This page covers the vocabulary specific to prop firms and funded futures accounts. Evaluation rules, payout mechanics, the platforms the accounts run on, and the slang traders use around all of it.
General market terms live in the Financial Dictionary. Firm rules and terms change often, so figures and dates are given where they matter. If a term you need is missing here, or something below has gone out of date, reach out and I will update the list.
Account Stacking
Running multiple funded accounts at once, either at one firm or spread across several, to multiply income from the same trading edge. Distinct from Copy Trading: stacking just means holding several accounts, whether or not software is mirroring trades across them.
Bonus Vault
Apex Trader Funding’s mechanism for crediting traders who move from a simulated funded account to a live one. Apex does not pay out the simulated balance directly. It tracks the balance and applies a percentage bonus, 20%, or 40% in a live account’s first month, on top of each future live withdrawal.
See Rug Pull for how this changed what traders had previously been told to expect.
Buffer Threshold
The minimum profit that must be reached, and sometimes maintained, before a funded trader can request a payout. Some firms let the full buffer amount be withdrawn. Others require part of it to stay in the account as a standing cushion.
Churning
The act of acquiring evaluation or funded accounts, blowing them, and repeating until reaching the payout phase, then starting the cycle over after getting paid. Cheap accounts get gambled on rather than traded.
This is a different meaning from churning in general investing, which refers to a broker excessively trading a client’s account to generate commissions.
Usage: “He’s not trading anymore, he’s churning. 40 blown $50k challenges this month and he’s already bought another 20.”
Combine
TopStep’s branded name for its futures evaluation program, genericized across the industry the way “Kleenex” means tissue. Traders casually say “I’m in the combine” regardless of which firm’s evaluation they are actually running.
Consistency Rule
A rule that requires profit to be spread across multiple trading days rather than concentrated in one, meant to demonstrate a repeatable process rather than a lucky outlier.
Mechanics vary by firm. Some use a static percentage cap on how much of total profit any single day can represent. For example, if you earned $2000 and the consistency rule is 40%, no more than $800 can be earned in a single day. If you earn too much, you have to earn more in total to bring that % down.
Other firms require a minimum profit on a set number of days. For example, they may require 5 or more trading days with $250 or more profit per day.
Copy Trading
Software that links a parent (master) account to one or more child accounts, so an order placed on the parent is automatically mirrored on each child.
In funded futures, this lets a trader multiply their total drawdown buffer across multiple accounts without increasing per-account position size, since each account’s drawdown limit is independent.
Flipping
Opening and closing a position very quickly, often on micro contracts, to log a trading day and satisfy a prop firm’s day requirement without risking what a normal trade might.
Some firms do not allow flipping for trading days requirements.
Usage: “Hit my target Monday, so I just flipped one micro the rest of the week to bank my trading days.”
FTMO
A proprietary trading firm founded in 2015 in the Czech Republic, one of the largest and most established in the industry. It is forex and CFD focused (MT4, MT5, cTrader) rather than futures-native.
Gauntlet
Earn2Trade’s branded evaluation program, also sold in a smaller size as “Gauntlet Mini”, conceptually similar to TopStep’s Combine. Earn2Trade does not fund accounts itself. It runs the evaluation and education, then hands qualifying traders off to one of several partner firms that actually provide the capital.
Live Account
An account funded with a firm’s real capital, offered to some traders after sufficient performance and payouts in a SIM account. Terms (profit split, scaling, restrictions) typically differ from the SIM phase. Not every firm offers this transition or the same qualification path.
Microscalping
Placing a very high volume of trades in a short window. Sometimes done to exploit quirks in the SIM trading environment. Other times used deliberately to give back excess profit so a big day does not trip a consistency rule threshold.
Usage: “He wasn’t even trading, he was just microscalping gold during the low volume afternoons. Of course they’d ban him.”
Profit Split
The percentage of trading profits a funded trader keeps, versus what the firm retains. The industry norm has moved from roughly 80/20 a few years ago toward 90/10 or higher.
Fees, withdrawal caps, and scaling rules affect take-home pay as much as the headline split does.
ProjectX
A cloud-based futures trading platform, not a prop firm. It was formerly shared across multiple firms (Bulenox, Tradeify, Lucid, Alpha Futures, Phidias, TradeDay) until TopStep acquired it outright in late 2025, and it went fully exclusive to TopStep in February 2026, rebranded TopstepX.
The transition was not smooth. Repeated platform outages left traders unable to open or close positions. See TopStep for how that hit the firm’s reputation.
Rithmic
A data feed and order-routing infrastructure provider, not a prop firm. Rithmic is used across many futures platforms (NinjaTrader, Sierra Chart, Quantower) and by prop firms as their execution backbone.
Rug Pull
Industry slang for a firm materially changing its rules or terms in a way that strips value traders believed they had already earned.
Apex Trader Funding’s 2026 Bonus Vault rollout is a documented example. Apex had stated that traders transferred to a Live Prop Account could withdraw profits directly, bypassing the normal five-payout eligibility ladder. Apex’s own materials describe the Bonus Vault system that replaced this as an alternative to those balances being forfeited outright, paying a 20-40% bonus on future live withdrawals rather than direct access to the balance.
A trader-run survey of 73 affected traders found a combined roughly $6 million in simulated balances converted into vault credit this way. Apex reportedly offered a flat $3,000 buyout to opt out of the vault entirely.
Usage: “Spent eight months building sim profit just to get rug pulled straight into the Bonus Vault.”
Shill
Someone promoting a company, account, or product they do not actually believe in, usually for an affiliate commission or other financial relationship they have not disclosed. The accusation lands hardest when they keep recommending something well past the point it stopped being good.
Usage: “Every ‘top 5 prop firms’ video is the same five affiliate links in a different order, half these guys are shilling accounts they’ve never traded.”
SIM Account
A simulated (not real-money) account. Account size in prop firm evaluations and funded accounts is a notional figure that sets buying power, drawdown limits, and payout math, not actual deposited capital.
TopStep
One of the longest-running futures prop firms, operating since the early 2010s. TopStep acquired The Futures Desk in April 2026 and now holds exclusive access to the ProjectX platform, rebranded TopstepX.
Its Trustpilot rating fell from roughly 4.5 to the mid-3s in late 2025 into 2026 after repeated TopstepX outages left traders unable to trade. The firm’s CEO issued a public apology in December 2025. See ProjectX for the platform story behind this.
Tradovate
A cloud-based futures trading platform and broker. It is used as the execution layer at many firms (Tradeify, FundedNext, and others).
This page is for informational purposes only and is not trading, tax, legal, or financial advice. Prop firm rules, fees, and payout terms change frequently and differ from firm to firm, and nothing here is a recommendation of any firm or account. Consult a licensed professional before making decisions based on your specific situation. See our Legal Disclaimer for details.