Research
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TradeDay Expected Value, Calculated (September 2026) | At Zero Edge, Quick Pay Intraday Nets +$2,522/Year - But Gains Plateau, and VPS Is Banned
We ran a one-year Monte Carlo simulation from evaluation to payout for TradeDay's $50K plans (Quick Pay Intraday, Quick Pay EOD, Fast Pass EOD), a futures prop firm. Confirmed against the official pricing card and help center on September 25, 2026. The monthly fee only applies during evaluation and stops once you pass; there's no activation fee and no daily loss limit. At 0.30 lots and zero edge, Quick Pay Intraday comes out best among Category B firms (self-built automation only) at +$2,522/year. That said, the profit split is 50%, and the sim account is capped at $10,000 in cumulative profit, so even with edge you're looking at only around +$8,000/year. VPS is banned, and so are off-the-shelf bots.
![[September 2026] We calculated Tradeify's expected value | At zero edge all 3 formats give a small profit; with an edge, Select Daily wins](/og/en/tradeify-expected-value-2026-09.png)
[September 2026] We calculated Tradeify's expected value | At zero edge all 3 formats give a small profit; with an edge, Select Daily wins
A one-year Monte Carlo comparison of futures prop firm Tradeify's $50K plans (Growth, Select Flex, Select Daily), run from evaluation through payouts. Confirmed against the official pricing cards and help center on September 25, 2026. All plans are one-time purchases with no activation fee. At 0.30 lots and zero edge, the three are roughly even — Growth +$1,255, Select Daily +$1,132, Select Flex +$1,118 — but with a 'medium' edge, Select Daily, which pays out daily, leads at +$24,218. Running a bot requires proof of ownership (a live video of you personally launching the code), and using the same bot across multiple firms is prohibited.
![[September 2026] I calculated FundedNext Futures' expected value — VPS and automated trading are explicitly allowed; go Legacy with an edge, Flex without one](/og/en/fundednext-futures-expected-value-2026-09.png)
[September 2026] I calculated FundedNext Futures' expected value — VPS and automated trading are explicitly allowed; go Legacy with an edge, Flex without one
Compared FundedNext Futures' 4 plans (Flex, Legacy, Rapid Pro, Rapid Daily) in a full year of Monte Carlo simulation from evaluation to payout. Confirmed prices, reset costs, max loss, and withdrawal conditions on the official help center on September 23, 2026. All plans are one-time purchases with no activation fee. At zero edge, only Flex $50K comes out positive at +$1,388/year; with an edge, Legacy pulls ahead thanks to its larger withdrawal cap. Covers how Flex and Rapid end an account after 5 payouts, plus a comparison against FTMO Futures and Topstep.
![[September 2026] I Calculated Lucid Trading's Expected Value — At Zero Edge, Go Flex (With Daily Loss); With an Edge, Go Daily (No Payout Cap)](/og/en/lucid-trading-expected-value-2026-09.png)
[September 2026] I Calculated Lucid Trading's Expected Value — At Zero Edge, Go Flex (With Daily Loss); With an Edge, Go Daily (No Payout Cap)
We compared Lucid Trading's 3 plans (Flex, Pro, Daily) with a 1-year Monte Carlo simulation running from evaluation through payout. Prices, reset fees, max loss, and payout conditions confirmed on the official Help Center and pricing page on September 23, 2026. All are one-time purchases with no activation fee. At zero edge, Flex $50K with a daily loss limit attached comes to +$2,152/year; with an edge, Daily — which has no payout cap — pulls ahead. Covers why adding a daily loss limit makes it cheaper, Daily's mandatory flat position around news releases, and the lack of any VPS policy.
![[September 2026] We Calculated MyFundedFutures' Expected Value | Builder at Zero Edge, Rapid EOD (No Payout Cap) Once You Have an Edge](/og/en/myfundedfutures-expected-value-2026-09.png)
[September 2026] We Calculated MyFundedFutures' Expected Value | Builder at Zero Edge, Rapid EOD (No Payout Cap) Once You Have an Edge
We compared MyFundedFutures' (MFFU) 4 plans (Builder, Rapid, Rapid EOD, Pro) with a Monte Carlo simulation running a full year from evaluation through payouts. Price, max loss, and payout conditions confirmed against the official help center and pricing pages on September 23, 2026. Since August 2026 it's a one-time purchase with no activation fee. At zero edge, Builder $50K comes out at +$1,658/year; with an edge, the uncapped Rapid EOD, Rapid, and Pro pull ahead. Also covers the fact that there's no VPS policy written anywhere, and that reset fees aren't disclosed.
