TradeDay review

TradeDay LLC is a US company that publishes named payout certificates with amounts and carries the CFTC Rule 4.41 hypothetical-performance disclosure. Both are more than most of the sector does. The programme itself is still unsupervised, and the payouts shown are selected by the firm.

Last verified 12 August 2026 · how we check

After a run of firms registered in the Comoros, Saint Lucia and St Vincent, TradeDay is a change of scenery. TradeDay LLC publishes a US address, quotes the disclosure US regulators expect, and shows payouts with names attached.

None of that makes the product supervised. It does change what you can check.

It quotes the rule most of the sector skips

TradeDay carries CFTC Rule 4.41 on its site:

Simulated or hypothetical trading programmes are subject to the fact that they are designed with the benefit of hindsight.

That rule governs how hypothetical performance may be presented in the US. A prop firm selling evaluations on simulated accounts is squarely in its territory, and quoting it is the correct behaviour. Plenty of firms marketing the same product to the same audience do not.

It is worth being precise about what the quote signals. It is a disclosure obligation, not a licence. Following it says the firm is behaving like a US business that expects to be looked at. It does not mean the CFTC authorised, reviewed or supervises anything.

The funded account here is a real one

This is the fact that separates TradeDay from most of the firms on this site, and it sits in the definitions of its terms:

Funded LIVE Account means a futures or options account trading account of the User funded by TradeDay.

The evaluation is simulated, and the terms say so: trades in a simulated account “are not made in live markets and do not incur actual profits or losses”, and simulated trading yields “no remuneration or profits based on the results of your simulated trading”. But what you are working towards is an account in live markets.

Compare what we found in the contracts of two competitors read the same week:

Two of these three never put you in a live market at any stage. Their funded accounts are a scoring system attached to a discretionary payment, which the contracts state openly. That is a legitimate product and it is not the same product.

It also changes what a payout is. At a firm whose funded stage is simulated, the money comes out of the firm’s own revenue. Where the account is live, there is a position in a real market behind it. Neither arrangement guarantees you get paid; they are different businesses wearing the same word.

The address is a real one

The terms name TradeDay LLC, an Illinois limited liability company, at 2nd Floor, 412 S. Wells, Chicago, Illinois 60607. That is a street address in the Chicago financial district rather than a registered-agent mailbox, and the difference shows up immediately against Clarity Traders, whose Dover address is shared with thousands of other Delaware companies.

Governing law is Illinois, and disputes go to binding arbitration through the American Arbitration Association in Chicago. For a US buyer that is a reachable forum. Set it beside Super Funded, where the contract sends disputes to the London Court of International Arbitration under the law of the Republic of Seychelles.

What the contract takes back

The favourable facts above do not extend to the fee or to the rules.

Fees are final. “All fees are final, non-cancelable, and non-refundable”, and you are not entitled to a refund on an evaluation or on early termination. That matches every prop firm contract we have now read.

Termination is at the firm’s discretion. TradeDay “reserves the right to refuse to permit or to terminate your access to any of the TradeDay Sites or Services at any time at its sole discretion.” Profits found to come from exploiting the simulated environment are forfeited and the account closed immediately.

The prohibited list is long and specific, which cuts both ways: automated trading systems, high-frequency scalping above 200 trades a day, order splitting, exploiting slippage, VPN use and hedging. Specific rules are easier to comply with than a clause about conduct the firm “considers to be trading in bad faith”, which is what Super Funded’s contract uses. They are also easier to breach by accident, and a trader running a VPN for ordinary privacy reasons should read that line before signing up.

The payout terms are not in this document. Funded accounts are “governed pursuant to separate or supplemental written agreement”, and that agreement is not published. So the profit split, the payout schedule and the conditions on withdrawal are all outside what a buyer can read before paying. That is the significant gap here, and it is worth asking for the funded-account agreement in writing before you start rather than after you pass.

Payout certificates with names and amounts

TradeDay publishes individual payout certificates showing a trader’s first name and the sum paid: Shahmir $13,207 · Brian $18,832 · Brandon $12,326 · Kou $5,369, among others.

That is more specific than the usual approach, which is one large cumulative number with no breakdown. A total of “$40 million paid out” cannot be checked or disproved by anyone. Individual certificates at least describe real transactions.

They are still chosen by the firm. A page of certificates is a sample assembled by the party with an interest in how the sample looks, and it says nothing about how many people paid a fee and received nothing. The number that would answer that is the pass rate, and TradeDay does not publish one.

Two firms in this sector do publish it, and we set out their figures in prop firm pass rates. Against that benchmark, named certificates are a partial disclosure, and the missing half is the denominator.

What the US address does and does not change

A US-registered LLC is easier to identify and, in principle, easier to sue than a company in Moheli. Compare FundedNext, where trading is executed by a Comoros entity, or Super Funded, whose contract names a Seychelles company and whose website names none.

But an LLC is a company registration, not a licence, and the same limits apply that we set out for HeroFX. No capital requirement, no audit, no rule requiring your fee to sit apart from operating money, and no regulator to complain to when a payout is refused.

The difference is jurisdictional reach, and for a US buyer that difference is real.

Registers we hold in full

Expected for a US prop firm and not a mark against it. A prop firm selling simulated evaluations generally does not require any of these licences.

What we checked, and what we didn’t

We read the firm’s published disclosures and payout material and searched three registers we hold locally. We have not bought an evaluation, traded one, or requested a payout.

Before paying, the questions are the ones the certificates leave open. How many evaluations were sold in the period those payouts cover? What share of buyers reached a payout at all? And which broker and data feed decide whether your drawdown was breached?

Sources

• TradeDay: terms and conditions
• TradeDay: site disclosures and payout certificates
• CFTC Rule 4.41 — hypothetical performance disclosure
• ASIC Financial Services Licensee Register