Live Program Rules

1. Who these rules apply to

They apply to a trader Options Funding has admitted to the Live stage and who has signed the Live Trader Agreement. Admission is at the firm’s discretion and is not something a trader can request or earn by right.

Trading at the Live stage uses the firm’s own capital. The account is the firm’s, not the trader’s. A trader contributes no capital, holds no ownership or withdrawal right in the account itself, and never bears a trading loss: a losing day reduces what the trader can earn, and is never a debt they owe.

2. Allocation, drawdown and the daily loss limit

Your figures are set by the funded plan you are promoted from. Where you hold more than one funded account, the largest eligible plan sets your terms; plans are never added together.

One Live account, sized by your largest eligible plan. A trader holds exactly one Live account no matter how many evaluation or funded accounts they held. Allocated capital is set by the single largest eligible funded account held on the date of the Notice, and is never the sum of the accounts you held. A trader who held five funded accounts receives the same Live account as a trader who held one of the same size.

Eligible plan sizes for advancement are $50,000 and $100,000 only. A $25,000 funded account is not eligible for advancement, which is what the “not currently promoted” label in the table below means. A $100,000 funded plan gives $50,000 allocated capital, $50,000 buying power at entry, $5,000 max drawdown, and a floor that locks at $5,100 of profit. A $50,000 funded plan gives $25,000 allocated capital, $25,000 buying power at entry, $2,500 max drawdown, and a floor that locks at $2,600 of profit.

Say it plainly: the Live account is smaller in real dollars than the combined simulated nominal you held. The capital at Live is real and it is the firm’s, so it is sized to real risk rather than to the sum of simulated account labels.

The drawdown floor. Your floor starts one drawdown below your allocated capital and trails your peak equity upward. It never moves down, and a payout never moves it. Reaching it closes your open positions and ends the Live account. That is a permanent outcome, not a reset.

The lock. Once your realized profit reaches the figure in the last column, the floor locks permanently at one hundred dollars above your allocated capital and never moves again. From that point the trailing drawdown and the daily loss limit both stop applying. The restrictions in section 4 continue to apply in full.

That figure is fixed. It is the published threshold for your plan size, exactly as the last column states it, and nothing reduces it, brings it forward or offsets it. A payout does not move it. Neither does an account you closed, a payout request cancelled when you moved to Live, or anything else you did at an earlier stage. The only thing that reaches it is realized profit in the Live account itself.

The daily loss limit applies before the lock only. Losing that much in a single session ends your trading for the rest of that session. Your open positions are NOT closed for you and nothing is liquidated - anything you are holding stays on, and the drawdown floor still applies to it. It does not end the account and it is not a breach: you trade again the next session. It exists to stop a bad day becoming a final one, and it disappears once your floor is locked and the firm’s downside is zero.

3. Buying power and scaling

Buying power starts at the entry figure above and increases as realized profit grows, as a multiple of your plan size:

• At entry: 0.50× your plan size.
• At $2,500 realized profit: 0.75× your plan size.
• At $5,000 realized profit: 1.00× your plan size.
• At $10,000 realized profit: 1.25× your plan size.

A step up additionally requires at least thirty closed trades in the Live account whose average result is statistically greater than zero. Until thirty live trades exist, buying power stays at the entry level however much profit you have made. Profit alone does not move you up; the firm needs evidence the result is skill rather than a short lucky run.

The firm may reduce your step at any time, including where realized profit falls back below a threshold, where the statistical test no longer passes, or in response to elevated risk-taking. A reduction is not a termination.

4. What you may trade

Permitted instruments are cash-settled index options only: SPX, SPXW, XSP, NDX, RUT, VIX. Anything not on that list is prohibited.

You may not, unless the firm permits it in writing:

• Sell or write any option that is not fully defined-risk, including any uncovered or naked short option.
• Hold a short option position through expiration where assignment is reasonably foreseeable.
• Exceed any position, order size, notional or concentration limit set for your account.
• Take any position whose maximum loss cannot be calculated at the time of entry.

The firm configures pre-trade controls at the broker that reject orders breaching these limits. Those controls are a backstop, not a permission set: an order the broker does not reject is not thereby authorised.

The firm may close positions, suspend order entry, reduce allocated capital or restrict instruments at any time and without prior notice, including for reasons that have nothing to do with anything you did: firm-wide exposure, market conditions, or a broker requirement.

5. Payouts

You keep 80% of realized net trading profit. At the Live stage a payout is your contractual share of profit actually earned trading the firm’s capital, paid by the firm from its own funds.

