Getting a payout doesn’t always mean you’re a profitable trader. Sounds weird? Let’s break it down 👇
Almost 10% of our traders make it to a payout—or even two or three. But many achieve it by taking big risks, overleveraging, or relying on one lucky streak.
But what happens after?
📉 They often breach accounts, blow up virtually funded accounts, or burn through evaluation retries.
We’ve seen it across the board:
💡 A trader with 2 payouts might still end up with a net cumulative loss when you look at their full trading history—including all the breached and failed virtually funded accounts, but even on a single account.
That’s why reaching a payout or two does always mean profitability. That might just be a momentary luck.
When you zoom out, the math doesn’t lie.
Let us show you one real example from 2024, which was quite a big lesson for us 👇:
We had a trader who reached 2 payouts totally worth $118,994. 🔥
Sounds pretty awesome, right? And everybody who saw his social media posts probably thought so too.
But let’s have a closer look and run some more numbers. 👀
The trader spent $29,104 to purchase 17 challenges. He managed to pass and get 4 virtually funded accounts. He blew all 4 of them eventually. As mentioned, he managed to get only 2 payouts altogether out of them, even though those two were obviously pretty huge ones. However, if counted all the 4 virtually funded accounts together, his cumulative P/L on them was $-42,505.51. And that’s including the large profits he made for a short time, and took the payout rewards for.
So obviously, the trader managed to make some decent money and that’s exciting.
But we cannot consider something like this as profitable trading. And as you can see, in the real markets or on a personal account, such a trader would end up losing his own money or the money of his investors.
🔍 What we ideally look at instead
We care about the full picture:
• How many accounts have you purchased in the last 3 months?
• How many have you breached or failed?
• What’s your average return vs. average drawdown?
• Is your strategy repeatable and sustainable over time?
📌 We’re not impressed by short-term spikes.
We back traders who show consistency, discipline, and long-term potential.
🚀 Want to become a real, long-term profitable trader?
Stick to smart risk management. Focus on repeatability, not just fast payouts. That’s how you build something real, something you can utilize also in the real world, outside of the prop firms—and that’s the kind of trader Fintokei backs.
💬 Final word?
2 or 3 payouts look good on the surface. But if your strategy can’t survive long-term, it’s just a lucky chapter—not a trading career. At Fintokei, we’re not here for quick flips.
💜 We back traders who build something real—and help them go further than they ever could alone.