CEO & Founder Statements 6th September 2023
CEO Statement - Simon, Funded Trading Plus
I wanted to personally share a message with you on behalf of the team at Funded Trading Plus, following the news of MyForexFunds’ recent injunction imposed on behalf of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in the US.
News of MyForexFunds alleged activities will no doubt have shocked the whole community. We too experienced the same shock.
The nature and scale of the alleged practices is something that has prompted a whole range of emotion for me – disbelief, distrust, anger, disappointment – to name but a few. I am sure these feelings are shared within the community.
I know that the actions alleged in the CFTC’s interim injunction will have rightly prompted questions from within the community. I would ask questions myself, and I would expect answers – this is what I hope to share with you.
To clear something up from the beginning – Funded Trading Plus does not, has not, and will never knowingly engage in practices which maliciously disadvantage traders.
This includes the creation of artificial groups with less favourable conditions for successful traders, and / or the artificial manipulation of slippage, spreads and commissions outside of real-market conditions which are provided as default by our internationally regulated broker.
I would welcome other firms to make a similar statement with the same direct, clear, and unambiguous language as I have been able to do. I can make this statement in this way because it is the truth.
I have also been transparent, and have always been an active presence in Discord engaging with the community directly since the firm’s founding in the UK in 2021. I know many of you will have come to realise that I am straight-talking, and provide a no-nonsense approach in my communication.
Some of you will be new to Funded Trading Plus, and you may be looking for your next funded trading firm. Now more than ever, it’s important to me that you find the right fit for you. That may be Funded Trading Plus, it may not be. I will never push you to make a decision, but I will provide you with clear and unambiguous information so that you can determine whether our offer is right for you.
I am also sharing Funded Trading Plus’s statement of good faith (Published Below) authored by the owners of the firm: myself, Michael and James. We all believe that transparency and good faith are what has made us a leading firm in the industry, and the recent controversies cement for me that this approach is the right choice.
Simon
CEO Funded Trading Plus
Founders’ Statement of Good Faith
Funded Trading Plus has always operated in good faith to and for our customers. We have clear terms and conditions that govern what our customers can and cannot do whilst participating in our programs. These rules are created to protect the integrity of the business and to ensure its longevity, however we have always been transparent and clear about what those rules and terms are.
Funded Trading Plus has never and will never plot or scheme to avoid paying a legitimate customer money that they have gained through legitimate strategies. Legitimate strategies do not include arbitrage, cheating or third-party account management.
We believe in a symbiotic relationship between payouts and trust. Simply put, we do not have a business if we cannot prove that we reward successes, therefore we believe that every eligible person should be paid out unless in breach of our unambiguous terms and conditions.
For context, in 2023 to date, we have denied only 1.74% of withdrawal requests due to breaches of our terms, conditions and rules – but more on this later.
When payouts are made and customers then post the proof, it serves as trust in us that we do pay withdrawals, and we will continue to operate on this basis.
To go further, purposely manipulating those payouts through hidden rules, malicious manipulation of slippage or falsely accusing someone of cheating is not only wrong, but it is a clear conflict of interest to the trust element of Funded Trading Plus as a business. Putting aside the moral and ethical question for one moment, it just does not make business sense for us to engage in that behaviour.
The Future of Funded Trading Plus
Since our founding in 2021 we have operated a risk-based approach to whether traders are placed in the live market, to trade as contractors on our own account, or whether to maintain simulated-live conditions. We have been clear about this in our FAQs and in our Terms & Conditions. We operated a risk-based model founded on our discretion.
We have sought extensive legal advice as to how we choose to operate. This has been a lengthy process including a review of our terms & conditions, and is not something that we could develop over the course of a weekend. We are satisfied with the advice received and the legality of our operations as a firm based in the UK.
We want to make it clear that the recent news pertaining to the allegations levelled against MyForexFunds is not the catalyst to our decisions – we do not knee jerk or simply go with the crowd.
That being said, we are at the stage where the size and stability of our business enables us to make some changes that we hope will be of significant benefit to our customers on a global scale, regardless of jurisdiction, country or continent.
