markets speculation and risk this is the chat with traders podcast Welcome to Chat with Traders, episode 306.
I'm Tessa, your co-host, and today we have a special episode.
We're diving into a topic that has really captured the attention of traders in recent years, prop firms.
Now, I'm not talking about the traditional brick and mortar firms that first made waves in the early 2000s.
I'm talking about a newer generation, the online funding prop firms that began to surface around 2015. and really gained momentum during the COVID era and still growing.
Since Trade the Pool, one of these prop firms, has been a longtime sponsor, supporter of the podcast. we thought it would be the perfect opportunity to bring on their CEO, Michael Katz.
In this conversation, I'll be asking him some of the big questions that traders, myself included, have been curious about.
Now, whether you use these platforms or not, whether you like them or not, we hope you can at least keep an open mind for this episode.
I am a developing trader like many of you and am constantly trying to learn and grow as a trader and find ways to help me in my trading journey. and share them with you.
So to be clear, the main purpose of this episode is not about promoting prop firms Instead, it's about pulling back the curtain and gaining a better understanding of how these firms operate, well, at least from Trade the Pool's perspective. what they mean for traders, and the questions that often surround them.
So we hope you enjoy this episode and learn something from it.
Let's dive right in. Ladies and gentlemen, we're so pleased to introduce Michael Katz from Trade the Pool.
Hey, Michael, welcome to Chat with Traders.
Thanks so much. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's great having you on the show finally.
And so... Your background, did you actually initially come from the brick and mortar prop firm type of environment or?
Yeah, for sure. You know, I've been trading for 17 years in total, mostly stocks and futures.
After a good few years of battling and succeeding, I became the head of the traders in one of the local shops here.
And then from there, I moved to actually building a trader pool.
Yeah, and Trey the Pool is associated with the fibers?
That's correct. Yeah, it's our parent company.
So when Gil, the founder, reached out and He found me through friends.
He reached out, told me about it. I said, I'm your guy.
Give me the keys and I'll do that. And the rest is history.
Yeah, so Fiverr are focused on Forex and Trade the Pool is focused on U.S. stocks, equities.
Yeah, so Fiverr is related to CFDs, so that's Forex and also commodities indices as well, but on the CFD side. established from 2016.
Probably the best, at least at the top three companies company in the industry of the prop industry?
And TraderPool, we launched it, as I said, three years ago, focusing on equities, mostly U.S. stocks or at least currently U.S. stocks.
But we will surely expand soon to Europe and also Asia.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I was going to ask you about that.
Yeah. Because I remember you telling me that it was initially just open to U.S. traders.
I mean, it's not for just US traders. I mean, the equity is like you can trade US markets, but you can... come from anywhere in the world.
We have traders from literally every place in the world.
Most of them are in the States just because the connection between the stock market and to North Americans like US and Canada.
But we have guys from India and and Japan and Brazil, everywhere in the world.
Yeah. And then Tray the Pool is based where?
So we're located in Israel, like 20 minutes from Tel Aviv.
That's the headquarter. But we got... roughly 80 to 100 guys all across the world.
A lot of them are in the US. The guys that are operating the YouTube live stream that we host every day, and support team, Discord.
All of that handled mostly by U.S. guys.
Yeah, so it seems like there are less and less brick and mortar type of prop firms and there's just a trend of more online funding type of prop firms.
Sometimes I get confused between saying the regular prop firms and the online funding prop firms.
So I think maybe it's easier if I just say... funding prop firms for the kind of the new prop firms rather than that way we don't get confused.
Yeah. So. What do you think is the key kind of attraction to these funding prop firms?
Right, so it's just an evolution, right?
In the early 2000 or even a little bit before that, The internet came out, you could trade from your home, right?
Or call your broker or do... A lot of the stuff that you couldn't do, a lot of the stuff that you could do today, it's just an evolution in the... opportunities that the vendor or the companies provide to the retail traders, right?
So at first, you would call your broker.
Then you were able to place orders. Yeah, place orders through your computer, then commission free trading that shift the industry completely and made all brokers to allow commission-free trading is something that never been done before.
