Going Live

A real brokerage account trading Options Funding's own capital in real markets, not simulated trading. The account belongs to the firm; you trade it and keep 80% of realized net profit.

You cannot apply. Options Funding selects traders for Live at its sole discretion, based on performance and compliance, and sends you a Live Program Notice if you are chosen. There is no checklist to complete and no fee to pay. The Notice changes nothing on its own: every account you hold stays open and tradeable, and you have 30 calendar days to accept or decline.

Yes. Live transition is determined by Options Funding based on account performance and compliance.

You can decline, but you cannot keep trading either way. Nothing closes when the Notice is sent: every account you hold stays open and tradeable, and you have 30 calendar days to answer. Declining ends your participation and closes your accounts, and every payout request pending at that moment is paid to you in cash, capped at $3,000 in total for you. Evaluation fees already paid are not refunded, and declining is not a breach and creates no debt.

Nothing closes. On the date the Notice is sent, every evaluation and funded account you hold stays open and tradeable and billing is unchanged, and nothing closes until you answer, or until the 30 days run out. The one thing the Notice acts on is payouts: new requests are paused, and every payout request you had already submitted is held while your notice is open. It is not cancelled, and it is not paid in the meantime. It is resolved by your answer: accepting cancels it without payment, and declining pays it in cash, up to the cap.

30 calendar days from the date of the Notice. The deadline is shown to you and is recorded on your account. An unanswered notice expires after 30 days and is treated as a decline: your accounts close, billing stops, re-entry is barred, and no settlement is payable on an expired notice.

New payout requests are paused while your Live Program Notice is open. Every payout request you had already submitted is held while your notice is open. It is not cancelled, and it is not paid in the meantime. It is resolved by your answer: accepting cancels it without payment, and declining pays it in cash, up to the cap.

They are paid in cash. Every payout request pending at the moment you decline is summed across every account you hold and paid, capped at $3,000 in total for you as a trader. The cap is per person, not per account: five accounts with $2,000 pending each pays $3,000, not $10,000. Payment goes through the ordinary payout rail and needs the same tax and banking details, the Mercury W-9 or W-8BEN plus your bank details, that any payout needs. If you decline with no payout request pending, you are paid nothing.

While the Notice is open it is held. It is not cancelled, it stays open so you cannot submit a duplicate of it, and it is neither approved nor paid in the meantime. Your answer resolves it. If you accept, it is cancelled and you are paid nothing for it: nothing is credited in its place, and nothing about it is carried into your Live account or applied to your lock threshold. If you decline, it is paid to you in cash, capped at $3,000 in total for you. If you never answer, it is cancelled when the notice expires and nothing is paid for it.

No. Accepting is what closes them: your simulated accounts close and consolidate into one Live account, and the subscription behind each closed account is cancelled. This is expected and not an error. If your accounts closed and you had not answered the Notice, tell me and I will check the record, because the Notice on its own closes nothing.

No. You hold exactly one Live account no matter how many evaluation or funded accounts you held, and your allocated capital is set by the single largest eligible funded account you held on the date of the Notice. Plans are never added together: a trader who held five funded accounts receives the same Live account as a trader who held one of the same size. Every funded plan size we publish is eligible for advancement: $25,000, $50,000 and $100,000. Eligible does not mean selected, though: it means your plan size can be advanced, and admission stays at the firm's discretion at every size. The Live account is smaller in real dollars than the combined simulated nominal, because the capital at Live is real and it belongs to the firm.

Yes. At Live you keep 80% of realized net trading profit, paid by the firm from its own funds, and you can only ever withdraw profit, never the firm's capital. You can withdraw profit down to $100 above your drawdown floor and never below that, and a payout never includes what your open positions can still lose, so an open spread reduces what you can take until you close it. The $100 is there because reaching your floor ends the account, and a payout must never be the thing that reaches it. Nothing else is held back. You can make one payout request per Eastern Time calendar day. We decide your payout request when you make it, and we can decline or hold one that does not meet these rules or that is associated with conduct under review. Once it is approved the full amount is taken out of your account at once and your 80% share is sent the same day. Identity verification and tax documentation have to be complete before any payment is sent.

