Do you suspend my trading account if I lose a certain amount of money?
If your account is in deficit by 10%, you will be required to stop trading. Your account will be reviewed and recommendations made. We may allow you to continue or we may recommend that you stop.
Do you benefit from my trading data?
The BluFX project relies on the trading data from a wide range of traders with different approaches, strategies and ability. This data drives our risk management and automated trading strategies. The more trader data we have, the better our behavioural models.
What’s the lot size I can trade?
The lot size is the amount of currency you can trade against the base currency. Different currency pairs will have different contract specifications. For detailed information about limits, margin, position size and other trading account parameters please refer to this blog: https://blog.blufx.co.uk/blufxmargin
What currency pairs am I allowed to trade?
We offer 28 of the most liquid pairs. For detailed information about limits, margin, position size and other trading account parameters please refer to this blog: https://blog.blufx.co.uk/blufxmargin
Other prop firms start you on a demo account, do you provide demos?
We do not provide demo accounts. We would prefer our traders to trade live with an FCA brokerage account and we control and assume losses on a global basis, rather than have them create unrealistic results on a demo.
What are your spreads?
The spread is the difference between buy and sell price for a currency pair. Our spreads include all commissions. As our spreads are variable, the size of this difference will depend on the specific pair and time of day as well as market volatility. This variable is set by our liquidity providers and is much better than retail traders typically get from their brokers and is in line with professional traders expectations. EURUSD for example is around 1.2 pips during the normal European trading session.
Are you FCA regulated?
We do not hold clients’ money or trade for the public. We are not brokers and do not require FCA regulation. All our funded accounts are held by our FCA regulated broker.
What is the upgrade or downgrade procedure?
If you would like to upgrade or downgrade your subscription you may do that at the end of your subscription cycle. However, if you would like to do it before your subscription cycle ends then you may pay the difference in package fee. Your upgrade will be applied immediately to your existing subscription cycle. Mid-cycle downgrades will also be applied immediately to the existing cycle.
Can I take a break and re-join later?
Flexibility is the main strength of the BluFX platform. You may start and stop trading after each subscription cycle. Your account and MT4 will be ready to go when you are ready to continue.
How important are your trading terms and conditions?
The BluFX platform is driven by trader data and behavioural risk management models. To that end we impose the absolute minimum restrictions on trading strategy and styles. The trading terms and conditions are a function of our risk management and must be followed by all traders. Please read the terms and conditions for your subscription package before trading.
What do you provide to help me with my trading?
We provide funding with no strings attached. We do not tell you how to trade or offer any advice. We believe that the funding should be the easiest part of trading.
Whats so unique about BluFX?
The BluFX project is unique in that it allows any trader with any experience to compete for serious amounts of funding, for an amount that is lower than the typical cost of using your own money at a broker to create a track record and then seeking funds to trade serious amounts.
Do BluFX provide education?
BluFX provide funding for experienced traders. We do not provide any training or make trading recommendations. We provide the funds and you provide the trading talent.
How do I know the accounts are real?
Our accounts are held by an FCA regulated UK broker. They clearly differentiate between live and demo platforms. All our accounts connect to their live platform. We do not offer demo accounts.
How can BluFX make money when most traders lose?
BluFx make money by operating a risk and funding matrix. The majority of traders are at the bottom of the matrix and receive the least funds and generate the most behavioural data. At the other end of the matrix are the fewest traders and our behavioural AI which receive the most funds and data. Our AI trades 8 currencies, our traders trade 28 permutations of those currencies. Losses at trader level are manageable as long as our trading guidelines are followed by all participants.
Why isn’t there any trader history, background or records verification?
The BluFX project relies on the trading data from a wide range of traders with different approaches, strategies and ability. This data drives our risk management and automated trading strategies. The more trader data we have, the better our behavioural models and the more we are able to manage risk and the more traders are promoted to provide better returns alongside our AI. Our AI underpins the whole platform. Therefore the only verification or qualification needed is the trader's own strategy. Every trader regardless of background then has an equal chance of competing for promotion and increased funding.
Why do you charge a fee for me to trade?
The subscription fee is the innovation created by BluFX. It is designed to allow the maximum number of participants to compete with live accounts for increasing funding. The amount of the subscription is designed to offer better value than using a brokerage to try and increase account size. The fee covers risk mitigation. Trading risk is covered by our proprietary AI trading models.
What happens when I reach the 1 million portfolio?
If you reach the 1 million target, then we will offer you a position as a fund manager. At this point you will no longer have to pay a subscription fee. You will be compensated by a share of your profits.
What is your position on hedging?
You cannot place a buy and a sell in the same pair at once – this is unauthorised trading. You can place buy and sell in two correlated pairs – as long as it's not a technique that aims to circumvent margin limits.
Do you offer swap free Islamic accounts?
If you use our basic subscription for only intraday with no overnights, no swap charges would be incurred. Currencies in Islamic law are permitted to be exchanged at spot (today) according to AAOIFI Shariah Standards.
We currently do not offer swap free Islamic accounts.
What broker do you use?
We use Price Markets UK who are regulated by the FCA.
Why is leverage 1-10 on the platform but 1-3 elsewhere?
We have had to implement some changes to the way leverage and margin requirements are calculated due to ESMA regulations that came into effect on 08/2018. Hence lower leverage/higher margin requirements. The effective leverage remains 1-3.
Is there any way to get non-approved currencies removed all together so we don't run into this issue of unauthorised trading?
