Guides · Before you pay
A nominal balance is not capital
Simulated, live-linked, and conditional-reward arrangements are different products. The title does not choose among them.
Every published record on this desk carries an environment. The three labels are simulated, live-linked, and conditional-reward. Most challenge products you will meet in the wild are simulated for the evaluation, and often still simulated at the reward stage. The firm’s software shows a balance. That display is a rulebook with a currency sign, until a contract says a different thing and you can point at the clause.
Three environments, not a spectrum of ‘more real’
- Label
- Simulated
- What it claims
- The trades are not placed in a live market account you own.
- What to demand in writing
- Where the profit figure comes from, and what a reward is a share of.
- Label
- Live-linked
- What it claims
- Some stage is described as orders in a live account.
- What to demand in writing
- Whose account, whose broker, and what happens to losing trades.
- Label
- Conditional reward
- What it claims
- Payment depends on conditions that are not ‘you own the balance’.
- What to demand in writing
- The conditions, the discretion, and what is excluded.
Why the display fools people
Platforms are built for live trading, so a simulated programme borrows the same screen: balance, equity, margin, history. The screen is not the legal relationship. A trader can be ‘up 8,000’ on a 100,000 nominal balance and still be owed nothing, because the 8,000 is the phase target, not an invoice.
Losses feel real because the fee was real. That is the trap. The fee is a cost you pay the firm. The nominal loss is a rule outcome inside the simulation. Mixing them produces sentences like ‘I lost 5,000 today’ when the person lost the right to continue a USD 499 evaluation. Both facts matter. They are not the same fact.
A pass is not an allocation
Reaching a target means the rulebook’s profit condition was met on the numbers the firm counts. It does not mean the firm has set aside the nominal balance, opened a prime-brokerage account, or accepted an obligation to pay simulated profit within a stated number of days. If the reward clause is missing, this desk leaves the reward fields as not found rather than copying a percentage from the homepage banner.
Before you treat any balance as money
- The record’s environment label matches the contract you were shown, not the advert.
- You can point at the sentence that says what, if anything, can be requested as a reward.
- You know the fee you can lose even if the simulation goes to zero.
- You have not added the nominal balance to your net worth, your tax estimate, or a loan application.