I guess the next step in that evolution is actually us as the prop, that we give everyone an opportunity everyone in the world an opportunity to actually enter the market pay a super small fee, like literally limit your risk. in trading, right?
Instead of going and putting your hard work and money into the test, most cases lose it. and not having enough capital to trade with.
So all those actually shift toward the prop which is limiting your risk, giving you enough capital that actually worth your time.
I remember, and you probably will feel the same.
I remember when I first started to trade, I spent hours on hours, and at the end of the month, I made $200, $500, right?
Nothing that actually compared to the time that I invested in actually learning and clicking the mouse key.
Do you relate to that? Oh, yeah. Yes, of course.
Yeah. So, so nowadays I can, I can take much bigger account, spend the same time and actually make more money.
So it just makes sense. Yeah, the key attraction I know for me, and I can say this on behalf of many traders, is the access to large-sized capital that you... you know, that most traders would just dream of having years ago, you know and then the leverage, you know, the leverage on this.
It's just really unheard of. It's really a very unique opportunity that traders have access to these days.
Yeah, and the fact that with let's say even $50 or $100, like you said, you can trade enough capital that's worth your time and can make you money.
While you're just risking that fee, for example, and we will probably talk about it in a second, but Even if I'm trying what we call the evaluation, the test, the challenge that we give you in order to give you a funded account,
Even if you do that five times, you failed four times, right?
And on the fifth time you pass, You paid $500 and you actually... And that's the risk.
That's it. You're done. Anything that you do from here is...
Either make money and take some home or lose the account, of course.
But at the end of the day, it's not your money that you're risking besides those evaluation fees.
It almost makes it feel like it's just a no-brainer to go this route. rather than trade your own personal account and risking so much more, your hard-earned savings or whatever, even maybe some people taking their money out to try to trade.
And then when it's gone, it's gone. It's so hard to build it back up.
Whereas with going through the prop trading funding route.
Yeah, like you said, the most you can lose... that's your risk is the evaluation fees that you pay to have a chance to trade a large capital or whatever capital size that you're aiming for.
Yeah. So it seems like a no brainer, but then there are kind of misconceptions around trading with prop firm and some of them are negative misconceptions.
Or maybe they're not misconceptions. Maybe they are really valid from a certain trader's point of view.
An example is that one of the things that we have heard over time is that around the for example, the tough rules that most online prop firms business model is based on the you know, traders, you know, they survive based on traders failing the challenges in order to take that revenue to pay out those that pass them.
And so some people equate this to like a casino model.
What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, that's a good topic to cover, I guess, because this is something that a lot of the traders are talking about these days. and ask themselves.
So first of all, as I see it, and as at least we operate on the fivers on a trader pool, is a business doesn't have to have one route of income, right?
And that's one thing that you always, I guess, as a business, doesn't matter if it's for finance business or a restaurant, right? you're looking to have a few streams of income.
And that way, when something is not going well on one direction, you have enough capital on the side to back it or another stream to help you with that.
So of course, there are the fees that the traders pay for.
And I'll touch about that in a second. And of course, there is the trading part.
When we execute the traders, the good traders, we take them to the market.
But that's trading, not every time it will work.
And there are many other streams that we're either working on already established.
For example, We're developing a trading journal.
We have a trade ideas section. We have education section.
So we're always working on not just on the funding part, but actually a full ecosystem that will be involved around this.
And that will give us two things. One, another stream of income.
The second thing, supporting our traders.
And regarding the... So that's on TraderPool on how we do that.
Regarding what I wanted to say about the evaluation fee, Specifically on Trader Pool, because we're an equity company, focusing on the US market, the fees, our fees are much higher.
I'm not talking about the evaluation. I'm talking about what we pay, the expenses. are much higher than, for example, what you used to think of in the forex industry, right?
In the forex industry, you just take a feed, CFD feed, cost a few thousands, and that's it.
In our case, we have the license to the exchanges, the feed from the exchanges, the level one and level two, and the vendor, And the trading platform, there are so many expenses around that.
And the fees of the evaluation covers some of that.
Well, that's that's great to hear to kind of give a so we can hear the perspective from the company side on what those expenses are.
