Hi everyone! My name is Vlad, and I'm 41. I currently trade options using a delta-neutral strategy against prop firms like FTMO, FunderPro, and others. Right now, I'm trading with my capital (a bit over $100k) and funded accounts totaling over $1M. I created this topic to share insights with those who want to earn from the market itself — and I emphasize from the market, not from prop firms. Why? Because, unlike some prop firms, the options market always pays — if you're right, you get paid. It's that simple. Of course, I've had both good and bad experiences. I lost small amounts with companies like The Funded Trader, Blue Guardian, TFF, Funded Engineer, and a few others — but despite that, I'm still averaging around 40% annual growth on my capital. Thank you for reading, and good luck with your trading!
Thank you for the clarification. I just wanted to start somewhere The core idea behind my strategy is that, by using options, we as traders can hedge our funded challenges in prop firms. If the risk is calculated properly, we can earn from the theta decay of options, regardless of the market direction, which in turn offsets the risk of a prop firm not paying out the profits. Of course, there are commissions, slippage, swaps, and other factors to consider. However, based on my 1.5 years of trading this strategy, the average ROI that can realistically be achieved is around 40%, taking all those risks into account. There were instances where I lost up to $20,000 in a single transaction (for example, Blue Guardian failed to pay out the profit and closed the funded account without explanation). Even those risks are covered by the theta from options. I’d be happy to answer any questions, and I hope you’ll find it interesting to explore my social media and YouTube channels.
This makes no sense. If you are hedging then you are offsetting risks. If Blue Guardian didn't pay out, then that implies that leg earned and your hedge lost, and then you lost more because Blue Guardian credit risk (which is unhedgeable). If you are doubling down or doing something different then that's fine, but it doesn't sound like hedging with your posts.
Of course, you're absolutely right that if a prop firm doesn’t pay out profits, the strategy loses its purpose. But not every firm fails to pay. As I mentioned in my first message, I am receiving payouts (as are the traders who have already joined me on Discord). My point was that by diversifying risk across multiple prop firms, the overall exposure is significantly reduced — one firm may not pay, but another will, and so on. Over time, I've been trading this way, thanks to the high theta decay of options, a substantial positive margin has been generated.
You're not shorting gamma as a hedge. You're on step 3 of Gambler's Anon. You don't know what you're doing so you're going to go bust in both venues.
In the past, I would manually calculate the amount of risk I could afford to take on against a particular challenge. But over time, the strategy evolved, and now I rely more on delta than on other parameters. Additionally, all prop firms have a fundamental flaw in their calculation of the daily swap fees that traders must pay to hold positions. For example, FTMO charges only $40 per day in swaps to hold a position of 10 ETH, even though the average implied volatility (IV) of this asset is around 70%. This creates a significant arbitrage opportunity with a large margin. Because if you compare a prop firm challenge to an option, it's essentially the same thing. The trader pays a fixed amount for the opportunity to earn unlimited profit.