Simulation, not markets
All Ghost St. accounts — evaluation and Qualified — are simulations driven by real market data. Fills are modeled with estimated slippage and fees. Real markets involve liquidity, queue position, outages, and execution costs that no simulation reproduces exactly. Profitable simulated trading does not mean you would be profitable with real money.
You will probably not pass
Evaluations have rules — profit targets, trailing drawdowns, daily loss limits — that most participants breach. Treat evaluation fees as the cost of a challenge with a defined ruleset, not as an investment with an expected return. Never spend money on evaluations that you cannot afford to lose entirely.
Payouts are performance fees
Payouts from Qualified Accounts are contractual obligations of Origin 22 LLC, funded from company revenue and a dedicated payout reserve (see the Reserve policy). They are not returns on capital, not profit-sharing from live trading, and are subject to the published caps, minimums, and review process.
Behavioral risk
Trading challenges can produce compulsive behavior: chasing losses with resets, revenge trading, and escalating spend. Our journal flags these patterns and we enforce cooling-off mechanics, but the responsibility is yours. If purchasing resets stops feeling like practice and starts feeling like gambling, stop. Help is available at 1-800-GAMBLER (US).
Automated systems
Bots fail in ways their authors do not anticipate. A strategy that passes an evaluation can still lose money live. API access, rate limits, and kill switches reduce — but do not remove — the risk of runaway automation.