FTMO Rules, Read as Numbers

What a firm like this publishes

Search for a name such as FTMO and you will find many pages that repeat the firm's marketing. This one does the opposite. It does not tell you what any firm's rules are, because we have not saved a dated copy of them and rules change. It tells you what a firm of this kind has, so you know what to look for and where each item goes.

• An evaluation. A trial phase, sometimes more than one, before any funded stage. Look for how many phases there are and what each one asks.
• A profit target. A gain, as a percent of the account, to be reached inside the phase. Check whether there is a time limit.
• A daily loss limit. How far the account may fall inside one day. Check what it is measured against, whether open trades count and when the day resets. The guide on daily drawdown rules explains each choice.
• An overall loss limit. A floor under the account. It can be static or trailing, covered in trailing drawdown.
• Minimum trading days. A count of days on which you must trade. A bot that trades once a week may not meet it.
• A consistency rule. A cap on how much of the profit may come from one day. See the consistency rule guide.
• Rules on automation and copying. Whether a bot may be used, whether trades may be copied from another account, and what behaviour is banned. Read these word for word.

A made-up rule sheet, in money

Take a made-up firm and a $10,000 made-up account. Daily limit 5 percent, total limit 10 percent, profit target 8 percent. None of these figures belong to a real firm. In money they are $500, $1,000 and $800.

Now add a bot that risks 1 percent, or $100, on each trade. It needs 5 losses in a day to reach the daily limit and 10 losses in total to reach the overall limit. That sounds like a lot until you count what a bot does. A bot that trades ten times a day has ten chances a day to string losses together, and a bot that adds to losers can lose several steps in one move.

Worked example: what the numbers say about a bot

Suppose the bot wins 50 percent of trades. The chance of 5 losses in a row is 0.5 to the power 5, which is 3.13 percent (calculated by us on 31 Oct 2026, exact). That is about one in 32 for any one run of five trades. A bot that places thousands of trades will meet such a run many times. Each time it is a loss of $500 inside a day, which is the whole daily allowance in the made-up firm.

The profit target is a separate arithmetic problem. If each winner makes twice what a loser costs, one winner is $200, so 4 net winners reach $800, before spread, commission and slippage. The risk reward calculator and the win rate calculator turn your own odds into the same kind of numbers.

How bots break these rules

• Averaging and ladders. A martingale or a grid adds size as the loss grows, so a single move can use the whole daily limit.
• Costs. Spread and slippage are paid on every trade, so a bot with a thin edge can drift toward a limit without a single large loss.
• Rule blind spots. A bot tested on a plain backtest has never met a daily reset, a minimum-days rule or a consistency cap.
• Old rules. A test built on last year's rule sheet is only as good as that sheet.

How to check your own setup

Open the firm's current rules in one window. Write every limit as a number in a note. Run your bot's backtest and record the worst day, the deepest drawdown, the fewest trading days in a month and the share of profit from the best day. Put each beside its limit. If any of them is close, the bot needs a stop of its own inside that limit. The rules versus bot types page maps the rule types against the common bot designs.

What this page does not tell you

It does not tell you the rules, fees or targets of any firm, whether any firm allows bots, or whether a bot will do well in an evaluation. It is not affiliated with any firm and has no affiliate links. A real evaluation is a contract. Read it, and keep a dated copy.