How you lose the account
At Audacity, account loss is primarily triggered by breaching drawdown limits or violating news trading restrictions on high-impact events. A critical risk factor is their Expert Advisor (EA) policy: using any commercial or third-party EA is a breach, as they only permit self-developed tools.
Wall Street Funded presents a stricter environment for immediate loss. You can lose your account not only for drawdown violations but also for failing to place a Stop Loss (SL) within two minutes of opening a trade. Additionally, holding a trade for less than 60 seconds (scalping restriction) or trading during the 4-minute red folder news window on funded accounts will result in a breach.
Maximum drawdown
Audacity utilizes a balance-based maximum drawdown. This is generally more favorable for traders as it ignores floating equity, allowing positions to breathe as long as the realized balance does not hit the floor.
- Example (Audacity): On a $100,000 Ability Challenge account with a 10% max drawdown ($10,000), your account is only closed if your balance drops to $90,000. If you have an open trade floating at -$12,000 but the balance is still $100,000, you have not breached the maximum drawdown rule.
Wall Street Funded applies different logic depending on the plan. "One Step" and "Two Step" (Ultra/Classic) accounts use a static drawdown, while "Instant" accounts use a trailing drawdown. Trailing drawdowns are significantly riskier because the "floor" moves up with your peak equity, locking in risk.
- Example (WSF): On a $50,000 Ultra account with 10% static drawdown, the limit is fixed at $45,000. On an Instant account, if your balance grows to $52,000, a 6% trailing drawdown floor would move up to $48,880.
Daily drawdown
Audacity calculates daily risk based on the highest value between balance and equity. This is a sensitive measurement that prevents traders from "hiding" risk in open losing positions over the daily reset.
- Numerical Example: If your balance is $10,000 and your equity is $10,500 at the start of the day, a 5% daily drawdown ($525) would be calculated from the $10,500.
Wall Street Funded uses an "End of Day (EOD) high-watermark" approach. They record the highest balance or equity at the end of the day to set the next day's limit.
- Numerical Example: If you end the day with a balance of $100,000 but reached an equity peak of $102,000 during the session, the 5% daily limit for the next day might be calculated from that $102,000 high-watermark, tightening the available room to trade.
Rules beyond drawdown
The risk profile of these firms differs sharply in their operational constraints:
- Stop Loss: Audacity does not require a Stop Loss. Wall Street Funded makes it mandatory within 120 seconds of execution; forgetting this once can end your challenge.
- Consistency: Audacity has no consistency rule for the Ability Challenge, but applies a 50% rule to Ability One and 35% to FTP Instant. Wall Street Funded enforces a consistency rule where no single day can exceed 15% (Instant Pro) or 30% (Instant Standard) of the total profit when requesting a payout.
- Lot Size Limits: Audacity limits individual positions to 10 lots. Wall Street Funded has a detailed lot scale based on account size (e.g., 35 lots for Forex on a 100k account) and forbids risking more than 50% of the daily drawdown on a single trade idea.
- Inactivity: Audacity is lenient with a 6-month window, whereas Wall Street Funded will terminate an account after just 30 days of inactivity.
Risk that comes from the setup
Audacity limits traders to MetaTrader 4 and 5. While these are industry standards, the lack of platform diversity means traders cannot use modern risk-management interfaces like cTrader. Their news rule is a 3-minute "no-trade" window around high-impact releases.
Wall Street Funded offers cTrader, MatchTrader, and DXTrade alongside MT5. This variety allows traders to choose platforms with better execution or built-in protection. However, their news rule is more restrictive (4 minutes before and after), and they explicitly prohibit "gambling behavior" and "hyperactivity," terms that are subjective and increase the risk of discretionary account termination.
What is at stake and what you recover
The cost of entry represents the immediate risk of loss. For a $50,000 account:
- Audacity (Ability Challenge): Costs $329. The fee is refundable with the first payout.
- Wall Street Funded (Ultra): Costs $349. The fee is refundable with the second payout.
Recovery of the initial stake is faster at Audacity (first payout), but Wall Street Funded offers faster subsequent payouts (every 5 days for Two-Step accounts) compared to Audacity’s 14-day cycle. Note that Audacity does not provide information on Stop Out or Margin Call levels, which is a transparency risk for the trader.
Frequently asked questions
Which firm is cheaper to start a $50,000 challenge, Audacity or Wall Street Funded?
Audacity is cheaper for a standard two-step evaluation, with its $50,000 Ability Challenge priced at $329, compared to $349 for the Wall Street Funded Ultra $50,000 account. However, if you are looking for a one-step evaluation, Wall Street Funded offers the $50,000 "Rapid" plan for $379, while Audacity's "Ability One" for the same size is more expensive at $399.
Does Audacity or Wall Street Funded have stricter rules for news trading?
Wall Street Funded is stricter, as it prohibits both opening and closing positions within a 4-minute window before and after high-impact "red folder" news on funded accounts. Audacity uses a shorter 3-minute restricted window and specifically limits the restriction to high-impact FOMC events and major news, allowing more flexibility for traders who operate near news releases.
Between Audacity and Wall Street Funded, which one requires a mandatory Stop Loss?
Wall Street Funded requires a mandatory Stop Loss to be added to every trade within two minutes of opening the position. Audacity does not have any mandatory Stop Loss requirement, allowing traders to manage their risk through other methods without the threat of account termination for forgetting a hard SL.
Which firm has a better profit split and scaling potential, Audacity or Wall Street Funded?
Audacity offers a higher potential profit split of up to 90% across its Ability Challenge and Ability One plans. Wall Street Funded starts at an 80% profit split, which can scale up to 95% only if you achieve 15% profit over 3 months with 3 withdrawals. While both firms scale up to $2,000,000, Audacity doubles the account balance (100% increase) per scaling event, whereas Wall Street Funded only increases it by 25%.