I feel like Trade the Pool is being an advocate for traders by offering education.
I've seen a change in the last few years that you have built more of a community. based platform and education to encourage traders to continue developing.
I think that's great. Thanks. This is something that actually Gil, the founder, brought from day one to the fivers.
And of course, I let it on the trader pool. side which the idea is Gil's background is basically a forex trader so So our idea is, you know, we are our traders, right?
We know exactly what our traders need in order to progress, in order to push themselves furthermore and to become better traders.
So education is by far the key element that we're using, besides technology and other instruments.
But just give the traders as much information as we can to provide.
So we're doing live streams every single day, trading together.
We're doing events, risk management events and strategies.
We build eBooks. We have a VOD section with more than 150 videos.
I'm interviewing, as you know, I'm interviewing our funded traders.
So every time someone is passing the evaluation, I go and interview him, ask him about the evaluation, about his trading, and they all share the information and you can hear about it and see it.
And then you learn and adjust and become better.
Yeah. And we'll get into the stats a little bit on your traders.
But I think that's awesome. And About the traders that do well, can you touch on a little bit more?
This is a simulated account. When traders are trading in the evaluation and also the funded phase, they're always trading in a simulated environment.
Is that correct? Not always. On the evaluation, it's a simulator account, yes, on the funded phase.
We choose which account to create as a real account, real market conditions.
And also not just the account, but also the orders itself.
So basically on our risk team, we have what we call profiles.
Mm-hmm. Once you trade on your evaluation and with your KYC and your trading activity, We categorize you, put you in a profile.
For example, we categorize the risk tolerance, the asset you're trading, the days, the number of trades, everything that we can get around basically and put you in a profile.
Once we understand that you fit a certain profile, In most cases, we will know if we can take it to the market or not, the account. and also orders that will come through.
So for example, if you're buying 100 shares of Apple, we might not take it to the market, but if you're buying 100 shares of Tesla, we might do that as well.
So we analyzed in the profile while analyzing the market conditions in general.
So there are traders on the fund that will stay on the simulator account and there are traders and orders that will go to the live market.
So I didn't know that. I just heard that in general, like the prop firms, they always...
Even the funded traders, they'll always be on a simulated account and that the company will never copy their trades or anything like that.
But it sounds like that's not the case with trade the pool.
You do pick and choose traders that you think you want to take on. you know, to copy their trades and replicate that in the live account.
Is that correct? Is that how I'm understanding it?
Exactly. That's what we call C book. So you have A book if you go directly to the market the whole time or B book if you stay... stay in house or cbook when it's an hybrid basically we do that same thing on the fiverr same thing on trader pool um it's not an easy test one of the one of the hardest even Because the work behind it is a very unique one and takes a lot of time. and data gathering and our guys on the risk need to be on their toes, but it is, you know,
Wow. Okay. Well, let's get into some of the numbers a little bit, just to give Me and the listeners, an idea of your traders, for example, what's the percentage of traders that pass the evaluation?
Let's start with that. Okay, first of all, I'm super proud of the number.
Obviously, I would love to see more of that, but we are at around 20 to 25%.
Okay. which is, you know, comparing to trading by yourself on your own account, which it's roughly 2% or 5%.
So I'm excited about those numbers. And it makes sense, again, if you...
If you're not trading your capital, if you have enough capital and you're not trading your capital, you're not risking your money.
That means that your mind can shift from attaching the money to your decision making to detaching the money from it.
And once you do that, you can make logical decisions.
And once you have enough capital to work with, You can get into a few trades simultaneously.
You can take the right number of shares and the right risk-reward kind of thing.
So it makes sense that you're, and obviously the stress is much lower when you're not trading your capital.
So it makes sense that the numbers are high Obviously, I would prefer to see more, but these are roughly... I think that's pretty high, 22 to 25 years.
That's really encouraging. And can I ask you more that...
What's the average number of times an average trader fails an evaluation before they actually pass? before they actually pass it between three to five attempts before you pass.
Yeah. And this is something that I'm, I'm happy to speak about it on our Funded Traders interviews as well all the time.