Yes, and it moves UP. Your floor trails the highest value your account has held at the end of a trading day, by your maximum drawdown, and never rises above break-even while it is trailing. Taking a payout sets it at break-even, and it never goes below break-even after that. It stops moving for good when it locks. It also ends your daily loss limit: from your first payout the limit no longer applies to you. Your floor never moves down.

No caps in Live. The minimum payout is $100.

Your drawdown is set by the funded plan you are promoted from: $5,000 on a 100K and $2,500 on a 50K and $2,000 on a 25K. Allocated capital is $50,000 on a 100K and $25,000 on a 50K and $12,500 on a 25K. Your floor trails the highest value your account has held at the end of a trading day, by your maximum drawdown, and never rises above break-even while it is trailing. Taking a payout sets it at break-even, and it never goes below break-even after that. It stops moving for good when it locks. Your floor locks at $100 above break-even at the end of the first day on which your total profit (every payout taken, the firm's share included, plus the profit in the account, unrealized included) reaches one hundred dollars above your allocated capital ($50,100 on a 100K and $25,100 on a 50K and $12,600 on a 25K) and your equity is at least $200 above break-even. If your profit gets there on a day your equity does not, the lock waits for the first day both are true. Your lock threshold is your drawdown, and nothing reduces it, brings it forward or offsets it. Reaching the floor closes the account.

Yes, while your drawdown floor is still trailing: $1,500 on a 100K and $750 on a 50K and $600 on a 25K. Hitting it closes every open position in your account and holds trading until 9:30 AM ET on the first trading day after the day you reach it. It is not a breach and it does not end the account, and it stops applying once your floor is locked or you have taken your first payout. Your floor trails the highest value your account has held at the end of a trading day, by your maximum drawdown, and never rises above break-even while it is trailing. Taking a payout sets it at break-even, and it never goes below break-even after that. It stops moving for good when it locks. The Live Program Rules at optionsfunding.co/live-program-rules publish it in full. Reaching the drawdown floor is what ends the account.

You are not left with nothing. The Live Trader Agreement terminates automatically, we restore the accounts that closed and lift the restriction on opening new ones, and your rights at the prior stage are unaffected. You are not penalised for a decision a broker made.

Yes. Trading is online. If you run into access issues, contact support.

No. The account belongs to Options Funding. You contribute no capital, hold no ownership or withdrawal right in the account itself, and never bear a trading loss: a losing day reduces what you can earn and is never a debt you owe.

$100, with no cap.

If you reach your drawdown floor in Live, the account closes permanently. There is no reset in Live.

A breached Live account ends permanently. Advancement to Live is one-way: once you have held a Live account you cannot return to an evaluation or funded account, so a closed Live account is the end of the program rather than a restart.

Yes. News trading is allowed in every phase, Live included. The same drawdown and daily loss limit apply.

US listed stock options and US listed index options, on any ticker. There is no symbol whitelist at the Live stage, and same-day expiries are permitted. Stock itself is closing only. You can close or reduce a stock position you already hold, including shares you were assigned, and you cannot open a stock position or add to one. Uncovered short options cannot be opened or increased. If assignment, exercise, or the expiry or closure of another leg leaves you holding a naked short option, closing it is permitted. Everything else is refused at the broker before the order reaches the market: futures, futures options, foreign exchange, bonds, mutual funds, metals, crypto, CFDs, warrants, structured products, event contracts and non-US products. Every position you open at the Live stage must be fully defined-risk: its maximum loss has to be calculable at the moment you enter it. This is the rule that changes most if you came from a Growth account, where undefined-risk positions are allowed. At Live they are not, so a naked or uncovered short leg cannot be opened or increased and a position whose worst case cannot be computed at entry cannot be opened at all. Closing or reducing something you already hold is always permitted, including a naked leg you were left with after an assignment.