The top proprietary trading websites are alike in a lot of ways, so it sometimes takes a deep dive into the nitty-gritties to figure out which one works the best for you. Whether it is forex trading that you are looking for, or you want to dabble in crypto trading with a high amount of capital. This is essentially what these firms specialize in.
Even though I will not be able to decide for you, the least I can do is provide you with all the information you require to be able to make one.
Both these platforms will require you to complete their KYC measures so keep your documents handy. With CTI, if you select the evaluation challenges, just like at FTMO, you will have to do this after you pass the challenge.
But if you are taking the instant route with your funding which is an option available at CTI, KYC will need to be done before you get access to the live trading account.
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City Traders Imperium vs FTMO: Trading Instruments
City Traders allows the trading of gold, indices, or forex, which you can use according to the trading hours and make money if your trading styles work.
FTMO allows tradable assets like forex, indices, cryptocurrencies, bonds, stocks, and commodities for your trading skills. A professional trader and a novice trader can both benefit from the wide variety of instruments available on the platform.
Account Types & Maximum Account Size
City Traders Imperium offers four types of funding options based on whether you want instant funding or want to go through an evaluation process.
If you want instant funding, you can start by paying a one-time fee of £1,059 for $20,000 in trading balance. For the evaluation process, you can select from the Day Trading Challenge, the Standard Evaluation, or the Classic Evaluation.
These plans start with one-time fees of £109 (Standard, Day Trading), and £119 (Classic) for $10,000 in trading balance once the trading objectives are achieved.
The maximum account size at City Traders Imperium for instant funding is $70,000, which will cost you a fee that is paid once, of £3,649.
When it comes to the evaluation process, the maximum account sizes you can ‘audition’ for are $50,000 (one-time fee of £289) in the Day Trading Challenge, and $70,000 in the Standard (one-time fee of £659) and Classic (one-time fee of £649) Evaluation Challenges.
At FTMO, you don’t have a choice of account types. The FTMO challenge is the only way to go for serious traders looking to trade with one of the most popular prop firms. The challenge, though, does have two different variants, namely the Normal and Aggressive challenge.
Both of these will lead you to funded trading accounts, and you can get started by paying €540 (Normal) or €1,080 (Aggressive), depending on which plan you want to pick.
The maximum account size at FTMO begins at $200,000, but the scaling plan allows you to grow it to $400,000. This is a hard cap, and the prop trading firm does not allow its traders to grow beyond this.
100k Account Challenge / Evaluation Prices & Period
City Traders Imperium does not have a $100,000 account to start you off. The maximum balance you can begin with is $70,000, which is available in the Standard, Classic, and Instant Funding options. But once you pass the Standard or Classic evaluation, CTI will increase your balance by 400%.
If you are interested, the Standard Challenge costs a one-time payment of £659 and lasts for six months.
The Classic Challenge on the other hand, needs you to pay £649 as a one-time payment and gives you up to twelve months to reach your profit target. With the Instant funding options, CTI doubles your trading balance for every 10% profit target that you achieve.
FTMO has a $100,000 trading account that you can access once you pass their evaluation process. It costs €540 for the Normal variant and €1,080 for the Aggressive one. The first phase of the evaluation process lasts for 30 days, and the second one lasts for 60 days.
City Traders Imperium vs FTMO: 100k Account: Challenge Rules
For the Standard Evaluation at CTI, the platform requires that you have a mandatory stop loss on all your positions as soon as you open them. This stop loss can not exceed 1.5% of your initial trading balance.
Also, any trades closed without a stop loss will violate the platform’s risk management strategies. You get up to 6 months to achieve the trading objectives, with a minimum of 30 active trading days during the Evaluation phase.
For the Classic challenge, the rules are a little different. You have up to 12 months to achieve the trading objectives. The stop loss on each position can be a maximum of 1.5% of your trading balance, and you need a minimum of 30 active trading days to not violate the evaluation process.
With FTMO‘s two-step evaluation process, you have a time limit of 30 days to pass the first phase and a time limit of 60 days to complete the second phase, whether it is the Normal or the Aggressive FTMO Challenge.
The rules are different when it comes to profit targets. In the Normal Challenge, you need to achieve your profit target of 10% in Phase 1, and 5% in Phase 2.
The prop trading firm also offers an Aggressive Challenge whose trading rules require a target of 20% in the first evaluation period and 10% in the second phase of the two-step evaluation process.
City Traders Imperium vs FTMO: Profit Sharing Ratio
If you select the Day Trading Challenge with City Traders Imperium, on passing the multi-step evaluation process, you will get a profit split of 70% for the first 10% profit share that you achieve. As you go through the multiple tiers, you can land up with a 100% profit split, which seems too good to be true but is not.
As is the case with Day Trading Challenge, you can reach a profit split of 100% with the other plans also. The profit split, although starts low at 50% for the instant funded trader program, but the trading rules allow you to grow quickly.
FTMO starts with a profit share that is high when compared to the initial profit share handed out by the other competing prop trading firms. Once you achieve the profit target, money is credited to your account according to the profit split calculations.
