Let’s say it clearly from the start
Overall, CFD prop firms are better than Futures firms.
A lot of traders in the prop firm space are unsure where they should really focus. Some start with CFD prop firms, others jump straight into Futures firms, mostly because challenge fees look cheaper.
What usually comes later is confusion, stress, and wasted time.
This article exists to help you understand the differences better, without hype, and without pushing fantasies. Just a realistic look at how things actually work.
To keep things simple, we’ll use FTMO as the CFD prop firm example, and NASDAQ as the market traded.
There are a couple of advantages of Futures
Everything you see on the chart is precise.
Execution is precise.
You also know where to put your stoploss much better than on CFD.
For example, let’s say you want to put your stoploss 1 tick below the 0.5 of a fair value gap (FVG), because in that specific situation it makes sense. On Futures, if price trades into that 0.5 and your stoploss is 1 tick below it, you are still in the trade.
On CFD, things can look different. Price might go a bit more than that 0.5 of the FVG. Sometimes it’s a full handle, sometimes 2 handles, sometimes even more. Because of that, when trading CFD, you have to take this into consideration and trade with a larger stoploss than you would on Futures.
For us, this usually means having a margin for error of about 5 handles on CFD. In practice:
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our stoploss on CFD is about 5 handles wider than it would be on Futures
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our trade exits on CFD are about 5 handles closer than on Futures
This balances things out.
Having two monitors helps a lot with this. You can analyze and watch price on the NASDAQ Futures chart, and execute or close your position in real time on your CFD account in MT5. There are multiple ways to work around these differences; this is just something we do sometimes.
The important point is this:
what you see on the NASDAQ Futures chart is what the market actually looks like.
It doesn’t matter what some random broker shows on a CFD chart.
The Futures contract is the reference.
The candles printed there, on any timeframe, are what you should be interested in.
Other than these, there are no real advantages.
How to use that Futures advantage without trading Futures firms
This is something very important, and many traders don’t realize it.
Even if you trade with CFD prop firms, you can still do your analysis on the Futures contract for NASDAQ on TradingView, and simply execute your trades on your CFD account in MT5.
This way, you avoid making mistakes caused by broker differences.
For example, you might see a higher high on NASDAQ on a random broker’s CFD chart, while on the Futures contract – the one that actually matters – price printed a lower high. That difference can completely change your bias and your execution.
And this is just one simple example.
By analyzing the Futures contract and executing on CFDs, you get the best of both worlds.
Why Futures prop firms are harder than they need to be
Trading with Futures prop firms is too stressful.
There are too many rules in place, and most of them exist to give the prop firm a big advantage over the trader.
Trailing drawdowns.
Consistency rules.
Daily limits that reset in strange ways.
All of this is designed to:
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limit how much traders can make
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increase failure rates
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make long-term consistency harder
From a prop firm point of view, as a business model alone, without not much good faith and genuine interest to see traders succeed.. it makes sense.
From a trader point of view, it’s tiring.
How CFD prop firms handle things differently
When we talk about major CFD prop firms, we are talking about their standard models.
Let’s take FTMO’s 2-step challenge as an example.
There is:
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no consistency rule
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no trailing drawdown
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a 10% maximum drawdown
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a 5% daily drawdown
The usual no-news trading rule applies only to high-leverage accounts.
On Swing accounts, which has much lower leverage, news trading is allowed (we do not recommend trading NFP, CPI, FOMC and anything similar to this, this is available for Forex pairs too, like EURUSD with the rates announcement and Christine Lagarde’s conference and so on).
With a CFD prop firm like FTMO, everything is clear.
What happens once you are funded on CFD prop firms
Once you are funded with a CFD prop firm like FTMO, you have much more freedom.
You can have a strong trading day, make 10% profits, stop trading, and wait for the payout cycle.
If you want to continue trading, you can.
If, let’s say, you lose all those profits (without hitting the daily drawdown, for the sake of the conversation – lose 3K in a day, 4K in the second day, 3K in the third day), you are back at the starting balance of the account and you can keep the funded account.
There is no weird drawdown or hard breach closing your account just because you lost the profits you already made, as it is the case with many Futures firms.
Things work very differently.
When Futures firms actually make sense
Futures firms only start to make sense after you already secured standard maximum allocation with 2 or 3 major CFD prop firms.
For example:
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FTMO
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FundingPips
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Alpha Capital Group
For traders using our services, since we do not accept FundingPips, the third CFD firm would usually be FundedNext.
This is the cleanest and strongest setup in our view, and it’s also how we already went about it ourselves.
Futures firms are not a foundation
Futures prop firms are not something you should build everything on.
They are better used as extra capital, once you already reached around $800,000 – $1,000,000 in funded trading capital with CFD prop firms.
Before that point, they often create more problems than benefits.
Why Futures challenges are cheaper
Yes, Futures challenges are cheaper.
There is a reason for that.
The whole Futures prop firm environment works against the trader.
It often feels like:
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success is not really encouraged
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making too much money is not welcomed
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long-term trading is made difficult
Trading is not easy anyway.
The issue is that Futures firms make consistency harder than it needs to be.
We make money with Futures firms and if you follow our trading strategies and signals properly, you can make money too – but we don’t recommend focusing on that industry.
We accept clients trading with Futures firms. That doesn’t automatically mean we recommend it.
A realistic look at trading capital
$800,000 – $1,000,000 in funded trading capital with 3 CFD prop firms is more than enough to do well for yourself and your family.
This is about real life, not bad influencer lifestyles or social media fantasies.
With that kind of capital, you can earn (not guaranteed) in one month more than doctors earn in high-cost countries in one year.
Long-term trading vs gambling
With major CFD prop firms, you are able to keep funded accounts long-term.
We are talking about real trading, not gambling.
If your plan is to fail 10 prop firm challenges just to pass 2, then once funded abuse the prop firms and reverse trade, or risk 4% per trade, PropFirmKillers is not what you’re looking for.
Trading with PropFirmKillers means:
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proper risk management
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consistency
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thinking long-term
- stability and peace of mind
We genuinely want to help you build stability and make a progress in your life, towards your dreams and goals – not stress yourself out and chase meaningless things.
We are not here to sell you fantasies, we are looking out for you.