Hold Brothers review: the 99% payout and the $30,000 deposit

Verdict. Hold Brothers Capital LLC is a genuine FINRA member broker-dealer (CRD 151864, SEC file 8-68404) running a self-clearing New York equity day-trading desk, not a challenge-fee prop shop. Its advertised “up to 99% payout” is real in the sense that a self-clearing firm keeps very little of the spread — but it is a payout on the trader’s own money. The firm’s Client Relationship Summary sets a $30,000 minimum funding level and lists platform, market-data and exchange fees the trader pays whether they win or lose. Suits licensed, capitalised US equity traders. Not for anyone looking to be funded. Biggest caveat: the FY2025 audited statement discloses live discussions with the NSCC over net-capital reporting errors.

Key terms, as the firm publishes them

• Advertised payout: “Hold Brothers’ self-clearing status allows up to 99% payout” — verbatim from the firm’s trading page and its advantage page.
• Minimum to open an account: $30,000, stated in the firm’s Client Relationship Summary dated 30 June 2020.
• Ongoing equity floor: $25,000, the FINRA Rule 4210 pattern-day-trader maintenance requirement, restated in the same document.
• Fees the trader pays: market data, ECN/exchange, trading software platform, margin interest, wire transfer and inactivity fees — the firm’s own list.
• Platform: Graybox, described on the trading page as a “Free highly customizable platform *” with the footnote “Terms and Conditions Apply”.
• Licensing: “Sponsorship for securities licenses”, advertised with no exam, timing or clawback detail anywhere on the site.
• Net capital at 31 December 2025: $3,074,728 against a $250,000 minimum, per the audited Form X-17A-5 filed with the SEC on 13 April 2026.
• Regulatory record: three final regulatory disclosures, all CBOE, totalling $65,000 in fines, on FINRA BrokerCheck.

What “99% payout” actually describes

In the funded-account industry a payout percentage answers a specific question: of the profit made on the firm’s capital, how much reaches the trader. At Hold Brothers the question is different, because in the retail arrangement the capital is the trader’s. The firm is self-clearing — it has held a direct clearing relationship with the National Securities Clearing Corporation since May 2012 — so it is not paying away a clearing broker’s cut. What “99% payout” describes is a commission and fee schedule so thin that almost all of the trading result stays with the account holder.

That is a real advantage and the honest reading of the claim. It is also not a profit split. The word “payout” carries funded-account connotations the underlying arrangement does not support, and the firm never disambiguates the two on any page we could find. Compare the way Chimera Securities structures trader compensation, or the licensing question we found unresolved across T3 Trading Group’s own pages: the US equity-prop lane routinely uses funded-account vocabulary for arrangements that are nothing of the kind.

Related:Evercrest Funding review: rules pages written by a chatbot

The payout section: what is published, and what is not

Hold Brothers publishes no payout schedule, no payout frequency, no minimum trading days, no profit target and no drawdown table. There is nothing to verify, because none of it exists as a published term. What the firm does publish is the Client Relationship Summary, and it is unusually candid about the direction of the money: “You will pay fees and costs whether you make or lose money on your investments. Fees and costs will reduce any amount of money you make on your investments over time.”

The document also names a “Trading Software Platform Fee” among the charges that may appear on an account statement — the same platform the marketing page calls free, subject to unspecified terms and conditions. The audited accounts show why a platform fee exists at all: in 2025 the broker-dealer expensed $2,520,000 licensing the Graybox software from Holdsoftware.com Inc, a related party under common control. That cost lands somewhere.

What we could not verify: the commission rate schedule (described only as “negotiable” and “custom pricing for individual traders, group and black box rates”); the desk fee, if any; the market-data package cost; the terms of the licensing sponsorship; and whether the Class B proprietary arrangement is open to new traders at all. We found no independent, dated, first-hand payout report for this firm on the trader forums that usually carry them. That absence is a finding in itself: a firm advertising a 99% payout generates almost no payout discussion.

Who bears the loss

The FY2025 statement of financial condition answers this cleanly. Members’ equity of $6,819,762 is split across four classes: Class A voting units of $360,817, Class B non-voting units of $4,086,076, Class F non-voting units of $1,622,869 and Class H non-voting units of $750,000. Note E states the mechanism: “Each Class B member is allocated the net income or loss from their individual trading activities.”

That is the loss allocation. A Class B member’s trading losses reduce a Class B member’s capital, not the firm’s. It is the same LLC-member architecture we examined in the Bright Trading review and in Great Point Capital’s funded-account documentation, and it means the phrase “funded” should not be used about any of them without qualification. Note E adds one detail worth reading twice: Class A members may allocate up to 95% of profits derived from referral and servicing revenue to the Class F member. The firm’s referral economics are pooled separately from trading.

The mechanics that actually cost traders money

Three deserve attention. First, the $30,000 entry and the $25,000 pattern-day-trader floor are cumulative, not alternatives: an account dropping below $25,000 in equity receives a day-trading minimum equity call and must be topped up before trading resumes. Second, the licensing sponsorship is advertised with no stated cost, tenure or clawback — and licensing is precisely where this firm’s regulatory history sits. Third, the balance sheet carries $2,826,915 of receivables from related parties, roughly 31.7% of total assets of $8,908,870, under an expense-sharing agreement with ten affiliated entities. Traders posting capital at a small broker-dealer should understand how much of its asset base is owed by its own affiliates.