I share the information because I think, first of all, First of all, it's a great number to have, nothing to be ashamed of.
It's great. Most guys need... that those three to five attempts just to get the understanding of the rules and the platform and really get the idea or the shift in their mind about what it likes to trade on a simulator with someone else's capital behind it basically.
So you just take that time. And also, I think it's important that everyone, all the traders will understand that, you know.
You got to understand that you shift in, many guys shift their strategy or tweaked it in order to fit the rules.
Because when you're trading your own capital, you're trading with a broker, you're trading with no rules, right?
No one will tell you, okay, you're done for the day.
That's it, daily pause, right? There is no such thing on your broker account.
So now that you have that, you need to understand how you work with it.
Yeah. Yeah, I can tell you that 99% of our funded traders would say exactly this when you have boundaries.
And this is kind of a weird... Thought at first but when you have boundaries to your trading when you add them you actually become a better trader That's incredible to see These rules, a lot of... I don't know if I should say a lot.
I can't quantify how many, but we just hear things like... people complaining about the rules of the prop firms.
I mean, every prop firm is different and have their own rules and they need to really...
Really understand those rules and read the fine prints and really understand it.
And I have to admit that... You know me, I have bought some evaluations and I'm just going to be very transparent.
I have failed several around the range that you were talking about, the average trader.
So I'm pretty average, I guess. And so I have failed a handful of times.
And part of that is just getting used to the platform and then getting used to the rules and and kind of adjusting the way that you normally would trade because it's completely different.
Like you said, when you're trading on your own, especially when you're a developing trader and you're still kind of getting experience and stuff like that. you're still working alone and you don't really have anyone to hold you accountable and have rules for you.
And you may develop rules for yourself, but maybe it's not, um, just not good enough to help you become a better trader.
And so When I first started with Trade the Pool, going through the evaluation, I was really mad because I was like...
You know, this is so unreasonable. And what was the max drawdown, daily drawdown?
I forgot. What was that, like 1% or 2%? It depends on which account.
And I guess it was on our previous programs, right?
We actually launched... The last five months or so, six months.
Yeah, but whatever it was, it was quite small compared to what we're used to when we're trading on our own because we kind of let things, we're more flexible.
Yeah. Whereas you cannot be as flexible.
And then there were times when I was kind of on tilt and I wanted to revenge trade and I
And I did. And then I got I got kicked out, you know, from the what is it called?
The daily loss. The daily pause. Daily pause.
That's a nice word to say, daily pause. It is stopping you for the day.
Yeah, it stalled me for the day and I was so mad.
And I was like, you know what? After a while, after several evaluations, I kind of got used to it.
And I'm like, you know, Imagine me doing this on my own, like, you know, my own personal account, how much more money I would lose trading on tilt and trading emotionally.
In the evaluation, Yes, it's annoying, but it's going to help you to just follow the rules.
You know what I mean? It's like having a seatbelt on.
Wear your seatbelt. And that's the thing about trading within those boundaries.
You want your trading to be... You know the sentence when everyone is saying you want your trading to be boring, right?
Yeah. So that's the same thing. You want your trading to be within boundaries.
When you have rules, you're increasing your chances to succeed. automatically because you're not losing more than you should.
You're not... Going in and looking for that home run trades, right?
You're doing it consistently. You're building yourself as a trader, developing yourself.
Yeah, but let me ask you something else that, you know, for the traders that, let's say without the prop firms, the ones that do really well, you know, like on their own, like trading on their own, their own account, their own capital and, um and you know seasoned traders and then they come let's say because you know we know that some of them still go through these problems because hey it's it's extra why not?
You know, it's like extra leverage and stuff like that.
And then they go through them and it's a completely different, could be a completely different world for them because they may not have the same set of rules, even though their rules are different.
They can still trade successfully with different rules, but coming over to a prop firm like Trade the Pool with these rules... would that force them to, they may not do well in this environment.
What are your thoughts? Yeah, so obviously we have also pro traders trading with us.
You know, guys that have been in the market for 15 years, even 20 years, been killing it.
And they do need to adjust their strategies, their setup, the way they react, the risk management to our conditions.
