simulation of 5 Plans Under the Same Assumptions Puts FTMO 1-Step on Top, With FundedElite's Lite Putting Up a Good Fight [September 2026]
A 1-year Monte Carlo comparison of FTMO (2-Step / 1-Step) and FundedElite (2-Step / 2-Step Lite / 1-Step), run strictly to the official rules of each. Covers expected value at 0.5%/1%/1.5% risk per trade and 50โ58% win rates, plus the differences in EA rules, refunds, free retries, and coupons.
![What's FundingPips' Expected Value? A 1-Year Simulation of 6 Plans Under the New Rules (From September 28, 2026): At 1% Risk, 1 Step Flex (3% Daily) Is 1st and 2 Step Standard (3% Daily) Is 2nd [September 2026]](/og/en/fundingpips-expected-value-2026-09.png)
What's FundingPips' Expected Value? A 1-Year Simulation of 6 Plans Under the New Rules (From September 28, 2026): At 1% Risk, 1 Step Flex (3% Daily) Is 1st and 2 Step Standard (3% Daily) Is 2nd [September 2026]
A 1-year Monte Carlo simulation of FundingPips' new rules from September 28, 2026, covering 2 Step Standard (3% and 5% daily), 2 Step Flex, 2 Step Pro and 1 Step Flex (2% and 3% daily). Compares annual take-home at 0.5%, 1% and 1.5% risk per trade and 50-58% win rates. For 2 Step Standard, the 3% daily option beat 5% in every scenario; for 1 Step Flex, 3% daily was better at 1% risk and 2% daily was better otherwise.
![[Breaking] FundingPips Significantly Relaxes Its Rules: Betting Big on One Trade, Holding Floating Losses, and Passing on a Single Big Win Are All Now OK โ Existing Accounts Keep the Old Rules (September 28, 2026)](/og/en/fundingpips-rules-relaxed-2026-09.png)
[Breaking] FundingPips Significantly Relaxes Its Rules: Betting Big on One Trade, Holding Floating Losses, and Passing on a Single Big Win Are All Now OK โ Existing Accounts Keep the Old Rules (September 28, 2026)
FundingPips significantly relaxed its rules on September 28, 2026. As long as you stay within the daily loss and max loss limits, it's now fine to bet big on a single trade, hold floating losses, or pass with one big win. Minimum trading days now starts from 0. This applies only to accounts purchased on or after September 28 on 1 Step Flex, 2 Step Flex, 2 Step Pro, and 2 Step Standard โ accounts you already have keep the old rules.
How to Convert a The5ers Payout to Yen: Rise โ USDC โ DAI โ bitbank Fees and Tax Math (September 2026)
The actual steps I used to convert a The5ers payout to yen: receive USDC via Rise, send it to Trust Wallet on Arbitrum, swap for DAI, then cash out on bitbank. bitbank doesn't handle USDC, but DAI deposits on Arbitrum are free. Fees: 1 USDC from Rise to wallet, 0.2% for the swap, 0.12% to sell on bitbank. Tax treatment splits into three parts because USDC is an 'electronic payment instrument' and DAI is a 'crypto asset': the payout itself, USDC's FX gain/loss, and DAI's trading gain/loss. Includes a worked example for a $3,545.67 payout.
![What's Alpha Capital's Expected Value? A 1-Year Simulation of Alpha One vs. Alpha Pro: Pro 10% Comes Out on Top [September 2026]](/og/en/alphacapital-expected-value-2026-09.png)
What's Alpha Capital's Expected Value? A 1-Year Simulation of Alpha One vs. Alpha Pro: Pro 10% Comes Out on Top [September 2026]
A 1-year Monte Carlo simulation of Alpha Capital Group's Alpha One (6%, 10%) and Alpha Pro 10% (On-Demand, Bi-Weekly), run exactly to the official rules. Covers annual take-home at 0.5%/1%/1.5% risk per trade and 50-58% win rates, Alpha One's trailing max loss, the consistency rule set by payout method, the lack of any fee refund, and the Max Risk Rule.
![What is Blueberry Funded's expected value? Running a 1-year simulation on Prime, 1-Step, Flex 1-Step, and Instant Elite puts Instant Elite 1st with an edge โ and at the biggest loss with zero edge [September 2026]](/og/en/blueberryfunded-expected-value-2026-09.png)
What is Blueberry Funded's expected value? Running a 1-year simulation on Prime, 1-Step, Flex 1-Step, and Instant Elite puts Instant Elite 1st with an edge โ and at the biggest loss with zero edge [September 2026]
A one-year Monte Carlo simulation of Blueberry Funded's Prime 2-Step, 1-Step, Flex 1-Step, and Instant Elite, run under the official rules. Covers annual take-home at 0.5%/1%/1.5% risk per trade and 50โ58% win rates, the per-trade-idea risk cap (1% on Flex 1-Step and 1-Step, 1.5% on Instant), and Instant Elite's trailing max loss.
