Howdy Larkers! This is Lark Digest, and we’re like the Mr.Beast of trading - Delivering you wild content and selling sweet treats.

Mr.Lark

On today’s menu:

• He spent $100,000 on challenges!? 🤯 

• True Forex Funds CEO goes full transparency mode 👀 

🤯 He Spent $100,000 On Challenges!?

I thought my wife had a spending problem after taking her to Barnes & Noble but boy was I wrong.

Just take a look at this tweet from a trader who spent $100,000 on challenges.

*No, that is not a typo. Yes, my hands are literally shaking just trying to type that many zeros.*

As you can see, there’s some drama between the client Sandy and the firm they used, Bespoke Funding.

But that’s a story for another day.

The point here is that this trader spent $100,000 on challenges.

Insane!

So the question is, at that point, if you have that kind of money, are challenge accounts still worth it, or should you just trade personal capital?

As always, here’s the Lark Breakdown.

1/ Challenge Accounts

At $500 a pop, you could buy 200, $100,000 challenges.

Assuming the following conservative stats (sorry, liberals):

• 50% pass rate.

• 25% payout rate.

• 5% average payout.

• Total payouts = $125,000

• Total profit = $25,000

Now, obviously, you would want your numbers to be better than this.

You should only be taking a challenge once you have a well-defined edge and are profitable.

So, for all you liberals out there, what happens if you assume the following?

• 80% pass rate.

• 50% payout rate.

• 5% average payout.

• Total payouts = $400,000 🤯 

• Total profit = $300,000

Okay, now that’s completely wild.

Now obviously, these are top 1% stats. No, this is by no means easy to achieve and we don’t want you to think it is.

But with these numbers in mind, what’s the case for trading a personal account?

2/ Personal Account

If you’re dropping 6-figures into a personal trading account, you can make some big moves.

But there’s an under-discussed aspect to doing that.

And that’s that trading personal capital is way more difficult emotionally.

Like 100x.

But still, let’s assume the following.

• Account size = $100,000

• Monthly compounded return = 5%

• Annual return with no withdrawals = $79,585

• Annual return with monthly withdrawal = $60,000

So, basically, it comes down to your stats.

At a certain point, trading a personal account can lead to larger returns. But you need a huge account.

Personally, the second I got funded in 2021, I stopped trading my personal account.

I know I said trading a personal account is 100 times harder emotionally. But for me, it was closer to 1,000 times harder.

As for the trader who spent $100,000 on challenges?

• It would be interesting to know his trading stats.

• We hope the situation gets resolved and he receives his payout.

😏 Active Goodies

Our 2-year anniversary is now only 23 days away!

That means we’ve been operating for 708 days without denying a single payout.

Now more than ever, reliability and trust should be the top priorities of every trader when choosing an evaluation program.

So, as always, if you have any questions or concerns, just reply directly to this email.

👀 True Forex Funds CEO Reveals All

Another day = another firm with another issue.

True Forex Funds is one of the largest firms in the industry, but its CEO just went full transparency mode and revealed some wild things.

Here’s what you need to know.

1/ NO A-BOOKING

The first takeaway is that even with “significant investments,” True Forex Funds has not been able to profit from traders' data.

To take it one step further, they also claim that any firm claiming that they have are lying.

This is interesting as some new firms have recently launched saying they A-Book every trader and there’s “real capital” behind them.

How do they do that?

They claim they do so because their challenges are more difficult to pass.

*Okay, okay, so far, I’m following what’s going on here.*

But once you visit their website, by “harder”, they mean the profit target is like 1-2% higher, and there’s 1-2% less drawdown room.

Now, I know an insanely hard challenge when I see one, and that’s not it.

So for firms claiming they’re A-Booking all funded traders with “real capital”, we raise a huge eyebrow to that.

And so would the CEO of True Forex Funds.

2/ IT ALL STARTED WITH METAQUOTES

This is maybe the most wild part of the story.

When MetaQuotes shut them off earlier this year, the company spent all the money it had accumulated in 2.5 years to try and relaunch.

This means that if it weren’t for MetaQuotes shutting off firms, True Forex Funds would be in a completely different position.

The willingness to spend what we imagine is a huge amount of money to relaunch is impressive.

But it’s now led to another issue for the firm.

3/ 300 DELAYED PAYOUTS

Spending two and a half years worth of savings to relaunch the company has led to “a backlog of 300 pending payouts.”

Ouch.

And obviously, this is the real point in the story that traders are focused on.

Trust and reliability are at an all-time low across the industry, and we all know why.

The CEO went on to say that they “cannot provide a definitive timeline for resolving these delayed payouts” but they’re “committed” to settling the payouts ASAP.

4/ THE TAKEAWAY?

There’s a ton to learn from this post.

Let’s cut to the chase:

1. A-Booking Difficulties. Finding a profitable way to utilize a trader’s data is incredibly difficult. The only solution is to make the rules more strict, and at Lark, we believe this is where the industry is headed.

2. MetaQuotes Started The Snowball. Would the industry be in it’s current state had MetaQuotes not shut off firms? Maybe. But maybe not. This post shows the major ramifications of that one industry change.

3. Valid Payout Concerns. Traders are more concerned than ever about their payouts being honoured, and they have every right to be. We hope this gets resolved ASAP, and we do think the full transparency mode is the right approach.

PS: We launched Lark Funding 708 days ago and have never denied a single payout.

☕️ Pre-Market Fuel

Here’s a bunch of cool stuff I’ve recently come across. So when your trading buddies ask you what’s new, you can hit them with these.

1/ Is Buffett Predicting A Market Crash? Just look at the $188 billion he’s holding in cash and what’s happened in the past when he’s held record amounts of cash.

2/ Another Suspended Company. Prop Firm Match just suspended My Flash Funding and another firm yesterday.

3/ The $68 million crypto loss. If you’re having a bad day, just remember you’re not the person who sent $68 million to the wrong crypto address and lost everything. Instantly.

🍪 Digestible Memes

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