Some of them found success and did those tweaking and made it happen. said I'm good with my capital and continue to trade on their own money.
And I think the difference, what we do, and professional traders are roughly 2%, 3% in the world, right? and the other traders are just struggling or somewhere along the learning curve. of trading and trying to make it.
And I think what we do and also see that on the numbers, we take that learning curve and make it much more shorter, right?
If you need When I started, I needed to spend two years or three years in order to learn until I found some profitability.
Um, we have guys or also ladies, uh, Morgan, for example, I did an interview with her it's online and. and she passed the evaluation after six months of trading.
Like she just literally just started to trade And she passed the evaluation.
And a few months after, I did another interview with her about her payout, right?
So... So that's insane. I mean, we're literally changing the way traders think.
And that's incredible to be part of that.
Yeah, that's amazing. And continuing on with the stats.
So once the traders pass, and they get funded for the first time, what are your numbers on the percentage that fail once they got funded the first time?
Because that's another phase. That's true.
It has a different psychology, don't you think?
Because it's like, oh, now I'm funded. 100%, that's a very good one, very good topic to cover.
First of all, yeah, it is a second phase.
And the thing about the funded phase is that, on one end, you have the guys that are all in.
They just want to make money, right? Just want to get to that payout phase.
Super fast, they will... change their strategy completely, they will go all in, they will risk much more than on the evaluation, really changing completely what they did.
And then obviously they will blow up because if you're changing everything and risking too much, you will lose your account.
And then you have the guys that says, You know what?
They would say, I just got to that funded phase after a few attempts and finally got to that funded phase, right?
And they will take it super slow, super consistent, and they will get to the payout.
They will, instead of risking, let's say, on the valuation, they risk $200 per trade, they will risk $100 per trade.
Instead of taking 3000 shares, they will take 1000 shares.
They will automatically lower the risk, take their time.
And those guys are in most cases will make the way to the profit, to the payout and also be with us. much longer time than those that will, you know, just try to eat at home.
Would you recommend that, um, say during your evaluation phase, should you trade in your evaluation phase the way that you would trade when you get funded so that it's consistent and you actually get more practice.
Because during the evaluation phase, that time, let's just say it takes two, three months to pass depending on your skills.
And why not... Like, this is how I'm thinking.
Like, why not... you know, trade the way you really would once you're funded from the start, even though it might take long and trade conservatively.
And then make tweaks, and there's a lot you can learn from that.
And then once you're funded, you continue... to be that same trader you continue to trade the way you traded during your evaluation rather than like you mentioned earlier some like just go all in or you know do whatever to just get funded really fast.
And once they get funded, they start trading like a different personality, like another way.
I mean, shouldn't we just trade the evaluation like we really would trade?
Yeah, that's for sure. And that will help us as a company on our risk management side as well.
If we got to know you on the evaluation, and we see that you still continue doing the same thing on your funded, it will be much more easier for us to manage the risk behind the scenes.
And of course, for the trader, if you already proved yourself on the evaluation and you showed that you can make it the way you did, then of course it makes sense to continue to do the same thing.
Be boring about it and be consistent. That's the key.
Yeah. So once they get funded for the first time, what is the percentage of your traders fail that funding?
So fail that funding, it's roughly, we basically have 15% that will hold their account after that.
So 85%. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Got it. Yeah.
I mean, it's hard. Trading is hard. Trading is hard. easier when it's not your own capital.
Cause you know, even if, um, I just interviewed like literally an hour ago, I interviewed, uh, Mark has been with us, uh, roughly a year and a half.
He got four funded accounts. This is his fourth funded account, basically.
And he lost the first three, right? He reached the payout and all, but he still blew the account because... sometimes you cross those boundaries and those rules and whatever that comes in mind when you're trading, like the psychology of it. and you lose the account.
But once you proved yourself, and this I say a lot, once you proved yourself that you can pass the evaluation, It's much easier for you to go back again and pass the evaluation again and get funded.
It took him one day to pass. Wow. Because he already did it a couple of times.
Now share with us what you see in the patterns and characteristics of those traders that end up staying longer with Trade the Pool being funded several times.
