FundingPips: a short Jurney

We went on to give Fundingpips a try. Turned into a 50 hour failure-mission, thanks to AI.

but before the drama, lets shortly sum up the general experience:

Technology

Generally speaking, the service seem to be quite famous, as they have like 200k members in the discord, that is buzzing with peoples. The Website itself is clean and eveything is laid out cleanly and plainly.

on the Technology end, the price feeds on cTrader are exeptionally, the spreads however are variable and do randomly widen, so tight stops (less than 4) maybe a bit of a issue, but that is something one can work around, this downside is ironed out be spot on execution and stable feeds.

Onboarding

The process to get on board is extremly streamlined, you sign up, verify, KYC, purchase and you good to go.
everything is set real fast. and you getting updates per email on the whole process. making this the smoothest onboarding process seen so far.

Also the firm makes sure there is no way you could miss any of the rules.

The Objectives

On Zero, they have a odd set of rules, besides the basics of 3% Daily 5% trailing total and a 2% “idea limit”

there is also

• Max Open Risk of 1% that contradicts with the 2% Idea limit
• 7 Profitable Days within 30 days, where “profitable” is defined by a 0.25% gain.
• No News and no weekend positions
• 15% consistency

and some “hidden rules”

• a initial minimum Profit of 3% is required to “lock the trailing drawdown”

this reads pretty clean on the surface, but comes with a few caveats

1. the Consistency combined with the minimum profitable days is “technically fine”
   but it also requires you to hit a certain target intraday,
   witch can put some pressure on the trader meeting a certain intraday target.
   plus this has to be done 7 times in order to qualify in the first place.
2. another thing is that this combination does requires a initial Profit of 4.75% before any payout happens,
   and you need to be really smooth in getting there. (well at least on the last 1.5% stretch).
3. The firm advertising that there is no profit target.
   it’s “technically” not wrong, but the rules in its combination do create one that will follow you at all times.
   as 4.75% initially and then 1.75% minimum profit each time.
4. After the initial profit is created your account is locked at 100k removing the broker risk.
   the best and easiest way to deal with this is to simply assume the account actually comes with 103k instead 100k from day 1,
   wich will lead to you starting in a 3% loss. this may look bad mentally, but makes the overall math and management significantly easier for the trader.

in short, there are some rough edges, but knowing them and your abilities should not stop you from being successful with Fundingpips.

then the drama starts.

They use Forexfactory as a news source, which is extremely non-intuitive, as the website has no functionality for properly keeping up with the news. So one has to write the events down for the day or something, instead of just using the Myfxbook calendar, which does not have those limitations. And now, in hindsight, I guess it makes it easy to overlook some events.

But that is no excuse, as this is the trader’s responsibility anyway. So you gotta do what you gotta do, it’s that simple.
Plus, the dashboard also has a calendar, so it is not that much of a problem.
The only issue is that the contract and website refer to Forexfactory while they maintain their own calendar, so it is unclear which one is actually used.

Being short BTCUSD with a perfect entry, right on VWAP, the position was almost the entire time in profit, but the price did not really move.

When the news approached over two hours later, We did the reasonable thing and verified it, logged on to the website and asked if crypto was included in the news rule, and the AI bot instantly declined, stating that this was a different asset class and is not covered by this rule.
followed up by asking how one could know that, because there is the phrase “USD” in the asset name. The bot responded that those assets are on limited leverage and therefore pose no risk.

Okay, so let’s just scale in, as the setup was still valid and, due to time passing, it approached a structure level on the right. Another 1.5 hours later the price did drop as expected, position closed near target, and a few minutes later the account status changed to “Close Only.”

asked the AI again what this is about, and the AI again wrongly informed us that this is a feature, preventing new orders to be filled due to news, since there were no positions open, noone cared about it, but after an hour the “close only” was still active, log on to the website, account gone.

contacted support, explained the situation, but support stating a non-existing “Zero-tolerance” policy that does not exist anywhere on the website or the signed contract, in fact the contract specifically states “intent” wich was clearly not the case.

proof?

due to Article 13 of the contract you have to take what’s written here as fact, but there are receipts!

the publicly avaiable TOS states in section 9.B.iii (iii)
...purposely trading news events. The Company reserves the right to determine, at its own discretion, whether certain trades, practices, strategies, or situations are Forbidden Trading Practices.

and in Apendix A
...including avoiding news trading and any attempt to purposely trade the news. News trading is forbidden, and intentionally trading the news will lead to termination, since it is an abuse of FundingPips accounts that were given in good faith. Make informed decisions based on sound analysis and remain aware of the bigger picture, even outside the market itself.

yet, trying to avoid by making sure this is not a problem, aparently does not count as good faith.

You can just try it yourself ..

1. go to fundingpips.com
2. open the chat
3. ask “is a us evend also cover aposition on BTCUSD?“

this is the exact phrase asked (including the typo) tested today 24 hours later, the response is still the same, tested multiple variations, the answers are random at best but do lean to stating that BTCUSD is not allowed to be traded in a US event about 65% of the time.

if it does say its fine, you can even follow up and ask how to know as the pair has “USD” in it,
the bot will go out of its way explaining that crypro is a different asset class or that the leverage is limited,
both is truem make sense and conforms one more time the statement made earlier.

sadly support does not agree that this is a honest mistake caused by both parties, and just erases the account.

i guess the $512 lost should be considered a “experience fee” at this point as support just stop reply after pointing out some legal corners they are crossing.