- ByMartin Najat
- CTI vs Prop Firms
Table of Contents
Introduction
Funded Trader Programs have become increasingly common in recent years. The latest of these is offered by Funded Trading Plus (FTP), established in 2021. In a short time of existence, more and more traders have joined their service over the likes of
FTMOand The 5ers.
Another key player in the space is City Traders Imperium (CTI), a proprietary trading firm that has been in operation since 2018. So, Choosing the best prop firm to partner with only makes sense when wanting to get funded.
So, how do CTI and FTP compare?
Here, we will look at the offerings of each firm and why City Traders Imperium is a better option, hands down!!
Fortunately, CTI and FTP have the same type and number of programs, making an accurate like-for-like comparison possible.
CTI Challenge vs FTP Advanced Trader Program
The Challenge and Advanced Trader programs are designed for short-term traders like scalpers and day traders.
Both consist of two phases, higher leverage, higher drawdown, and refundable fees upon completion.
Let’s examine how City Traders Imperium (CTI) and Funded Trading Plus (FTP) stack up when compared directly.
1. Lower Prices
The logical starting point when comparing prop firms is typically the cost of their challenge. So, let’s delve into the fees associated with various account balances at both prop firms.
The first thing the data presents is that CTI offers, overall, slightly lower prices.
- $40 cheaper on the $25k account
- $20 cheaper on the $50k account
Secondly, it provides lower account sizes ($5k and $10k) than FTP, which only starts at $25k. This also makes CTI more affordable than FTP and many other firms in the business.
2. Offers a Monthly Salary
The cost may not be a convincing differentiator, but the potential to earn a monthly salary should, which is what you get with City Traders Imperium.
CTI was the first prop firm to launch this incentive for funded traders in Jan 2023 and remains among the few that do; Funded Trading Plus currently doesn’t.
Participants of the CTI Challenge can
receive Up to $1000in monthly salary per funded account for life. The monthly salary amount depends on the account size, and whether the funded trader qualifies for the weekly withdrawals and maintains a monthly average net profit of 3%.
Of course, the salary is on top of a trader’s funded account profit share. CTI introduced this incentive to help traders maintain consistency after getting funded to ensure they can profit without facing the financial pressures of trading for a living.
Ultimately, the earning potential is two-fold and greater with CTI’s challenge program compared to Funded Trading Plus.
3. Fixed Absolute Drawdown vs Relative Trailing Drawdown
Relative Drawdown (applied by FTP) involves a trailing loss amount that is not flexible with your account growth.
On the other hand, Absolute Drawdown (offered by CTI) is better as it provides more ‘wiggle room’ for losses as you increase your bottom line.
Let’s demonstrate a hypothetical example of trading a $100,000 account with a 10% Relative Drawdown that you get with Funded Trading Plus. Initially, your termination level would be $90,000 (10% of $100,000).
But then, when you grow your balance to $120,000, guess what? The new termination point would be $108,000 (10% of the new balance high).
Meanwhile, with CTI, you have a 10% Absolute Drawdown, which under the same circ*mstances, the termination level would remain fixed at $90,000.
Therefore, you would have more breathing room with CTI to risk an additional +$18,000 (or +18% Buffer). This +$18,000 would act as an extra drawdown buffer, a stark contrast to the trailing model offered by FTP.
4. Easier Withdrawals with CTI
With the 10% fixed absolute drawdown offered by CTI, you will always have the 10% drawdown buffer on top of the net profit you generate. It gives you a huge advantage and flexibility to withdraw profits while maintaining the original drawdown as a buffer.
On the other hand, with FTP, withdrawals come with a negative consequence due to the Max Trailing Drawdown rule mentioned above.
With Funded Trading Plus, any profit you withdraw will be counted as part of your trailing drawdown.
So, let’s say you are 6% in profit, and the Max Trailing Drawdown is 10%. Once you withdraw that profit, your remaining trailing drawdown will be only 4% (10% – 6% ).
This rule is a major factor which punishes you each time you withdraw and forces you not to withdraw any profit. The more you withdraw, the closer you getto your Max Trailing drawdown limit.
5. Higher Profit Share
With Funded Trading Plus, your max profit share is 90%. Meanwhile, with CTI, the funded trader could get up to 100% profit share once they scale up 3 times. The share difference may be slight. Yet, it plays a big role as your earnings increase, provided you are consistently profitable.
Now, you might ask: how could CTI make any profit when giving away 100% of the profit share to the funded trader?
The answer is simply by copying the trader into a 2nd live account. CTI could profit on the 2nd live account and allow the funded trader to each 100% profit on his account.
6. Allows Weekend Trading
Generally, short-term traders don’t hold their orders over the weekend. Yet, you can rest assured of doing so in the rare case with City Traders Imperium.
Unfortunately, FTP doesn’t have this feature, as they close your trades automatically by 21:30 GMT (16:30 NY Time) on Friday.
7. Lower Profit Target to scale up
Profit share isn’t the only factor in assessing earning potential with a prop firm. It’s also about the progressive growth of your account balance once you start making profits; this is where
scalingcomes in.
At City Traders Imperium, traders only need a 10% profit to advance to a higher account balance tier. Unfortunately, the threshold at Funded Trading Plus is double that, requiring traders to make a 20% profit before scaling up.
Summary
The Challenge program from City Traders Imperium (CTI) and the Advanced Trader program from Funded Trading Plus (FTP) bear a lot of resemblances, with slight differences in aspects like profit targets, leverage, and drawdowns.
Yet, the major factors that set them apart include the type of drawdowns, ease of withdrawals, availability of lower account tiers, higher earning potential, weekend trading, and monthly salary.
