# What 3,000+ reviews reveal about prop firm churn > Free Report. We analysed 3,000+ Trustpilot reviews for a major prop firm. 30% of negative reviews are behavioural, not operational. Here is what that means for your churn cost. ## Key findings **30% of negative reviews are behavioural.** Tilt, revenge trading, drawdown breaches under pressure. Not platform bugs or support failures. **$2M+ estimated annual cost of behavioural churn.** Acquisition waste plus lost lifetime value from traders who quit due to psychology. **23% mention drawdown breach under pressure.** The most common pattern. Traders hit daily limits during volatility. Reactive mechanisms trigger too late. ## What is in the report - Full review categorisation: behavioural vs operational breakdown - Top 3 behavioural patterns with real trader quotes - Financial impact calculation with transparent assumptions - Industry benchmark comparison - Methodology and data sources ## Download the full report 6 pages. Every number sourced. No pitch. To get the report, submit your work email (and optionally your company name) on the page. We send the PDF and you can download it directly. No spam. No obligation. By submitting, you agree to the Discentra Privacy Policy. This report analyses publicly available data. Discentra is a behavioural coaching platform for financial institutions. Coaching, not financial advice. ## Why this matters: behavioural churn is established science The report applies this lens to one prop firm's 3,000+ public Trustpilot reviews. The lens itself is documented in peer-reviewed research and regulatory data. Same lens runs on yours. **ESMA, 2018.** *"74-89% of retail accounts typically lose money on their investments, with average losses per client ranging from €1,600 to €29,000."* The base rate is documented. Most retail accounts lose money. Most accounts also leave. **Coates and Herbert, PNAS, 22 April 2008.** *"A trader's cortisol rises with both the variance of his trading results and the volatility of the market."* Tilt is not a metaphor. Cortisol elevates measurably during volatile sessions. **Kandasamy et al., PNAS, 4 March 2014.** *"Financial risk preferences shift, and do so substantially."* Cambridge raised cortisol in volunteers to trader-floor levels. Risk-taking changed. Discipline does not disappear. It gets neurologically overridden. **Reichheld, Harvard Business Review, 29 October 2014.** *"Increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%."* Retention math is not a soft initiative. It is the highest-return line item in the retention budget. ## Frequently asked questions **How was the 30% behavioural-churn finding calculated?** We pulled 3,000+ public Trustpilot reviews for a major prop firm and categorised each negative review by primary cause. Reviews referencing tilt, revenge trading, account-blowing decisions made under pressure, or psychological breakdowns during drawdown were classified as behavioural. Platform bugs, payout disputes, support failures, and rule-clarity issues were classified as operational. The 30% figure is the share of negative reviews where the primary cause is behavioural. Full methodology, including disambiguation rules for borderline cases, is in the report. **Is the underlying churn problem documented in independent research?** Yes. ESMA's 2018 review of CFD trading across EU regulators found that 74-89% of retail accounts typically lose money. Coates and Herbert (Cambridge, 2008) and Kandasamy et al. (Cambridge, 2014) showed in peer-reviewed PNAS papers that cortisol elevation under market volatility shifts financial risk preferences in measurable ways. The behavioural pattern that produces churn is established science. **Will the same methodology work on our firm's reviews?** Yes. The categorisation framework is portable. We can run a custom audit on your public Trustpilot reviews and produce a tailored report covering behavioural-vs-operational split, top 3 patterns by frequency, financial impact estimate using your CAC and LTV inputs, and benchmark comparison against the segment. Book a call via the get-in-touch link below to scope it. **Is this financial advice?** No. The report describes patterns in trader behaviour and the economic cost of those patterns to firms. It does not recommend trades, investments, or trading strategies for individual traders. Discentra is a behavioural coaching platform for financial institutions. Coaching, not financial advice. ## Want this analysis on your firm? We can run the same review-categorisation and financial-impact methodology on your firm's public Trustpilot data. The output is a custom churn audit you can take to your board. Book a call via the contact page below. We will scope the audit on the call. ## Sources - Coates, J. M. and Herbert, J. (2008). *Endogenous steroids and financial risk taking on a London trading floor.* Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(16), 6167-6172. [pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.0704025105](https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.0704025105) - Kandasamy, N., Hardy, B., Page, L., Schaffner, M., Graggaber, J., Powlson, A. S., Fletcher, P. C., Gurnell, M. and Coates, J. (2014). *Cortisol shifts financial risk preferences.* Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(9), 3608-3613. [pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1317908111](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1317908111) - ESMA (2018). *ESMA agrees to prohibit binary options and restrict CFDs to protect retail investors.* Press release, 27 March 2018. [esma.europa.eu](https://www.esma.europa.eu/press-news/esma-news/esma-agrees-prohibit-binary-options-and-restrict-cfds-protect-retail-investors) - Reichheld, F. (2014). *The Value of Keeping the Right Customers.* Harvard Business Review, 29 October 2014. [hbr.org/2014/10/the-value-of-keeping-the-right-customers](https://hbr.org/2014/10/the-value-of-keeping-the-right-customers) ## Related links - [Get in touch](https://discentra.ai/get-in-touch) - [Privacy Policy](https://discentra.ai/privacy) - [How Discentra works](https://discentra.ai/how-it-works) - [Calculate your churn cost](https://discentra.ai/calculator) - [For prop firms](https://discentra.ai/prop-firms) - [For brokers](https://discentra.ai/brokers) - [For crypto exchanges](https://discentra.ai/exchanges) - [Download the PDF directly](https://discentra.ai/social/prop-firm-churn-report.pdf) --- This is a Markdown mirror of [https://discentra.ai/churn-report](https://discentra.ai/churn-report). Generated for LLM citation. © Discentra Ltd. Coaching, not financial advice.