• Minimum payout: $100.
• You can only withdraw realized profit above your allocated capital, and never an amount that would take your equity below your drawdown floor.
• A payout does not move your floor in either direction, and it does not bring the lock closer or push it further away.
• Identity verification and tax documentation must be complete before a payout is processed.

The firm reviews each request against these rules and the account’s realized results, and may decline or hold a request that does not satisfy them or that is associated with conduct under review.

6. The Live Program Notice, your 30 days, and what each answer does

Can I decline and stay on my funded account? You can decline, but you cannot keep trading either way. Nothing closes when the Notice is sent: you have 30 days to answer, and every account you hold stays open and tradeable until you do. Declining ends your participation and closes your accounts, and every payout request you had pending at that moment is paid to you in cash, up to $3,000 in total.

The Notice closes nothing. On the date your Live Program Notice is sent, no account of yours closes. Every evaluation and funded account stays open and tradeable. Billing is unchanged. Nothing is barred. Accounts close only when you answer, or when the 30 days run out. The one thing the Notice does act on is payouts, and that is set out below.

You have 30 calendar days from the date of the Notice to accept or decline. The deadline is shown to you and is recorded on your account.

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.

If you accept, then and only then: every evaluation and funded account you hold is closed; the subscription behind each closed account is cancelled; every payout request then pending is cancelled and you are paid nothing for it; you may not open, purchase or hold a further evaluation or funded account, including under a different email address; and a Live account is opened for you. Your accounts closing at that point is part of accepting. This is expected and not an error.

Accepting means giving up the payouts you had already asked for. Nothing is paid for them, nothing is credited in their place, and no part of them is carried into your Live account or applied to your lock threshold. If those requests matter more to you than the Live account does, decline instead, and they are paid in cash under the cap below. We would rather you read that here than discover it after you have answered.

If you decline, every payout request pending at the moment you decline is paid in cash. The amounts are summed across every account you hold and 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 is made through the ordinary payout rail and requires the same tax and banking details, the Mercury W-9 or W-8BEN plus your bank details, that any payout requires. Your accounts then close, billing stops, and re-entry is permanently barred. No Live account is opened.

If you never answer, an unanswered notice expires after 30 days and is treated as a decline. No settlement is payable on an expired notice. Your accounts close, billing stops, and re-entry is barred, exactly as on a decline, but nothing is paid, and every held payout request is cancelled without payment.

Nothing pending means nothing paid. A trader who declines with no payout request pending is paid nothing. The settlement pays the requests you had already submitted, so where there are none, there is nothing to pay.

Fees already charged for a closed evaluation or funded account are not refunded, at this or any other stage. Declining is not a breach. It creates no debt or liability to Options Funding and is not treated as misconduct.

If the broker declines your application, the Live Trader Agreement terminates automatically, the firm restores the accounts that closed and lifts 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.

7. When the Live account ends

Your Live account ends if you reach your drawdown floor, if either party terminates the Live Trader Agreement, or if the broker withdraws your authorisation. Profit you have already realized and become entitled to is payable under section 5 whatever the reason, except where it arises from conduct prohibited by the Live Trader Agreement.

8. Changes to these rules

Amendment. Options Funding may amend the Terms, the Program Rules and any published rule set at any time and in its sole discretion, including for risk, compliance, legal, brokerage or business reasons. An amendment takes effect when it is posted with a stated effective date, or on the date stated in a notice. Continued use of the Services or of any account after the effective date constitutes acceptance.

What an amendment cannot reach. An amendment does not apply to a payout request properly submitted and pending before the effective date, to a decline settlement already owed under section 6, or to a Live Trader Agreement already executed. Each of those is governed by the rules in effect when it arose.

Suspension and termination for cause. Separately and at any time, Options Funding may suspend or close any account, halt trading, or withhold a payout pending investigation where it reasonably believes there has been a rule violation, manipulation of the simulated environment, prohibited trading, fraud, chargeback activity, identity misuse, or where a legal, brokerage or regulatory requirement applies. No notice period applies to this.

Changes are not applied retroactively: a rule change does not reopen a completed trading day, retrospectively breach an account that complied with the rules in force at the time, or reduce profit you had already realized under the previous rules. Changes are published here with a new date at the top of the page.

The firm may change your risk parameters at any time, including during a trading session, where market conditions or your exposure warrant it. A change of that kind takes effect when it is communicated to you or configured at the broker, and applies from then onward.

9. Questions

If anything here is unclear, ask before you sign rather than afterwards. Support is reachable from your dashboard and by reply to any email the firm sends you.