And not just the first time, but at least two or three times.
What are the common themes? What do you see that you can share with us?
Yeah, so the guys that are sticking to their accounts are, first of all, they build a cushion I mean, we got Arbnor and Michael Tarantula that spoke about it in their interviews.
When they start to trade on the funded account, like I said before, they start super slow.
They build a cushion and then they start to increase the sizes and the risk because you have something to fall back on, right?
Yeah. So that's the first thing you need to do on your funded account.
You start slow, build in a cushion. Once you build that, enough. capital to fall back on, then you can start increasing your sizes.
And second thing, it's scaling into the account, right?
Of course, scaling out as well, but most importantly, scaling in.
If you go... into a trade full power, risking all the capital, all the dollar you're willing to lose on a trade, even if it's let's say you're willing to lose $100.
Instead of clicking the mouse key and then put the full $100 at risk, Start by putting $10 at risk, $20, right?
You scale, you build the position. Once you accumulate the position, you can actually see, first of all, a much higher success rate It will give you more flexibility of managing that trade, because even if the trade goes against you, it's nothing.
You're still risking $10 out of the $100.
And that gives you confidence at the end of the day on your trades.
Yeah, what you described requires a lot of patience and a lot of... you know, following your process and patience and dedication to it and not being in a hurry.
I think that's the key is the patience part.
Yeah, I mean, the market will be open tomorrow as well, right?
You don't need to look for that big trade Just to make it, although we do have some traders like this.
Just today, I spoke with Jim. He made $85,000 on one trade.
PTHL. I don't know if you saw this chart, but it went from $30 to $1.
A Chinese company. Yeah. And it was incredible.
But if you look at the other trades that he made, it wasn't, to be honest, it wasn't that good.
And I spoke to him today and I told him, Listen, we want you to start building it and trade consistently and not looking for that crazy move from out of nowhere, like a black Swan of the company.
This leads me to what those traders that, you know, have been funded several times.
What are they actually mostly trading? Is it penny stocks or small cap, large cap ETFs?
Yeah, we do have a variety of traders. We offer 12,000 symbols, so stocks and ETFs.
Most of our traders, because they are young guys, they would love to mostly short and trade penny stocks, small caps.
They will definitely do that. And because we also don't have a local fee and borrowing fee, of all kind, they really enjoy that and will come to us.
So you can short any small cap, any penny stocks on our platform.
And, but besides that, we do have guys like, like I just mentioned, Mark and, that I interviewed an hour ago, and he's...
I'm guessing by his face, he's about 70, 75 years old, around those lines.
He's been in the market for like 40 years.
Great interview. And he's been trading just one ticker, actually two tickers the entire evaluation.
He traded SMCI and Lemonade. That's it.
The full evaluation, it did those two. Just learning the nuances of the tickers and then...
He understands more about the price section, the momentum, everything involved around it.
So it really depends on your personality, but a lot of our guys are small cap traders.
That's why I love that you offer stocks because there's just so many opportunities.
You know, like these 12,000 symbols, ETFs or whatever, however you want to trade.
It's amazing. Have any traders ever been denied a payout?
Yes, but not because we decided to just because of that, but actually because we broke the rules.
We do have the rules that you got to follow.
One of them will be not trading before the halt, for example.
So if a stock made a a move of 8% within four minutes.
And we know that whenever it does 10% within five minutes, it's automatically altered. then if he traded like this and broke the rule, then we eventually will invalid the trade.
But as long as you're in the parameters and the objectives that we set, beforehand, you're good to go.
Doesn't matter if you will make $85,000 on a single trade, like I just mentioned.
I mean, It's not a great trade. It was on a technical level. support, resistance, reversal, whatever it is.
It took a trade. It took a shot, basically.
And he made that money, so we will pay that.
He didn't break any rules, Jim, on the 85K.
But if you did break the rule, even if it's $2,000, obviously we won't pay that for sure.
And this is why, as you mentioned before, you got to read the rules before we put them straightforward on our terms and conditions and on our FAQs.
And you can ask, we got a huge community on Discord, so you can ask anything that you like.
But if you did break the rule, of course, we will not pay for something that broke the rule.