Profit splits start at 80% and will keep increasing if you get to your profit target in the allotted trading period. The highest profit splits at FTMO can go up to 90% of your earned profit if you don’t break any rules set forth by the trading platform.
City Traders Imperium vs FTMO: Scaling Plan
At City Traders Imperium, your funded account balance is increased by 400% as soon as you pass the evaluation period, and then doubling your account as and when you reach your 10% target of profit up to a maximum of $2,000,000.
If you select the instant funding account, your account’s capital is doubled for every 10% target profit that you achieve.
FTMO, on the other hand, has a scaling plan that is slower in comparison to CTI. Instead of doubling your capital for every 10% goal achieved, FTMO increases the capital by 25% every four months with a hard cap of $400,000.
This can be a problem for serious traders looking to gain access to large amounts of capital which is half the reason people use prop trading firms in the first place.
Allowed Leverage & Max Daily Drawdown & Total Drawdown
Funded trading with CTI has four different plans, and they have their own rules for maximum leverage, maximum daily drawdown, and total drawdown. The Day Trading Challenge is the one that differs the most from the other programs as it is the only one that has a maximum daily drawdown rule.
The maximum allowed leverage for the program is 1:33, with a maximum daily drawdown of 4%, and a total allowed drawdown of 10%.
The leverage and drawdown calculations are part of the trading objectives, and the Classic Evaluation allows maximum leverage of 1:10 along with a 5% relative drawdown.
The Standard Evaluation and Instant Funding plans share the same amount of maximum leverage (1:10), and an absolute drawdown of 5% from the initial trading balance.
When it comes to FTMO, the maximum allowed leverage is 1:100 for both the Normal and Aggressive challenges. There is a difference in the maximum daily drawdown and total drawdown numbers.
The Normal plan allows a 5% daily drawdown and a 10% total drawdown before your funded trading dream is ended for this try.
The Aggressive challenge allows a 10% daily drawdown and a 20% total drawdown, and you must stay within these numbers to be able to begin funded trading with FTMO.
City Traders Imperium vs FTMO: Trading Hours
If it fits your trading style, and you are looking for trading hours that are not very restrictive, you should pick one of the four plans on offer at CTI. With this, your forex trading journey becomes less restrictive because you can trade the news, and hold positions overnight or over the weekend.
When you have not yet started your funded trading journey with FTMO and are still in the challenge phase, be it the Challenge phase or the Verification phase, you are allowed to take advantage of the volatility that comes with the release of macroeconomic news, hold positions overnight or over the weekend.
After you pass the challenge, it becomes important to choose whether you want the regular FTMO-funded account or the FTMO Account Swing. With the Swing account, you can keep your positions open overnight, or over the weekend. This is similar to what prop firms like CTI also offer.
If you select the regular FTMO account, you will need to close and square off all your positions before the trading period ends on Friday, or if the rollover time is going to be longer than a couple of hours.
Serious traders will need to compare the allowed trading hours on both of these plans before making a decision on which one they want to trade with.
City Traders Imperium vs FTMO: Payout/Payment methods
Processing a payout with CTI is not straightforward or a one-time process that allows you to feed your information once and receive regular payouts.
When you want to withdraw from your account, you will need to send an email to [email protected] during the last 5 days of the calendar month with your account number and the amount you would like to withdraw.
Their team will review the account, and sans any violations, your withdrawal will be processed right away.
As Portfolio Managers or Direct Funding traders, you have the option to withdraw profits every month or build them up as a buffer against any future drawdown.
With FTMO, you can choose when you receive your payout. This concept is called the Profit Split Day and makes sure that you will get your profit splits on the same day every month. Keep in mind that you are only eligible for payouts once your live account is older than 14 days.
City Traders Imperium vs FTMO: EAs Allowed? & Rules
CTI allows you to use EAs as long as it is an EA that you have either developed yourself or bought one that is not used by a lot of people. As trading firms try to limit their exposure to the same trades, this works against the principle of diversification.
For this same reason, CTI, like some other prop trading firms, does not allow the use of copy trading where trades are copied from other sources, as this does not prove your ability to trade, which is required for all serious traders.
FTMO, on the other hand, allows you to use bots or EAs to make your money just like other prop firms that are competitors to them.
City Traders Imperium vs FTMO: Trading Platforms
As of writing this article, CTI only allows its traders to use MetaTrader 5 on Windows and Mac OS X.
FTMO has a variety of trading platforms for your ease of trading. You can use MetaTrader4, MetaTrader5, or cTrader, depending on which one you are most comfortable with.
Conclusion
FTMO wins over people who appreciate the Swing trading account’s perks or the lowest profit share of 80%, which can go up to 90% if you do well consistently.
With CTI, it takes a trader who is confident in their skills as the profit share begins as low as 50% but can go up to 100% if they are good at what they do.
The quick funding option is a big pull also for traders looking for that sort of thing, combined with the good reputation of a firm like CTI.
By now, you have all the information you need to decide where you will take your fee money to.
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