Experienced Trader vs. Advanced Trader Program – Which FTP Challenge Should You Take?

Funded Trading Plus came onto the prop firm scene with one of the biggest benefits to taking a successful prop trading challenge: they removed the challenge time limit. 

This post contains affiliate links. I have personally chosen to promote Funded Trading Plus because I firmly believe they are a professional, realistic, and helpful prop firm with reasonable challenge rules. I am not asked to post these reviews but do so out of my own choice. 

Many firms, like FTMO or MyForexFunds, offer challenges with 30-day time limits – including full days when trading isn’t possible. 

Frankly, this is an unnecessary pressure – you’re not necessarily a better trader because you can capture profit quickly. It’s a challenge rule that typically benefits the prop firm (rather than the prop trader) because most people buckle under the pressure of needing to perform fast. 

So Funded Trading Plus offered the kind of challenges they would also want as traders, themselves – challenges without a time limit. 

Under this model, you can take as much time as you need to profit. For many traders, this means being able to risk a responsible amount per trade (closer to 1% or less, rather than the 2% standard encouraged to traders who are risking their own money). It also means that you won’t necessarily have to fail a challenge and retake it again in order to get through a less-than-stellar month for your strategy. An (unnecessary) added pressure is removed from a challenge that is already difficult, as it is. 

[Want 10% off of your Funded Trading Plus challenge? Use DFX10 at checkout!]

Funded Trading Plus’ Challenge Offers

Now that you want to take on a prop firm challenge with FTP, you have a couple of options. The firm offers three programs: Experienced Trader, Advanced Trader, and Master Trader program. 

This article is focused on the first two options, as they are very similar yet come with different rules that may be more or less appropriate depending on your style of trading – we’ll talk about these distinctions soon. 

The third option, the Master Trader program, was recently updated as a program that offers instant funding with a 70/30%, trader/firm, profit split. This is a more expensive program than the others and does not come with any initial challenge phase. The major rule is to keep above the 5% trailing drawdown in order to maintain the account.They allow for weekly withdrawals above $50. It’s a fantastic arrangement for anyone with considerable trading experience, evidence of consistent profitability, and enough expendable income to float the initial fee.

For those who do not wish to spend more than $999 (Or $909, with a DFX discount – you can use DFX10 at checkout!), there are two other challenge options to choose from. While they may appear vastly similar, each has its own benefits for different stylese of traders. Let’s explore!

Experienced Trader Program vs. Advanced Trader Program

Seeing is believing – to start, let’s look at each program’s features, as they are displayed on FTP’s program pages, to get an idea of their similarities and differences.

Below is the Experienced Trader Program:

Key Features:

  • Single Phase, no verification phase required
  • Daily drawdown: 3%
  • Maximum Relative Drawdown: 6%
  • 10% Profit Target for scaling-up the funded account
  • No stop-loss required
  • Able to hold trades overnight and overweekend
  • Additional $12.5k option

 

Below is the Advanced Trader Program:

advanced trader program funded trading plus

Key Features:

  • Two-phase: Assessment #1 (10% target) and Assessment #2 (5% target)
  • Daily Drawdown: 5%
  • Maximum Relative Drawdown: 10%
  • 20% Profit Target for scaling-up the funded account
  • Stop-loss required for each trade
  • Do not hold trades over weekend

Both programs cost the same for their individual account sizes. Both offer MT4/MT5 accounts, offer an 80/20 profit split, allow for maximum 1:30 account leverage, and allow EA bots.

However, there are some distinct differences as well. With only one phase to complete, only a 10% profit target for scaling, and the option for over weekend trades, Experienced Trader Program seems to offer the better deal. And if that’s what you’re thinking – you’re probably right!

Let’s face it – challenges are overwhelming. Undergoing two phases, even when one has a smaller profit target, is still more challenging than undergoing only one. There are a significant number of traders who fail their second challenge with firms like MyForexFunds and FTMO. Granted, those are time-limit-based challenges, but the risk is all the same. On a psychological level, sometimes trading a prop challenge feels more stressful than trading a funded account. Perhaps it’s better to deal with only one phase.

But before we completely write off the Advanced Trader Program, let’s consider its one key benefit: The maximum and daily drawdowns are 1.66x the size of those offered by the Experienced Trader Program. 

That means for every 1% you can risk with the Experienced Trader, you could be risking up to 1.66% for Advanced Trader. 

If you’re risking 0.5% per trade, this allows you 3x the number of trades or opportunities.

So with this understanding, we can now see who might benefit from the Advanced Trader program – either individuals who are comfortable risking more per trade in order to capture bigger wins (this works best when your take profit targets vary in size with unlimited potential) or for traders who scalp multiple trades a day and would like the extra wiggle room for safety.

The Verdict: Experienced or Advanced?

Now that you understand that the one key difference between these two programs is the drawdown allowance, you should be able to discern whether this added benefit is worth the trade-off of missing out on a single-phase challenge, over-weekend trades, and half the target for scaling.

For most people, I believe the Experienced Trader Program is the better option of the two.

There are too many additional benefits that outweigh the allowances of the Advanced Trader Program. 

[Want 10% off of your Funded Trading Plus challenge? Use DFX10 at checkout!]

Remember, you don’t need to rush the challenge by taking bigger risks on your trades or over-leveraging your account. If you want to be able to have more opportunities to scalp or trade each day, you can always cut down on your risk per trade. Risking 1% or less per trade for this challenge option is optimal. If you take more than 2 trades per day, cut that down to 0.75% or less. 

Overall, Funded Trading Plus is a professional and reliable prop firm for achieving realistic results with funded account trading. They are the only firm I go out of my way to promote, not because they sponsor my posts (they don’t), but because I firmly believe this is one of the most professional, trustworthy, and reasonable firms out there.