The LSE Directory / Prop firms
FTMO is a Prague headquartered proprietary trading firm, founded in 2015, that runs a paid evaluation program called the FTMO Challenge. Aspiring traders pay a one-time fee to attempt a two-stage assessment, an initial Challenge phase followed by a Verification phase, each governed by defined profit targets and maximum daily and overall loss limits. Traders who pass both stages are granted an FTMO Account, a simulated account funded with up to $400,000 in virtual capital, from which they can earn a profit share of up to 90% of the trading gains they generate. FTMO states that the underlying accounts are demo accounts running on fictitious funds rather than the trader's own money or capital literally placed at risk in the market; the firm pays qualifying traders out of its own funds based on their simulated performance. Its evaluation and funded environments cover forex, stock indices, commodities, individual stocks and cryptocurrencies. The company operates in the category commonly called modern prop trading, distinct from traditional proprietary trading desks that risk a firm's own capital directly in the market. FTMO's stated differentiators are the size of its profit share (up to 90 percent, high for the category), the size of its funded accounts (up to $400,000, with a scaling plan for consistent performers), broad instrument coverage across five asset classes in one evaluation product, and a track record dating to 2015, longer than most challenger firms that entered the category from 2020 onward. Rather than stay a pure evaluation-and-payout business, FTMO has built out in-house trading and market-data technology through acquisition, and in 2025 moved into owning a regulated multi-asset broker outright, a step beyond the challenge-fee model most category competitors still rely on exclusively. FTMO traces its founding to 2015, when university graduates Otakar Suffner and Marek Vasicek launched a trading education project limited to the Czech and Slovak markets under the names FF Trader and Ziskej ucet ("Get an Account"). The company took outside investment in 2016 and rebranded internationally as FTMO in 2017, a name built from the initials of four early team members, Filip, Tomas, Marek and Otakar. Suffner is now FTMO's chief executive officer and Vasicek its chief technology officer. The firm relocated to Prague's Quadrio complex in 2022 and added further Prague office space in 2023. By its own reporting, FTMO has attracted more than 3.5 million customers across over 140 countries and paid out more than $500 million in trader rewards, with a headcount above 300. In autumn 2023 it acquired quantitative trading firm Quantlane and marketing agency eVisions, and topped the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Central Europe ranking that year, having previously won the same award in 2021 on four-year growth of 39,432 percent. FTMO expanded into regulated brokerage in 2025. On August 26, 2025 it entered a strategic partnership with OANDA to reopen its simulated-trading product to US residents through an "FTMO Rewards Account," a market it had previously exited over regulatory constraints; FTMO described this partnership as legally separate from any acquisition. Separately, on December 1, 2025, FTMO completed its acquisition of OANDA Global Corporation from CVC Asia Fund IV, taking on OANDA's regulated entities across markets including New York, Toronto, London, Warsaw, Singapore, Tokyo and Sydney. FTMO has said it intends to run OANDA as a standalone business within the group rather than merge the brands.
