Take Profit Trader

Take Profit Trader, a Futures Prop Fund, offers trading through CQG or Rithmic. This allows traders who choose CQG the option to use TradingView for charting and trading, a feature often inquired about. However, Take Profit Trader faces two major challenges: it is a relatively new entrant in the market, and its evaluations are more expensive compared to those of its competitors. Despite these drawbacks, it boasts a more user-friendly website than Apex Trader Funding and appears they are attempting to offer a real prop fund experience.

What is possibly unique to Take Profit Trader is that they claim to actually give you a live trading account if you make it to Pro+. This does come with some drawbacks however.

Concerns:

1. $5k in profit permanently frozen? To qualify for Pro+ you must earn $5k in profit, at which time they send you an “offer” by email to trade their live account. When they give you the Pro+ account, your $5k in profit is “frozen” and your Pro+ account balance resets to $0. So, it sounds like you are essentially paying $5K for a Pro+ account.
2. Drawdown type changes once funded I’m not a big fan of prop funds that change rules once funded. It seems somewhat deceptive. If you make it to a funded account the trailing drawdown will switch from EOD trailing to live trailing. This mean that while on an evaluation if you are trading and have a trade 3% in profit but end up only taking 2%, you close that day 2% in profit and your EOD drawdown trails from that point. However, with the live trailing drawdown it would trail from the 3% profit. This could lead to losing an account.
3. 50 Executions Limit
   On the surface, this limit might not seem restrictive, but when you consider that every time you enter a trade, exit a trade, or take partial profit it counts as an execution, it effectively means you are limited to a max of only 25 trades per day. This would be acceptable, except that Take Profit Trader’s model discourages longer-duration trades by enforcing a very tight trailing drawdown. This tight trailing drawdown promotes quick scalping strategies; however, the execution limit prevents trading in such a manner, which creates an unnecessarily difficult trading environment.

The Take Profit Trader Challenge

• Entry cost: $150/month for $25k in funding. The challenge fee is non-refundable.
  Other funding options include $50k for $170 per month, $75k for $245 per month, $100k for $330 per month, and $150k for $360 per month. Monthly fees are waived once you pass and are granted a Pro account. However, there is an additional $130 “account setup fee” to become Pro. Therefore, the $25k account will cost you a minimum of $280 if you pass in under a month.
• Challenge: One-step program requiring 6% profit in the ‘test,’ with max daily loss of 2.2% and drawdown of 3%. Very tight and challenging conditions.
• EOD Drawdown: Dynamic 3% based on end of day trading (until Pro where it switches to a live trailing drawdown)
• Daily loss limit: Dynamic 2.2% based on unrealized profits ($25k account is actually only 2%)
• Max contracts: If you break this rule your account can be terminated
  $25K acct: 3 contracts or 30 micros
  $50k acct: 6 contracts or 60 micros
  $75k acct: 9 contracts or 90 micros
  $100k acct: 12 contracts or 120 micros
  $150k acct: 15 contracts or 150 micros
• No time limit to complete test, however, you will be paying a monthly reoccurring fee
• 1 Trade per week required. If you fail to place at least one trade a week you will lose your account. This trade must remain open for a minimum of 1 minute to be valid.
• Minimum of 5 Trading Days required to pass.
• News trading is allowed during test but not allowed in funded Pro account.
• Holding overnight/weekend is not allowed and will cause you to lose your account
• 50 Executions a day limit for all accounts. An execution is a fill, so includes both entry and exit. This means you can only take 25 trades a day. This should not be a problem for most traders, however would make it hard for scalpers.
• Price limits set by CME, if hit will trigger account loss
• Consistency rule applicable only to test accounts, not Pro or Pro+. Your highest profit day cannot exceed 50% of your total profits.

Fees

The prop firm sets and collects the fees. Until you become Pro+ the broker is not involved at all, you are trading a simulated environment.

• $5 per round trip per contract
• $0.50 per round trip per contract for micros

Profit Withdrawal Limitations

To be eligible for withdrawal, you must have earned an amount equal to your maximum drawdown in profit. For example, with a $25k account, your drawdown is $1500. You must earn at least $1500 to be eligible for withdrawal. However, that’s not all. You cannot withdraw those profits unless your account is terminated. Therefore, you need to earn $1500 to become eligible for withdrawal, but you must also retain the $1500 in your account as a “buffer.”

One plus is that Take Profit Trader does not set a max withdrawal limit. If you make big money you get to withdraw big money.

Restrictions

It is very important to understand that while you will have access to a variety of instruments to trade you are not allowed to trade certain pairs

Also, you must close all your trades before 5PM Eastern time or you will lose your account.

If the price of a specific instrument hits a price ceiling set by CME, you will automatically lose your account.

You will be penalized $50 if you try to withdraw less than $250.

Verdict

Take Profit Trader offers some commendable features, such as the opportunity to trade a live account rather than just a simulation. However, it has several significant drawbacks, including a small stop-loss and a live trailing drawdown. To avoid accidentally hitting the trailing drawdown, it’s advisable to trade very conservatively.

While we have experience with many of these proprietary trading firms, we have not yet registered with Take Profit Trader. Therefore, we cannot provide any reliable information regarding its trustworthiness or payout process.