The audited accounts also disclose, at Note H, that “The Company is currently in discussions with the NSCC as a result of errors in reporting of net capital during the course of 2025”, with no notification of pending material fines as at the report date. Read that against Note G: to maintain its current NSCC clearing tier the firm must hold $2,500,000 in excess net capital, and its excess at 31 December 2025 was $2,824,728. The cushion above the tier threshold is about $324,728.

Regulatory posture, and the two Hold Brothers entities

Two different registrants share the name, and a prospective trader needs to get this right. The current firm, Hold Brothers Capital LLC, was formed in New Jersey on 4 May 2009, registered with the SEC on 6 May 2010 and approved as a FINRA member on 20 July 2016. It is registered in five states — New York, New Jersey, California, Florida and Texas — and BrokerCheck classes it as small. Its three disclosures are all CBOE matters and all final: a $15,000 censure and fine resolved 31 January 2012 for failing to retain instant messages in WORM format and for AML programme approval and attestation failures; a $20,000 censure and fine resolved 29 July 2013 for failing to register two officers as Proprietary Trader Principals in WebCRD and for FINOP registration failures; and a $30,000 censure and fine resolved 10 September 2015 for failing to establish, document and maintain the market-access risk controls required by SEC Rule 15c3-5, failing to conduct the annual review, and failing to obtain the CEO certification. A firm whose product is market access was censured under the market-access rule.

The 2012 SEC layering case did not involve this entity. It named Hold Brothers On-Line Investment Services LLC — CRD 36816, a separate registrant that BrokerCheck records as expelled on 26 November 2012 and which now carries the name Tafferer Trading, LLC. In its order of 25 September 2012 (Release 34-67924, File 3-15046) the Commission found that from January 2009 to September 2010 overseas traders, primarily in China, trading through accounts held by Demostrate LLC and Trade Alpha Corporate Ltd, manipulated US markets by layering. On the control question the order is blunt: “If the trader exceeded his or her daily loss limit, Hold Brothers, not Demostrate, shut down the trader.” The firm paid $629,167 in disgorgement and a $1,887,500 penalty and was censured; Demostrate disgorged $1,258,333; Steven Hold, Robert Vallone and William Tobias paid $75,000 each, and Steven Hold was barred from association in a supervisory capacity with leave to reapply after three years. Gregory Hold, the current firm’s chief executive and managing member, was not a respondent.

The connection that survives is documentary. Tafferer Trading, LLC and Sodalite Financial Services LLC — the renamed 2012 respondent and the renamed Hold Brothers Execution Services — both appear by name in Note D of the FY2025 audited statement as related parties to the current broker-dealer under the same expense-sharing agreement.

How it compares with the other US equity desks

Counts are from FINRA BrokerCheck firm records retrieved on 7 September 2026. On disclosure volume Hold Brothers is the cleanest of the six, and its three matters are all more than a decade old. That is a genuine mark in its favour and it should be said plainly.

The website problem

A thin site is normal in this lane and is not evidence of a dormant firm — liveness here is proven by an active FINRA registration and an audited annual report filed five months ago, not by page count. The neglect is still a data point. The holdbrothers.com domain does not complete a TLS handshake at all and serves only over plain HTTP, with roughly 1,300 characters of visible text. Most of hold.com carries a June 2023 last-modified date; the careers page is a heading and nothing else; the timeline’s most recent entry is 2016, under a header that still reads “2014 marks 20 years”; and the Client Relationship Summary, the SEC-mandated retail disclosure, is dated June 2020. Every commercial term has to be obtained by telephone.

FAQ

Is Hold Brothers a prop firm? Partly. It is a FINRA member broker-dealer with a retail self-directed day-trading business and a Class B proprietary member structure. There is no challenge, no evaluation fee and no funded account in the modern sense. The Class B arrangement requires a member capital contribution, and the member absorbs their own trading losses.

Is the 99% payout claim true? The wording on the firm’s own pages is “allows up to 99% payout”, and we could not obtain a schedule showing how it is calculated or what conditions apply. It describes the economics of a self-clearing firm keeping little of the trade, not a profit split on firm capital.

How much does it cost to start? The firm’s Client Relationship Summary states a minimum initial funding level of $30,000. Commissions are described as negotiable, and market-data, exchange, platform, margin, wire and inactivity fees are charged separately. No total cost of trading is published.

What does “sponsorship for securities licenses” mean? A broker-dealer must file the Form U4 and act as sponsor before an associated trader can sit the Securities Industry Essentials exam and the Series 57 trader qualification. Hold Brothers advertises that it will do so. It does not publish who pays the exam fees, what tenure is expected, or whether costs are recoverable if a trader leaves.

Is my money protected? The firm is a SIPC member and held $430,000 in cash segregated for the exclusive benefit of customers under Rule 15c3-3 at the last audit date. SIPC protects against broker-dealer failure, not trading losses, and does not extend to capital contributed as an LLC member.

Who audits the firm? BDMP Assurance, LLP of Portland, Maine, PCAOB registration number 7293, which reported on 26 February 2026 and states it has served as the company’s auditor since 2025. It is a genuinely registered public accounting firm and the opinion is unqualified.

This review is independent editorial analysis and is not financial, investment, or trading advice, and is not an endorsement or solicitation. The Industry Spread has no affiliate or referral relationship with the firms covered. Proprietary trading challenges carry a fee that is generally non-refundable, most participants do not reach a funded account, and funded capital is the firm’s capital, not the trader’s. Terms change frequently — always verify current rules directly with the firm before paying any fee.