Turtle – 1 Phase Challenge

The profit target on the stage 1 account is reached when the account equity reaches 10% gain above the initial starting equity.

There is no profit target for stage 2 funded accounts.

We calculate the daily loss limit based on the previous day’s end of day equity. This is calculated at 5PM EST, so ensure you know what time of day this is in your location.

All of this is calculated for you automatically inside your traders dashboard in real time, so you don’t need to calculate any of it, but you do need to understand it.

Example 1: 

The day’s starting balance was $100,000. You open a position and it goes into $10,000 profit and you close the trade before the end of the day. At the end of this day your account equity is $110,000 which is carried over to the second day. 

The second day your daily drawdown limit is reset with the new High-Water Mark being $110,000. If your daily drawdown limit is 3% on the Turtle account then the lowest your equity can reach is $110,000 – $3,300 = $106,700.

Example 2 (Violation): The day’s starting balance was $100,000. You open a position and it goes into $10,000 profit but you did NOT close the trade before the end of the day. Instead you moved your stop-loss to breakeven. At the end of this day your account equity is $110,000 which is carried over to the second day. 

On the second day the trade goes back to breakeven and is closed by your stop-loss. Even though the individual trade did not lose from the balance, you have lost more than the allowable amount (3% on a Turtle account) on a single day and this will be a hard violation and the account will be closed.

The Maximum Drawdown is static, which means it is calculated based on the initial balance and not the equity.

For example:

The Maximum drawdown of a 100K Turtle account is 6% of the initial balance. This means that the Maximum drawdown level is always 100K minus (100K x 6%) = 94K.

If you violate this rule, the account will be closed.

The minimum time to complete the Turtle Challenge is 10 trading days. There must have been at least one trade opened on 10 different days to successfully pass the challenge.

A trader may not reach the profit target with one large trade, then use significantly smaller lots to pass the minimum trading days.

When the account is reviewed if there is a large difference in lot size used to pass minimum time rule the challenge will be failed.

Trades must be fully executed trades, they can not just be opened and closed. Pending orders do not count towards the total.

You can take as much time as you need to complete the Turtle Challenge, as there is no maximum time limit. You are free to trade at your own pace as long as you do not breach the inactivity period.

All challenge and funded accounts are traded on a demo account so we can manage our risk. Your funded account is connected to a real funded account, which you are paid from.

To ensure trades can be copied effectively to the real account we can not tolerate any form of manipulation on any account.

Manipulation includes but not limited to:

• Tick scalping – constantly opening and closing trades in less than 30 seconds. We realise sometimes trades are closed instantly for one reason or another, so if there are occasional trades that are opened and closed in less time we won’t close your account.
• Arbitrage.
• Hedging between accounts.
• Delayed or frozen data feeds.
• Unrealistic fills that don’t take into account slippage, where a huge lot size is used and closed within a small amount of pips.
• Allowing others to trade your account.
• Copying others trades.
• Lot size manipulation – Traders cannot use a much smaller trade to pass the minimum days after hitting the profit target or to fill the minimum trading days. As a guide, the deviation can not be greater than a factor of 5.
  – Example 1: If your smallest lot size is 1 and your largest is 5 on similar assets, this is okay.
  – Example 2: If your smallest lot size is 0.1 and your largest is 5 on similar assets, this is not okay.
  – Example 3: If your trade 1 lot on EURUSD and hit your profit target and then trade 1 lot on LTCUSD to pass minimum days, this is not okay as LTC has a contract size of 1 while EURUSD has a contract size of 100,000. In this example, a 100 pip increase in LTCUSD would be equivalent to $10 but a 100 pip increase in EURUSD would be equivalent to $1,000.
  – Example 4: If you have 5 trades of EURUSD opened at the same time, each with a lot size of 1, your net position size is 5 Lots. Thus, if your smallest lot size is 0.5 lots, this is not okay.
• Taking advantage of the demo environment is also not permitted.
• Traders cannot trade digital currencies over the weekend to pass the minimum days.