Our broker has these contracts available for other customers, we are unable to change this. We can and do set our own internal risk parameters that must be followed by each trader. These must be agreed to upon account funding. Traders unable to follow guidelines are an unacceptable risk within our business model.
Why did a certain price trade and even though I had an order there I did not get filled or traded with? My other broker platform always gives me a fill if the price is touched.
Your issue was caused by the actions of the liquidity providers that take the other side of your trades.
There are different types of spot FX systems with different ways of handling fills. Some brokers may use ECNs so that they guarantee fills if a certain price is traded. Other brokers route trades to liquidity providers.
We are not brokers and we trade through a broker that routes trades to liquidity providers. Therefore sometimes prices that are shown are not filled for everyone especially if it’s at a high or low. That’s because at that price, say the low of the day, the liquidity providers are not willing to keep sell orders at that level for long and shift their bid/offer spread upwards.
Therefore the first buy orders get filled and everyone else in the queue is disappointed. It’s simple supply and demand.
What trading platform do you use?
We use industry-standard MT4.
Are EAs or robots allowed?
We do not allow traders to use EAs or robots as our risk management setup currently prohibits this. We hope to develop the system to accommodate EAs in the near future.
What is the lot size?
The maximum lot size will depend on currency pair and amount of margin you have available. Different currency pairs will have different margin requirements. The lot size is the amount of currency you can trade against the base currency. Different currency pairs will have different contract specifications. For detailed information about limits, margin, position size and other trading account parameters please refer to our blog on BluFX margin.
Can leverage be changed?
Our trading parameters are all set in line with our analysis of vast amounts of trader data. We have set leverage at the level that allows traders who have developed strategies that do not rely on luck and are suitable for low risk and consistent returns when applied to large amounts of trading capital. Therefore our leverage level is fixed to achieve our objectives for the BluFX project.
When I take partial profits a new trade is created and it hurts my risk management - what can I do?
We would suggest that you enter positions with smaller lot sizes. That way you would be able to partially close your positions by closing the smaller units. This should help with your risk management. Otherwise, if you split a larger unit you will have a new position created again.
What are the commissions?
The commissions are integrated with the buy/sell spread. Different currency pairs will have different contract specifications.
The maximum amount of lots I can buy is 0.5. Are you aware that individual orders are capped to a max 0.5 lots?
If you want to place a position of long 0.73 lots you would need to enter orders of 0.5 and 0.23.
What type of account will I be trading on?
You will be trading on a live spot FX account at a UK FCA regulated brokerage.
I forgot to close my positions last night, what's happened?
Risk management is fundamental to the BluFX project. To provide our funding to traders with different strategies our risk team must be active when our traders are active. Our risk team comprises AI as well as humans. Trading unauthorised currency pairs or positions carried overnight or over the weekend represents a deviation from our models and forces the adoption of disproportionately expensive short-term risk management solutions. These include a variable hedging cost that will be passed on directly to the trader’s account. There is also a separate fixed carry fee that is applied per contract per night.
Therefore it’s very important that individual traders ensure compliance with our few trading guidelines especially regarding trading hours and currency pairs permitted.
Where possible the risk team will ask the trader to close the position or attempt to close them. This will cause the account to be restricted and existing passwords to become read-only or to stop working completely. A request must be made to the trader manager to recreate the passwords and enable normal trading.
What is the maximum risk per trade?
The trading guidelines are designed to have minimal restrictions on a trading strategy. Our platform is dependent on our risk management models and the few guidelines we do impose are a result of this function. There are no minimum or maximum limits for the number of trades or loss per trade. As stated before, the only limit is a total drawdown limit of 10%.
I had open positions on USDCAD and scaled out of half of my position to reduce my risk however in doing so my positions were closed and new ones opened at the scaled out lot size at a completely different entry price. What has happened?
This is a result of how our broker deals with partial position closes. When you make the original trade, for example, buying 0.5 lots GBPUSD, transaction number 123 is created.
When you decide to partially close the trade by closing 0.2 lots and running the remaining 0.3 lots the following happens; the original transaction of 0.5 lots long is closed and a new transaction is created of 0.3 lots long from the partial exit price.
This is an accounting function and does not change the profit or loss. If your new trade of 0.3 lots drops in price then your original trade of 0.5 lots would also have dropped in price from the partial exit point.
What are the trading hours? Are you allowed to hold positions overnight?
The trading hours that we operate in are 0600 - 2100 London Time. Trades may be opened and closed during this time which equates to the European session. No trades maybe opened outside these hours. Pro account holders may carry positions or close out positions outside this period. Basic account holders may not open or hold positions outside this period.
What is your reset policy?
Many traders prefer to continue from their previous balance at the start of each subscription cycle as they want to build a track record based upon the initial balance.
As long as traders have followed the trading guidelines and have not engaged in unauthorised trading then we can refinance the account to give a fresh start at the next subscription cycle upon request. This is subject to approval from the Risk Team.
Do you have a maximum daily loss?
The trading guidelines are designed to have minimal restrictions on trading strategy. Our platform is dependent on our risk management models and the few guidelines we do impose are a result of this function. There are no maximum loss limits per trade or per day. The only limit is a total drawdown limit of 10%.
I am on the 100k account - what happens when I make a loss?
After account growth, your drawdown limit remains 10%. Therefore on the 100k account, if you lose 10k your account will be reviewed by the risk team. They may reset you back to the lower level of 50k. However, you will not be reset to 50k just for being negative in the account.