In order to maintain the longevity of Funded Trading Plus across the globe, and to ensure we remain compliant with the complexities of global regulations we will be doing the following:
All customers across all phases of all programs will be placed into simulated-live conditions, through our fully regulated broker.
The broker runs all simulated-live accounts through a “bridge provider” for the sole purpose of simulating live market conditions. By executing simulated orders to their liquidity providers, the execution you experience in turn is a reflection of how the liquidity providers would fill orders if they occurred in the real market. We do not, have not, and will never use any sort of software that manipulates slippage or delays, beyond the default simulated real market executions provided by our regulated broker.
No additional customisation, no malicious intent.
For the time being, and for the avoidance of any doubt whatsoever, for the immediate future we will be running a simulated-live model only, to enable our future plans which we will share with you below. If this were to change, we would inform you of this change. We also now believe that this will become mandatory practice in the industry to ensure operations on a global scale, including in the US. The difference with Funded Trading Plus is that we are telling you this in advance to help inform your choices.
You will start to see our website being updated immediately.
From your point of view, your experience in terms of how your simulated trades are executed will be identical to how you will have experienced our platform previously.
Research & Development
Since the beginning of our operations in 2021, Funded Trading Plus has been scoping and evaluating opportunities to innovate within the industry to ensure that its programs can be offered to you for years to come. We said earlier that the details in this statement have not been created as a knee-jerk response to current events, and you will see now how we can demonstrate its truth.
Funded Trading Plus has recently completed its recruitment of skilled developers and data scientists to enable us to develop our own (confidential) proprietary technologies. This has been a lengthy process to ensure we have the right people in-house, who can help us to realise our ambitions. We have now recruited the final person in this team, and we are ready for the next step.
We are committed to the research and development of profitable trading strategies for use in our ambitious projects which are in active development. We will use the data collected from successful customers to further our research in this area. This is why we will be seeking skilled participants in our simulated programs, with up-front consent to include your anonymised trading into our data set.
As a result of your participation we will award bonuses from 70-90% (as stipulated in the program type) of the simulated profits generated to successful traders who help to advance our knowledge in this area. The bonuses will be awarded as a “thank you” for advancing our research into profitable trading strategies.
The rules to our programs remain the same, as we believe adhering to these rules has the highest probability of successfully furthering our research.
We have demonstrated since 2021 that we are the most trusted firm in the industry, and we believe that of all the firms in this space, we can and will continue to deliver on our promises.
Transparency Report
To do this effectively, we believe that sharing as much information as possible with you as customers is the only way to repair the harm caused by the allegations circulating within the industry towards other firms. Our commitment to you is that we will continue to be open, honest, and truthful. We are sharing with you today our commitment to providing regular Transparency Reports for our community, so that you can continue to ask the question “is this firm legitimate”, and we hope that you will always be able to answer “yes”.
To expand on what we shared earlier, in 2023 to date Funded Trading Plus has only denied 1.74% of all withdrawals. The reasons for these include but are not limited to having clear evidence of:
Cheating / Arbitrage;
Hedging between accounts or grid trading;
Copy trading / trading syndicates;
Failure to complete KYC, and;
Fraudulent purchasing behaviour (i.e. credit card theft)
The remaining 98.26% of customers who wished to proceed to withdrawal were paid their funds. We are proud that this number is so high, and we believe that it is likely to be one of, if not the highest in the industry.
Thank You
Lastly, on behalf of the whole team at Funded Trading Plus, we want to thank you for your continued support, humour, and skills that you have shown throughout the firm’s history. We hope this news will help us to go from strength to strength together as a community.
As ever, you will see Simon in Discord. He regularly answers direct messages, but most frequently you will find him in General Chat. If you have not yet joined our community, you can join here https://discord.gg/hAQkcBr8 – we hope to speak to you soon.
Thank you again, from the Founders & Owners of Funded Trading Plus.
Simon
Chief Executive Officer & Founder
James
Chief Operating Officer & Founder
Michael
Chief Marketing Officer & Founder