While the advent of retail prop trading is still very much on the rise, it has not been the case of a rising tide lifting all boats.

Continuing a somewhat disturbing trend, another prop firm has shut its virtual doors, this time Propel Capital in the UK.

Founded just over a year ago by CEO Mitchell Ali, who is also the founder of online FX platform Apex Partners Group and based in London, Propel Capital essentially blamed competition for its reason to shutter.

The Propel Capital website (at propelcapitalgroup.co.uk) is now down, and the company posted the following note on its Twitter feed earlier today.

PROPEL CAPITAL

Dear Valued Traders and Partners,

Today, I have made the extremely difficult decision to wind down Propel Capital as you know it. Over the past 14 months since our inception, we have consistently reiterated the message that we were here to build a sustainable prop firm that could last for many years to come.

However, the sheer volume of competition in the market has led us to a position where I believe that scaling the business would go against our goal of sustainability. As you have probably noticed, firms across the industry have significantly increased their offerings, with higher discounts and relaxed rules. I do not believe we can compete with these offers without selling evaluations at a loss, which we refuse to do.

We have therefore decided to remove ourselves from the market with immediate effect. We will temporarily pause all operations whilst we decide on our next steps. We will no longer be processing any payments, and all trading activity will be halted. Whilst this may come as a surprise to many, we wanted to publicly address our decision to wind down. Of course, we could have disappeared as many other firms have done, and will likely continue to do, but that was something we promised our traders we would never do.

Over the next few weeks, we will wait to see if another individual or corporation would like to continue the brand. After that, we will begin to offer refunds to those who qualify.

Please remain patient with our support staff whilst we navigate these next steps. We will announce further updates on our Discord channel, X page, and via email.

I would also like to publicly thank every single support staff member, influencer, tech team member, and, of course, every trader who has worked with us over the past 14 months. Without you, none of this would have been possible.

I am sorry that we could not grow Propel into the industry leader I had targeted when we began, but I hope you understand my decision to uphold the values we set out at the start of our journey.

Mitchell Ali
CEO
Propel Capital Group