![[September 2026] I calculated Topstep's expected value — it loses to FTMO Futures at the same lot size; you only win by sizing up big with no daily loss limit](/og/en/topstep-expected-value-2026-09.png)
[September 2026] I calculated Topstep's expected value — it loses to FTMO Futures at the same lot size; you only win by sizing up big with no daily loss limit
Ran a full year of Monte Carlo simulation from Topstep's Trading Combine through the Express Funded Account to payouts. Confirmed the monthly fee, resets, activation fee, max loss, and withdrawal conditions on the official help center on September 23, 2026. At $50K and 0.30 lots, zero edge comes out to +$2,519/year — about half of FTMO Futures Pro. Without a daily loss limit you can size up to 0.50 lots and flip the result, but that needs 25–39 resets a year. Also compares with/without the activation fee, Standard vs. Consistency, and with/without a daily loss limit.
What Happens When You Split a Random Technical Strategy Across 1, 3, 5, or 15 Accounts? Measuring the Effect of Diversification Alone With 5.7 Years of Real Data
Each account trades once a day, risking 2% per trade at RR 1:1. Holding this fixed, we ran the same signal split across 1 account, 3 accounts (by strategy), 5 accounts (by weekday), and 15 accounts (strategy × weekday) over 5.7 years of real data from 2021. The strategy itself loses — a 47.8% win rate with negative expectancy. Even so, splitting into 5 or more accounts kept every one of the 6 years in the black, while the 1-account version had a losing year. Of the 90 account-years across the individual accounts, 50 were losing years — yet bundled together, the losing years disappear. That's the effect of diversification. Finally, moving only the win rate with the same setup: 55% wins gives ¥17.34M a year, while 45% gives just ¥1.1M and losing years return. Diversification firms up the floor; whether you get a big upside comes down to edge.
Which Hola Prime Plan Should You Buy? For EAs, the "2% Rule" Decides Everything
Hola Prime has five plans, and the right pick changes if you're running an EA (automated trading). The key is the "2% per trade idea" rule — it judges the stop-loss position at entry, not floating loss, and it only applies to funded accounts. Misread this and you'll throw away 30% of your lot size. We ran an actual strategy on real data across all four plans, and 1-Step Prime — the one with the heaviest target-to-max-loss ratio — came out on top in all three sub-periods. Also covers the per-instrument leverage (gold and indices at 10:1), and results from measuring instrument specs on our own account (Nikkei and Dow don't exist).
Don't Smooth Out Your Equity Curve in Prop Trading: Why It's the Exact Opposite of Normal Portfolio Management
In investing, conventional wisdom says to suppress volatility. But in prop firm challenges, this flips completely — payouts are decided by a threshold ('did you hit +8% or not'), and downside is capped at the fee. A smoothed-out account never hits the wall, but it also never reaches the target — it just pays the fee and goes nowhere. Testing by scaling lot size on real intraday-anomaly strategies, we found the location of the 'cliff' — where too much lot size backfires — varies more than 3x between strategies: one strategy fell off the cliff and stayed negative past 2.5x, while another kept climbing all the way to 8x.
Is Diversification Really a Free Lunch? Testing Challenge Distillation With 40 Real-Data Strategies
There's a famous line that "diversification is the only free lunch in investing." Does the same hold for prop firm challenges? We built 5 strategies x 8 symbols = 40 strategies using real prices from 2010 through 2026, then ran 4,000 challenge trials keeping the real correlations intact. The results were extreme. With the same 10 accounts and the same fees, concentrating on one strategy gives a 58.4% total-wipeout rate; splitting across 10 strategies drops that to 1.8%. And expected value barely changes. On the other hand, we also found that "picking the best-performing strategies" pushes correlation from 0.003 up to 0.209, breaking the diversification itself.
Mindless Prop Firm Spam vs. a Serious Own-Capital Trader: We Tested Which Wins With the Same Cash, Using Real Data
Which makes more money: putting the same $10,000 entirely into challenge fees and running 20 unrelated accounts, or trading it as your own capital? Using 40 strategies built from real prices from 2010 to 2026, we ran the same market data and same strategies through 3,000 simulations each. The result: expected assets after one year of $20,356 vs. $10,157 — a clear win for prop. And the own-capital side still can't catch up even at 60x leverage, because it goes bust first. Matching prop required an annualized Sharpe ratio of 1.46. But once capital reaches $1,000,000, the gap almost disappears.
E8 Pro Is Worth Buying at $366 — But Watch Two Catches: the "2% Daily Profit Cap" and "Static DD Stays Static Only Until Your First Payout," Tested Across 40,000 Runs
E8 Markets' new E8 Pro plan lists the $100K account at $488, or $366 with code E8. It strips out almost every annoying clause — static DD, no consistency rule, no minimum trading days, daily payouts. Run 40,000 Monte Carlo simulations, and even a zero-edge trader gets an expected payout of 4.53x the entry fee. But there are two catches. One is a "2% daily profit cap," where anything above it gets deleted from the account the next day — trade through it unaware and expected value can drop by up to 54%. The other is the static DD: the moment you request your first payout, the fail line jumps to the initial balance, and only half of your saved-up profit remains as your lifeline. Also covers the comparison with E8 One (same $366), lot-size ceilings, and how to choose a configuration. Prices and rules verified live on the official site and Help Center on September 13, 2026.