Initiating your trading journey with City Traders Imperium is more budget-friendly as they offer smaller account sizes of $5k and $10k. In addition, a couple of their packages, which offer the same balance size as FTP’s, are priced a bit lower.
The definitive area where CTI outperforms FTP is in its earning potential, and ease of withdrawals. With attractive features like a salary incentive, an unprecedented profit split of up to 100%, and a faster scaling system, CTI positions itself as a more lucrative option for traders.
CTI Instant Funding vs FTP Experienced Trader Program
Next up in our overall comparison is looking at the funded programs geared toward long-term traders.
Here, we have CTI’s Instant Funding versus FTP Experienced Trader packages. In all fairness, the latter program is quite competitive and almost like CTI’s Instant Funding program. Still, the main differentiation is, again, the drawdown limitation that you would get with FTP.
Each plan has only one phase and no minimum active trading days or maximum time limits.
The profit targets are slightly lower, with CTI at 9%, which it’s 10% with FTP.
Also, the maximum profit share is slightly higher with CTI, with up to 100% profit share, while it’s 90% with FTP.
The main exception which makes City Traders Imperium a better choice is the drawdown type, which can also affect the ease of withdrawals.
1. Refundable Fee
Upon reaching a 10% profit on your live-funded account (following a successful evaluation), Funded Traders Plus refunds the signup fee that you initially paid.
This means to qualify for a refund; you would have to make 20% in total (10% on the Demo evaluation phase and another 10% on the live funded account phase).
In contrast, CTI provides an option to withdraw just two weeks after hitting the 9% profit target in the Instant Funding Phase. This means, once you are funded, you won’t need to hit any profit target objective to get a refund of your fee.
2. Better Drawdown Rule & Easier Withdrawals with CTI
Firstly, the drawdown for FTP is a 6% “Trailing Drawdown”, while CTI offers a 5% “Fixed Absolute Drawdown.”
Of course, this is an insignificant difference. But, as explained earlier, we employ absolute drawdown, while FTP applies relative drawdown, which isn’t beneficial.
You can revisit points 3 and 4 in the previous section to show how disadvantageous it is for the trader to have a Relative Drawdown when funded and how it massively affects withdrawals.
Also, with CTI, you don’t have any other drawdown type except the absolute drawdown; you either make a 9% profit or lose 5% in the drawdown without any other rule that could hinder your performance.
Meanwhile, with Funded Trading Plus, you have Relative (trailing) + Daily Drawdown in place. The daily drawdown means you cannot lose more than 3% daily, which is too tight for most traders.
Ultimately, CTI has more favourable drawdown rules that offer traders more freedom and flexibility to show their true performance.
Summary
Again, looking at the details of the “Experienced Trader” offered by FTP and the “Instant Funding” offered by CTI, it is evident that FTP imposes more restrictions in terms of drawdown type.
This makes it very difficult for the trader to stay funded due to their drawdown style and the punishment effect each time a withdrawal is made.
Yet, City Traders Imperium offers flexibility with absolute drawdown, and easier withdrawals making their Instant Funding a superior option.
CTI Instant Funding vs FTP Master Trader Program
CTI’s Direct Funding and FTP’s Master Trader are funding programs where traders don’t undergo an evaluation phase. Instead, a one-time fee applies to access a live-funded account with balances from $5k to $100k.
It’s a package that only a few prop firms offer and a great one for confident traders who want to save time and go straight to earning.
What makes Direct Funding different from Instant Funding is that the Direct Funding, you won’t need to hit any profit targets to ask for withdrawals, and you start right away on higher levels by passing and getting evaluated on smaller account sizes.
As with the last section, the Direct Funding and Master Trader programs are alike in many respects:
- No minimum trading days.
- No time limit.
- No evaluation.
The lower prices are the one area that FTP is better at than CTI.
However, CTI’s excellent trading conditions still make it a considerable choice.
With CTI, the drawdown is fixed absolute from the initial balance; meanwhile, with FTP, it’s a trailing drawdown.
Also, as discussed in the challenge section, the trailing drawdown affects withdrawals because any withdrawals will affect your max trailing drawdown.
For example, with FTP, assume you were in a net profit of 4%. If you withdrew the full amount, you would only have 1% left in the max trailing drawdown. This would increase your chances of losing your funded account.
Meanwhile, with CTI, you only have a fixed drawdown, and you can withdraw all the profits at any time with no issues related to it.
Also, FTP prohibits weekend trading, while CTI doesn’t.
The direct funding program is suitable for all trader types. Thus, allowing traders to hold their orders over the weekend only makes sense.
With all CTI’s programs, CTI offers funded traders the opportunity to reach a 100% profit share when reaching higher levels, while it is capped at 90% with FTP.
Summary
CTI is the smarter choice between the two due to having favourable drawdown rules, easier withdrawal options, allowing weekend trading, and a higher profit share.
Final Thoughts
In this area, City Traders Imperium edges out Funded Trading Plus:
- Offers a better drawdown model.
- Allows weekend trading.
- Has a profit share that goes up to 100%.
- We are one of the only few prop firms offering a salary to funded traders.
These reasons alone should be proof enough of why we are the best, with plenty of success stories to share.
All that’s left for you is to join City Traders Imperium to take your funding to the next level!
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Martin Najat
Martin Najat is a seasoned forex trader and co-founder of CTI, a prop firm dedicated to empowering undercapitalized traders. Martin co-founded CTI with the mission to provide traders with the capital and support they need to thrive. Martin has developed and implemented trading strategies that have led him to share his valuable insights through a series of informative blogs aimed at aiding traders in navigating the complexities of the forex market. As a testament to his expertise, Martin's journey from novice to full-time trader serves as an inspiration to those looking to achieve success in the world of forex trading.
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