![What's BrightFunded's Expected Value? A 1-Year Simulation of 1-Step, 2-Step Bright, and 2-Step Classic Shows the Two 2-Steps Nearly Double the 1-Step [September 2026]](/og/en/brightfunded-expected-value-2026-09.png)
What's BrightFunded's Expected Value? A 1-Year Simulation of 1-Step, 2-Step Bright, and 2-Step Classic Shows the Two 2-Steps Nearly Double the 1-Step [September 2026]
A 1-year Monte Carlo simulation of BrightFunded's 1-Step, 2-Step Bright, and 2-Step Classic ($100K) run strictly by the official rules. Covers how per-trade risk of 0.5%, 1%, and 1.5% and win rates of 50-58% affect annual take-home pay, and how BrightFunded's quirks โ the 1-Step's trailing max loss, no refund on the challenge fee, and a 30-day wait for the first payout โ play into the result.
Challenge Distillation: Run Multiple Accounts on Unrelated Waves, and Only Advance the Survivors | Same Expected Value, but the Odds of Actually Winning Went from 13% to 81%
Until May, I mirrored the same trades across every account. Now I run multiple challenges in parallel on unrelated waves, and only advance the ones that survive. I call this "challenge distillation." A 40,000-run Monte Carlo test showed distillation doesn't add a single yen of expected value. What it adds is the probability of actually capturing that expected value โ from 13.0% to 81.1%, even at zero edge. What matters isn't the number of accounts but the correlation between them: at correlation 0.8, risk only ever falls to 0.894 no matter how many you stack. Covers how much each way of splitting waves (instrument, day of week, time of day, SL/TP) actually helps, why even a funded account should be blown up once you've withdrawn from it, and where this differs from the banned practice of cross-account hedging. Calculated using real list prices from Fintokei, FTMO, and FundedNext. In September 2026 I also verified this on real data (5 strategies ร 8 instruments = 40 waves, 2010โ2026): running the same wave on every account leaves the total-wipeout rate stuck at 58.4%, while splitting into 10 waves drops it to 1.8%.
![What's the Expected Value of City Traders Imperium (CTI)? Running 1-Step and 2-Step for a Year Shows 2-Step on Top [September 2026]](/og/en/citytradersimperium-expected-value-2026-09.png)
What's the Expected Value of City Traders Imperium (CTI)? Running 1-Step and 2-Step for a Year Shows 2-Step on Top [September 2026]
A year-long Monte Carlo run of City Traders Imperium's (CTI) 1-Step Challenge and 2-Step Challenge ($100K) under the official rules. Covers annual net take-home at 0.5%, 1%, and 1.5% risk per trade with 50โ58% win rates, and how 1-Step's 5% trailing drawdown, 7-day profit-day requirement, and once-a-month payouts affect expected value.
![Is a Challenge "Expected-Value Positive Just by Buying It"? I Built a Coin-Toss EA and Backtested It 16 Times [Analysis]](/og/en/coinflip-challenge-ev-backtest-2026.png)
Is a Challenge "Expected-Value Positive Just by Buying It"? I Built a Coin-Toss EA and Backtested It 16 Times [Analysis]
Placing SL/TP at spread x 40 makes the cost ratio independent of the currency pair. Verified with an exact solution plus 24 real EA runs, a single challenge's expected value comes out to +ยฅ119,000 against a ยฅ108,800 fee (95% CI +ยฅ18,000 to +ยฅ381,000). Raising the number of daily attempts up to the daily loss limit shrinks the time to resolution from 139 days to 7 days without lowering the pass rate, and across multiple accounts, simply using a different random seed per account shifts the probability of finishing positive from 56% to 98%. The one remaining hole is a stop-loss getting jumped by a gap.
What Dan Cheung Means by "Rotation": It's Not About Doing More Trades โ It's About Containing Losses to One Account
We looked into Dan Cheung's (London-based) account rotation, a term that comes up a lot in prop trading circles, based on his own public statements. It boils down to three lines: touch only one account at a time, close that account and move to the next once you hit your daily profit target or your stop, and never chase a losing account. People often mistake it for a way to trade more, but the real point is containing losses to a single account. We then checked whether this actually holds up under the terms of firms available from Japan, across four axes: consistency rules, minimum trading days, allocation caps, and multi-account clauses.
![What's E8 Markets' Expected Value? Simulating E8 One, E8 Pro, and E8 Signature Over 1 Year: E8 Pro Wins at 1% Risk, E8 One Wins If You Size Up [September 2026]](/og/en/e8markets-expected-value-2026-09.png)
What's E8 Markets' Expected Value? Simulating E8 One, E8 Pro, and E8 Signature Over 1 Year: E8 Pro Wins at 1% Risk, E8 One Wins If You Size Up [September 2026]
A 1-year Monte Carlo of E8 Markets' E8 One, E8 Pro (80%/100% split), and E8 Signature, run to the official rules. Covers annual take-home at 0.5%/1%/1.5% risk per trade and 50โ58% win rates, plus E8 Pro's '2% daily profit cap,' 'payouts capped at 50% of profit,' the max-loss line rising to the initial balance on the first payout, and the fact that fees are non-refundable.