City Traders Imperium Review

City Traders Imperium Review

Founded in the UK, City Traders Imperium is a London-based prop firm with a team that features over 4 decades of trading experience. The UK prop firm has many benefits, none more so than offering 100% profit split, should you scale your account up successfully. City Traders Imperium also offers the following highlights:

• Great range of trading plans
• Fees starting at $99
• Instant funding available
• Achievable trading objectives
• Longer trading limits

Trading Plans and Accounts

• City Traders Imperium offers 3 trading plans as follows:
• Challenge
• Evaluation (Standard + Classic)
• Direct

Our assessment is that each plan is quite different and suited to traders of all levels of experience. The Challenge plan is designed for beginners, Evaluation, consisting of Standard or Classic, is for intermediate traders and Direct is for experienced or professional traders.

We have broken down each City Traders Imperium’s three trading plans in more detail below.

Challenge

The Challenge plan features starting capital of between $10,000 and $100,000, with a 2-phase audition required to qualify for a funded account. For the audition, you’ll need to make a 10% profit for phase 1 and 5% for phase 2. We found this is in line with the industry standard for 2-phase audition plans, based on our analysis of other prop firms.

In achieving this profit target, you’ll have to stay within a max daily drawdown of 4% and a max total drawdown of 10%. The max daily drawdown is based on your starting balance for the day while the max total drawdown is taken from your initial starting balance.

You’ll have up to 45 days to achieve the profit target and stick within the max drawdown limits, for each phase of the audition. We consider this a reasonable amount of time for a 2-phase audition plan.

Once you pass both phases of the audition, you’ll receive a funded account based on the starting capital you signed up for.

Your profit split starts at 80%, which you can increase to 90% if you qualify for Tier 1 and 100% for Tier 2. To qualify for Tier 1, you must hit the following trading objectives:

1. 1. Make at least 10% profit within 4 consecutive months with 2 out of 4 months being profitable
   2. Process 2 withdrawals within those 4 months on the 80% profit split
   3. Your account balance must be positive at the end of the 4th month

To qualify for Tier 2, you must scale up your account three times (I.E. repeat Tier 1 three times).

Fees start at $99 for the $10K account and work all the way up to $509 for the $100K account. We believe these fees are relatively cheap, in comparison to similar prop trading accounts. All fees are quoted in USD.

Evaluation

Within the Evaluation plan, you can choose two different account types:

• Standard
• Classic

Both accounts are very similar, each with a 1-phase audition to pass in a smaller evaluation account before qualifying for a funded account. Your only difference between accounts is the trading time limit allowed and profit target.

The evaluation account starts at $2,500 and goes up to $17,500. $2,500 will get you a $10,000 funded account and $17,500 will give you a $100,000 account once you pass the audition. You earn 50% of your profits during the audition, which is rare for a prop firm from our analysis.

The Standard account gives you 12 months to achieve its profit target of 9% while Classic has no time limit to achieve a 7% profit. From our research, this is much more than what most prop firms offer.

To achieve your profit target, you are given a 5% max total drawdown for both accounts, with no daily drawdown limit – a major bonus of the Evaluation plan. CTI also imposes a 1.5% stop loss level for both Evaluation plans, which you must place for each order. A stop loss is an order you place that limits the amount you can lose from a trade if the market goes against you.

Once you pass the audition, you start with a profit share of 70% for both Standard and Classic accounts. This can be increased to 100% if you continue to earn 10% profit and scale your account up to a total of $2M in funding.

Fees are reasonable too, though slightly higher than the Challenge plan, ranging from $139 to $799.

Direct

The Direct plan is the only plan that features instant funding from day 1. As long as you cover the drawdown (max total loss of your initial balance) of 5%, you’ll continue to earn payouts at any time. While some prop firms offer instant funding, not many offer a path to 100% profit making City Traders Imperium unique in that sense.

Plans start from $10,000 and go up to $70,000, with a profit split of 70% as soon as you make a 10% profit. The other benefit of CTI’s Direct plan is that there are no time restrictions to make this profit target.

Like the Evaluation plans, the Direct plan also features a stop loss of 1.5%. This is common in some prop firms for risk management purposes.

Fees for the Direct plan are a little more expensive, ranging from $1,279 for the $10K account to $4,399 for the $100K account. This is why we suggested the Direct plan is a better funded trader program choice for more experienced traders and professionals, with higher barriers to entry.

Verdict of Trading Plans and Accounts

Overall, we surmise that City Traders Imperium has a good variety of accounts for prop traders with all levels of experience, from beginners to professionals. Fees are also lower than the industry average, with a profit split of up to 100%, which can’t be beaten.