Over the last 2 years many prop firms have appeared offering funding in both futures and forex/CFDs. Many disappear very quickly and don’t offer the service levels or right conditions you want as a trader. Many are just plain cons and when they run out of money, dump you and disappear as fast as they arrived!

I have attempted or completed evaluations with a number of these over the last few years including FTMO, CTI, Trader Central, Topstep, Apex, Leeloo, Funded Trading Plus, Elite Trader Funding, My Forex Funds and a couple of others who are no longer around. Partly to test them out, and also of course to secure additional funding for my own trading. I’ve researched pretty much every prop firm out there (although many keep appearing from nowhere every month) and below are the two I chose to trade with and the reasons why I chose them.

Here is what I believe to be the most important features in any prop firm and why I rank them so highly:

• FAST evaluation – Either 1 step (Apex) or two steps (MFF) with a minimum of 5 days in each step. This ensures you can get your funding quickly, if you fail an evaluation or lose a funded account getting back to funding fast is imperative if you want to trade for a living.
• FAST funding – My live accounts with both of these firms were delivered within 24 hours of completing the evaluation and signing the contracts. Others I have passed with took up to 2 weeks to actually get the live accounts in place!
• Realistic Targets – Both offer a conservative target for you to hit (8% with MFF & 6% with Apex) making it easy to pass your evaluation.
• Virtually NO rules – Both of these firms have very relaxed rules. You can hold your trades, trade around news, use EA, virtually do anything you like. Both do NOT allow copy trading though from signal providers, which is fully understandable, they are funding YOU, not some guy on the internet claiming to be able to trade!
• Decent drawdown available – Both offer good buffers to trade within. 10% drawdown on the MFF account in total and a 3% trailing DD in the futures market with Apex. Allows to you have a few bad days and survive without breaking any rules.
• Fixed daily DD (MFF only) – You have a fixed DD limit each day, which DOES NOT increase if your profits do throughout the day. This makes life simple for the trader. You know exactly how much you can lose in a day before you need to stop trading, no guessing whether you ran up an extra £1000 profit before something tanked, meaning a rule break!
• Fixed DD at starting balance – When you get the funded account your drawdown stops trailing when you hit your initial starting balance allowing you to build a buffer in case you have bad days. Critical to surviving in a prop firm environment. If you get funded with $50,000, and you reach $55,000 that maximum drawdown you can have on the account stays fixed at the $50k level.
• Well established – These firms have been around a long time and are well established with backend systems to match.
• Great social community & support (MFF) – My Forex Funds has a HUGE Discord channel with around 100,000 members. There are 1000s of funded traders in there to help, and their internal support is instant and second to none in the industry.
• Proof of funding and payment (MFF) – The MFF Discord has 1000s of proof of payment screenshots from verified members (myself included) so you can verify for yourself they are a legitimate prop firm.