Complete Prop Firm Review: Blue Guardian

Is this the Next Best 2-Stage Prop Firm?

(This post contains affiliate links. I have voluntarily chosen to spread the word about Blue Guardian because I believe it offers one of the best parameters for a prop trading challenge that you can currently find)

While FTMO has become the industry standard of prop firms for online retail trading, it’s also one of the more difficult challenges to pass with live account rules that are lackluster. You’re required to hit a 10% profit target within 30 days, followed by a second challenge round of a 5% profit target within 60 days. When you are fully funded, if you don’t have a swing account, then you are not allowed to trade news events nor hold trades overnight. But if you do have a swing account to avoid that nonsense, then it becomes really expensive to scalp with a 1:30 leverage. Their payout rate is 80% of what you return. 

Since FTMO came onto the scene a few years ago, many other prop firms have risen out of the woodwork to compete with better rules and rewards for prop traders. Some of these firms (like MyForexFunds and Funded Trading Plus) have offered slightly lower profit targets or have removed the time limit altogether. Others may have changed their rules to offer seemingly attractive offerings, but include other, less desirable restrictions such as requiring a profit percentage before you’re allowed to take your payout or a reduced limit on daily and maximum drawdown. 

Prop firms have to dance a little dance between allowing attractive trading conditions and making sure only truly profitable traders make it to a funded account. And less ethical firms make up just enough difficult rules to ensure that next to no one gets a payout but offer enough hope to keep you coming back. Therefore, we have to become conscious and diligent buyers who are committed to doing our due diligence by reading through the entire prop firm website and asking questions of help desks before signing up to take a challenge. Speaking of which, even though you are reading a review right now, don’t even think about signing up for Blue Guardian until you’ve read through their offerings and FAQ page. I’m here to distill enough information for you to get an idea of whether it’s worth your time to do more research about Blue Guardian on your own. 

I have a rule that I only promote prop firms that are ethical, reliable, and offer some kind of new benefit that the gold standard prop firms like FTMO and MyForexFunds don’t currently provide. Blue Guardian is probably the most exciting new prop firm I’ve yet to see, with much awaited improvements on standard time-limit trading conditions. 

Today, I want to share with you a prop firm that may offer not just a good deal for traders, but perhaps the BEST PROP TRADING CHALLENGE CONDITIONS I have yet to see. 

May I introduce to you, Blue Guardian.

To properly examine the benefit of signing up with this relatively new and lesser known prop firm, let’s cover their challenge rules for their main and only challenge plan.

Blue Guardian offers only one style of a prop trading challenge, a two-phase, time-limit challenge, which is most comparable to FTMO and MyForexFunds. Using a $100,000 account as our example, here are the stats for their challenge requirements as of April 2023:

The trading period for phase 1 is 40 days and for phase 2 it is 80 days. (This is compared to 30 days and 60 days, respectively, for other standard 2-phase prop firms)

They require a minimum number of trading days of 5 days, but 0.01 lot sizes are allowed if the target is hit before the 5 days are up.

The require profit target for phase 1 is 8% while phase 2 is 4%.

The maximum loss for all phases, including the funded phase, is 10%, while the max daily loss for all phases is 4%. 

The account leverage is 1:100. Commission is $6 per lot. They offer options for mt4 or mt5 platforms. EA’s and trade copiers are also allowed.

The profit split for payout is 85%, while most firms only offer 65-80%. 

The fee is $517 and is refundable with the first payout.

Payouts can be requested bi-weekly, including the first two weeks you trade (other firms, like MyForexFunds make you wait a whole month for your first payout before allowing you to switch to bi-weekly payouts)

Traders can acquire up to $400,000 through challenges and may be able to scale up to $2,000,000 in funds. Their scaling plan is that a trader needs to make at least 12% within 3 months before being allowed to scale up by 30%. 

They also allow for free retries if the account is in profit by the end of the maximum time and hasn’t experienced a violation of max daily loss or max drawdown.

Overall Impression:

 

As you can see from the above parameters, Blue Guardian blows FTMO out of the water when it comes to creating a more realistic and comfortable trading environment for the prop trader, while also creating enough of a challenge to prevent irresponsible trading styles from getting funded. 

At 85%, Blue Guardian takes the lead in offering one of the most profitable payout splits in this industry. While FTMO requires a 10% phase 1 target within 30 days, Blue Guardian requires 8% and gives you ten extra days to make it happen. While MyForexFunds requires you to wait a whole month before you can withdraw profit, Blue Guardian lets you withdraw funds within 2 weeks. They require a less expensive sign-up fee than FTMO. 

Overall, Blue Guardian is hands-down one of the best deals available for prop firm trading. I highly recommend you check them out. I don’t doubt that more third-party reports of payouts are coming soon. I know I’ll be signing up for a challenge or two, myself. I’ll be sure to report when I do! 

If you’re excited about these prop trading conditions and want to learn more, I invite you to use any of the affiliate links on this page. Again, please do your due diligence and make sure these are the trading rules and conditions that are right for you and your trading style. If you have questions, don’t be afraid to use their convenient chatbot to get your answers before you pull out your wallet. 

As always, I wish you nothing but the best of strength and luck with your trading!