Have you ever had to adjust your rules or add new rules because maybe the traders are doing too well on a certain type of trade?
I mean, what are your rules based on? Is it coming from a place of... Because it's based on the business model we kind of mentioned before...
Where it depends on that where, you know, traders fail or is it coming from a place of for longer term trading success?
I mean, we just want to understand like, like where the rules coming from.
The rules come from risk management, right?
That's the first thing. So the risk managements are... of the business, we'll call it, right?
It comes from trading, comes from the evaluation to see that actually You know, it's not like one lucky trader.
It actually shows us that you can... and show consistency.
This is why, for example, we have a rule of 50% consistency rule, right?
When your best trade cannot be responsible to more than 50% of the target.
So of course, if you made one trade, and this is on the evaluation phase on the Flex account, So if you made one trade that got you to the target, you didn't prove anything to us.
I cannot categorize you to the profile that we just talked about by showing me that you did one trade.
So you need to do your minimum trades are 10, for example. and you have the consistency rule.
We are changing them and adopting two the market conditions or our traders' conditions.
Sometimes it's for... It will look like it's for bad or better or worse.
For example, when we first started, you add 30 days to pass the evaluation.
30 days, that's it. Now it's unlimited, right?
Yes. You can take your time. It doesn't matter if it will take three months or one day.
Take your time, do your best. So this is a great benefit for the traders.
We had a 60 second rule before when you got to stay in that trade permanently. for 60 seconds.
Between your entry and your exit, you gotta have at least one minute difference.
We lowered that once we checked the data and confirmed that, and the risk management allowed us to do that.
We actually lowered that to 30 seconds. So a lot of scalpers like that as well because they don't need to stay a full minute in.
So we are adjusting the rules. always trying to help our traders at the end of the day to pass.
Like I said, because we're doing the model of the hybrid, the C book, which we're taking the traders to the market, some of our traders to the market, we can adjust it better and allow our traders more flexibility on their trading.
Most of us, or at least I didn't know that you have these, like you kind of mentioned it before about these different categories and you do take some traders alive and things like that.
You should put that on the website because I think that would really motivate a lot of traders to see where their trade's going. all the effort that they're putting into this.
I mean, it could be very motivating. Basically, it is in the FAQs, but maybe, yeah, putting it out there.
Oh, I didn't see that. Okay. Yeah. So people know that, Hey, it's not just, I mean, it depends on how you trade and, and if you trade well and then, you know, trade the pole likes your strategy, you're going to go live. you know?
Yeah. That's, that's awesome. Yeah. Okay, I have one more.
I have another weird question. If more traders become successful at these online trading platforms, Like break the mold and it's no longer like the only 5% make it and maybe it becomes...
20% or 30%, do you see that the online prop trading firm's business model changing?
I guess so. I mean, again, we are at the 2025 that passing the evaluation.
So, and still good on our risk management and everything around that.
But besides that, We are always looking for shifting or evolving, right?
So, for example, one of the things I just talked about with Gail, the founder, is about offering maybe a free evaluation, right?
So literally give everyone a chance of joining and give it a shot.
Testing it. See if it's for you. See how you react to it.
Because the trading evaluation gives you not just the option to pass to the funded phase, but also it teaches you a whole lot about yourself.
Some of the Trustpilot reviews that we get, that the guys are... the good ones at least, the guys are actually becoming better by learning about themselves and about how to behave in that market environment, right?
So I literally spoke to Gil about it, about opening the doors completely and giving a free evaluation.
We're, like I said, as a business, at least as I see it, a business gotta have a few streams of income.
And so even if we give the evaluation for free, we're still good on the other side.
Yeah, it seems like a win-win situation overall, whether you're a seasoned trader or a newbie.
I think there's something for everyone. through trade the pool really especially if you love stocks um you know there's other platforms for other types of trading but you know especially you guys are the only ones that offer stocks.
Is that right? Yeah. And it's a good and a bad thing.
On one hand, because we are the only one, so no one besides us talks about it on social media, right?
If you go to the Forex or the future industry, Yeah, it's everywhere.
