Read for yourself, and make your own decision...
I previously wrote a glowing review for ETF (after receiving the bonus provided for leaving it) but after some further experience I need to share my full story.
After about a year with ETF I finally started to dial in my trading strategy enough to navigate their convoluted payout structure and achieved my 1st payout. And like so many others on here that I willfully ignored, it would also be my last.
My next payout sat on pending for over a week. (They’re just busy I told myself nothing to worry about.)
Then the day comes when you open your dashboard and your account is just gone (not failed mind you, because failure would of course leave the account accessible in your dashboard allowing you to go back and examine trades/fills in dispute of whatever farce they put forth to explain the closure, ITS GONE).
You will go to your email expecting there must be some mistake, surely there must be some notification or email from them explaining WHY your account has been wiped from existence right? NOPE. Radio silence.
And you know that customer service that’s just so great they’ll get back to you in 15 minutes even in the middle of the night on a weekend (while the money is flowing in their direction of course) good luck with that.
I spent the better part of a Monday, at least 12 hours from the closure itself, before getting ANY response. And it took going on their discord and pleading with their mods to have someone anyone respond to do so.
This was the matter of fact email I received 12 hours later as a response to the closure of the funded account I had slowly built to 10k in profits over a few months.
“Your payout request was denied because some of your crypto futures trades were executed at prices outside the achievable market bid-ask range, violating our trading policies. While limit orders are allowed, they must align with real market conditions at the time of execution. To avoid similar issues in the future, ensure all trades are within the bid-ask range, use reliable market data, and avoid strategies reliant on price anomalies. For detailed policy information, please refer to our Payout Audit FAQ and Trading Rules.
Thank You”
This perplexed me for a number of reasons, first of which being that it says absolutely nothing of the sort in any of the policy information or rules they laid out.
It says nothing about not being able to use limit orders or them needing to be within a certain percentage of the market.
The next being I traded almost exclusively MNQ/MGC I had maybe 2-3 MBT trades total in the entire life of the account for maybe ~$200 of the 10k total profit on the account. All of these trades were pretty uneventful, I did catch a take profit order toward the top of a move and I am assuming this was the trade in question (I say assume because as I said the account was wiped first and foremost and they have been unwilling to provide even the slightest detail to the fills in question)
So just know if you happen to catch a take profit order a few percent above the market (MBT only moves ~$100 per 1% so really not an unreasonable trade) you WILL be banned.
Weird how they are willing to let you slide on all those Stops you catch on the bottom though!
The worst part is I still had 5 other funded accounts with them! Well I did, as I continued to press them for further details about what actually happened it had become clear that they had no intention of providing anymore info as evidenced by this follow up email.
“We have already gone over what ticker we saw these issues with your account. We have internal tools that are able to find these specific issues and we stand by the closer of your account.
Although we understand and appreciate your advocacy for our products, we take situations like this very seriously to ensure a safe trading space for all traders.
We will reiterate the last line in the previous email. You are free to continue trading with ETF, but if the trading behavior observed on _______ continues, you will be banned from using ETF services.”
That last line essentially saying, yes I am aware we are providing you with no other information as to what you did or how or why your account was closed, but make sure you don’t do it again or we’ll close the rest of them.
This is the entire email I sent them in reply to the previous email.
“If you’re forcing me to take this public I am sure after I upload my update you will find a need to explain further details publicly, and I’ll leave it to your P.R. and mods to handle that dumpster fire when it comes to it. Good day.”
Me saying I would come here and share this experience was apparently viewed as a threat to them and all of my other 5 funded accounts were banned as well.
I don't see it as a loss though, by then they had shown their colors and I would have just wasted time trading those accounts for them to make up excuses not to payout.
After about a year with ETF I finally started to dial in my trading strategy enough to navigate their convoluted payout structure and achieved my 1st payout. And like so many others on here that I willfully ignored, it would also be my last.
My next payout sat on pending for over a week. (They’re just busy I told myself nothing to worry about.)
Then the day comes when you open your dashboard and your account is just gone (not failed mind you, because failure would of course leave the account accessible in your dashboard allowing you to go back and examine trades/fills in dispute of whatever farce they put forth to explain the closure, ITS GONE).
You will go to your email expecting there must be some mistake, surely there must be some notification or email from them explaining WHY your account has been wiped from existence right? NOPE. Radio silence.
And you know that customer service that’s just so great they’ll get back to you in 15 minutes even in the middle of the night on a weekend (while the money is flowing in their direction of course) good luck with that.
I spent the better part of a Monday, at least 12 hours from the closure itself, before getting ANY response. And it took going on their discord and pleading with their mods to have someone anyone respond to do so.
This was the matter of fact email I received 12 hours later as a response to the closure of the funded account I had slowly built to 10k in profits over a few months.
“Your payout request was denied because some of your crypto futures trades were executed at prices outside the achievable market bid-ask range, violating our trading policies. While limit orders are allowed, they must align with real market conditions at the time of execution. To avoid similar issues in the future, ensure all trades are within the bid-ask range, use reliable market data, and avoid strategies reliant on price anomalies. For detailed policy information, please refer to our Payout Audit FAQ and Trading Rules.
Thank You”
This perplexed me for a number of reasons, first of which being that it says absolutely nothing of the sort in any of the policy information or rules they laid out.
It says nothing about not being able to use limit orders or them needing to be within a certain percentage of the market.
The next being I traded almost exclusively MNQ/MGC I had maybe 2-3 MBT trades total in the entire life of the account for maybe ~$200 of the 10k total profit on the account. All of these trades were pretty uneventful, I did catch a take profit order toward the top of a move and I am assuming this was the trade in question (I say assume because as I said the account was wiped first and foremost and they have been unwilling to provide even the slightest detail to the fills in question)
So just know if you happen to catch a take profit order a few percent above the market (MBT only moves ~$100 per 1% so really not an unreasonable trade) you WILL be banned.
Weird how they are willing to let you slide on all those Stops you catch on the bottom though!
The worst part is I still had 5 other funded accounts with them! Well I did, as I continued to press them for further details about what actually happened it had become clear that they had no intention of providing anymore info as evidenced by this follow up email.
“We have already gone over what ticker we saw these issues with your account. We have internal tools that are able to find these specific issues and we stand by the closer of your account.
Although we understand and appreciate your advocacy for our products, we take situations like this very seriously to ensure a safe trading space for all traders.
We will reiterate the last line in the previous email. You are free to continue trading with ETF, but if the trading behavior observed on _______ continues, you will be banned from using ETF services.”
That last line essentially saying, yes I am aware we are providing you with no other information as to what you did or how or why your account was closed, but make sure you don’t do it again or we’ll close the rest of them.
This is the entire email I sent them in reply to the previous email.
“If you’re forcing me to take this public I am sure after I upload my update you will find a need to explain further details publicly, and I’ll leave it to your P.R. and mods to handle that dumpster fire when it comes to it. Good day.”
Me saying I would come here and share this experience was apparently viewed as a threat to them and all of my other 5 funded accounts were banned as well.
I don't see it as a loss though, by then they had shown their colors and I would have just wasted time trading those accounts for them to make up excuses not to payout.
Response from Elite Trader Funding
We kindly ask that you refrain from posting fake reviews.
ETF Team
ETF Team