Yeah, exactly. Everyone is talking about it.
So you need to decide which company to go to, and that's it.
On our side, we need to do two things. bring the awareness and actually tell people about it.
Most of the guys that I'm talking to and tell them about it, their mind is...
You know, they're losing their mind because of the solution that we offer, but no one actually knows about us.
They're not noticing, right? I find that really strange.
Yeah, but I just talked to Bernadette, if I'm not mistaken, from Virginia, a funded trader.
She was absolutely sure that most of our traders, our funded traders, are actually from Europe and Asia.
And of course, most of our traders are based in the US and Canada.
Yeah. She's been talking to some of the traders that she knows from her area, and no one knows about us.
We need to create that awareness and also educate the guys that come in about prop trading, what are the rules and how it works and all of those things.
This is our, it's good to be alone, but on the other side, it's good to have more people, more companies that will bring that attention as well.
Yeah. So there's one thing I wanted, I think I asked you personally before, because as you know, I'm currently in the evaluation.
And I'm so happy that you made the unlimited time available, unlimited package.
So thank you for doing that. Less pressure.
So the only thing I would love to see and maybe you might think about doing is copy trading, having multiple accounts.
Is that something that could be on the horizon soon?
Yes. So... Right now, you can copy your trades between two accounts, but the lower tiers.
Our lower tier is 5K all the way to 200,000.
And we do have a scaling plan as well. So you can copy between the five and the 25, but you got to do that manually.
You got to go between the platforms and actually click the mouse key.
What we're working on right now, and probably by the time this podcast will be live, because it's very soon on our end.
We are creating the copy option as well.
So you will just click the mouse key and automatically it will go To those trades, to those accounts.
Oh, wow. Yeah. That's awesome. Thank you.
It is. And, yeah, in two weeks we will launch – also algo trading as well so you will be able to connect your trading algo and set the order for for you know automatic orders It's great that you're listening to the traders and their feedback and constantly evolving.
I think that's really important. And I have, I think, one more question. question for you.
You know, Michael, remember when we were in the Chat with Traders trading community two or three years, two and a half years ago?
And then we were having... We were doing that challenge, the competition.
And then... You were part of the challenge.
You were also competing, you know, just to kind of inspire people and everything as well.
But I noticed you were always like in the top... five or top 10 like every day for 21 days.
It's like, it tells me you're a great trader.
So why not just trade for the rest of your life?
I mean, isn't that like... What every dream trader would have is just to trade and do nothing else.
That was definitely my dream for many, many years.
And I achieved that. I had good, very good years that I traded. and did only that even before going into the local prop here that I managed the traders there.
So I had a very good years that I did that.
But for me, at least, I love to do a few things that probably interrupt with that.
I still trade these days, of course, much less than before when I was actually trading like a one minute every single day.
But I guess for me, I have, first of all, I really love innovation.
So I always like to invent something, either technology or... a new evaluation or a new solution or whatever it is.
So I'm really keen on that. And the fact that I can see it from... see the behind the scenes, see what the traders are doing, understand how they operate, The new strategies, the type of risk they're putting in, all of those things, by managing this whole operation, it's really incredible.
I'm still pumped by that, even after three years.
Actually, I totally understand. I mean, because trading by itself I mean, maybe to some people it's like the best thing in the world, but to me it's challenging.
But I can see why people who trade, even they trade well and they've been successful, they go on to... start businesses and things like that to still be creative, to engage the creative side and things like that.
So I can totally understand that. And also just to communicate with people, because when you're trading all by yourself, I had like four years when I literally just sat and traded by myself.
No one around me, no community, nothing like that.
And it's obviously super hard. and lonely.
So it's great to have, for example, we come to the office every day, right?
We don't do hybrid or stuff like that. So in the office, there are currently 55 guys that work in.
So it's just a bunch of guys talking to each other, laughing, brainstorming.
So it's really fun. Yeah, that's awesome to hear.
I know we're up for time, but thank you, Michael, for coming on to the show. sharing with us some more of your insights, prop trading in general and trade the pool.
So thank you. Happy to be here. Thanks so much. with real market insight and zero hype on the way soon.
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