Trading Evaluation Buyer. Prop Gazette. Eval firm mentions and industry discussions are not a recommendation to trade underfunded. DYOR on risks, FAQs & firms
Evaluation Hamsterwheel
- Tweets 4,578
- Following 1,167
- Followers 7,222
- Likes 8,227
CFTC to re-focus on fraud
Could potentially lead to some major FX eval companies returning to the USA market.
.@CFTC Division of Enforcement to Refocus on Fraud and Helping Victims, Stop Regulation by Enforcement: cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressRele…
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Forex Evaluation Industry Restart nearing completion as industry looks to rebound from rock bottom.
- FTMO Acquiring Oanda
- MFF case conclusion
- Circuit Breakers and edge-eroders are finally being put into place industry wide
Up from here
GL
Forex Evals 2024: Industry Re-Start
Intro to CBEEN Series
Accepting payment for and advertising a service or business opportunity that the seller has no technology, backing, or desire to service isn’t too far from FRAUD.
Large balances, cheap, static drawdown, unlimited trading style, high scaling & high leverage evaluation products can not exist.
Serious evaluation industry players with longevity in mind will not be getting there by:
- Denying payouts (adding legal exposure by refusing to service advertised business opportunities)
- Making a bet on company T&C superseding international data privacy laws
- Deceptively inflating the value of the product to drive sales
- Mocking customers for using advertised product’s features
Serious evaluation world players will be getting there by:
- Risk management
- Cleaner Data Monetization
- Lower Exposure
- Transparent advertising
- New ways to attract less experienced customers
- Getting rid of some profitable customers (gently)
Evaluation companies will have to be able to stand on their own merits no matter what else goes on in the evaluation world circus.
How do we get there?
CBEENs = Circuit Breakers + Edge Eroders + Nudges
Circuit Breakers - company risk management tools preventing windfall profits of a single customer or market event from blowing up the company.
Edge Eroders - trading rules and evaluation features that will erode the edge of those using evaluations for their infinite, undetectable, and significant non-normal-trading edges.
Nudges - offering traders decisions that often result in removing risk from the company
Over the next month, a series of Prop Gazette - CBEEN Series posts will give readers a look into the industry's future by addressing the above points
The industry restart era will be busy, and products won’t appear as sexy.
Higher Prop IQ and understanding which CBEENs your trading system works best with will significantly improve payout per fee expectancy.
As always, great trading solves all underfunded trader problems
GL & DYOR
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ZB-Gate Disaster Cont'd
MFFU & TTT restrict trading in treasuries.
Are companies (TTT) sure it's a good idea to call execution on the only feed they provide FRAUD?
Do the feeds get abused? ABSOLUTELY! Or are they just used?
In the futures evaluation niche 95+% have never executed a trade in a live brokerage, and 99.999% will never execute an equivalent size live.
Theoretically, how are traders supposed to know if their strategy is only working because of the sim environment, as they execute on the feed they are provided?
Potentially a mistake to call customers who use the only feed provided to them, within the listed rules, "FRAUDS".
How do companies confess to not having the technology or history of offering the feed they require to be used? And worse, retroactively apply fills? Potential FRAUD confession on the other side of the evaluation. Very tough one to navigate for eval sellers, which is why some are taking their time to come up with a solution
There is also an option to pay attention to what is going on in the industry and under your own roof. To avoid paying catch-up a year later. If scalping and hold time restrictions by major players didn't give it away..
Phidias extensively covered the exact "schemes" and inability to replicate them back in July.
Now what? Do you refund all failed accounts/data with CBOT trades? Retroactively cancel fills? Call customers who use the only available feed FRAUDs?
No easy way out, all solutions are a mixture of expensive, paying [ab]users, compliance or PR disasters.
Apex is attempting "probation", no new purchases, changed cushion/withdrawal rules, DCA removed while honoring old fills for ZB-gaters.
Other majors are still at the drawing board.
Rumor: Those who have been aware of the sim bond gold mine, but chose not to dabble, are expressing remorse not 50x-ing GDP of some Eastern European villages by teaching them to be ZB/ZN experts in 15 minutes. As it is probably not a sin to use the product that is advertised and provided to you.
ZB-Gate will be expensed to normal customers via reduced EV of opportunities.
Fortunately opportunities are still amazing and life-changing.
GL to all involved.
---
Don't trade underfunded without understanding that your eval company could disappear tomorrow.
ZB-Gate [Futures]
Earlier this year, customers and groups started exploiting demo fills &or spreading Bonds/Treasuries.
In June/July some companies became aware and either banned scalping or ZB trading/spreading.
This month groups became so emboldened that they became impossible to ignore.
Top 4 in Sales this week:
Topstep - No official announcement yet.
Apex - Conducting investigations, banning ZB etc.
MFFU - Unaffected due to scalping being banned.
FTT - ZB trading investigation.
Smaller - many ZB bans/investigations.
Wild times.
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TopTier CEO, who is still listed on the website as CEO, resigned two weeks ago?
No announcement on official company channels.
Whether rug pulling entire major countries[x.com/FundTraders/status/175…], turning 2 phase evaluations into 3+ phases [via unknowable secondary review criteria], changing rules on the fly, or silently changing leadership.. "For traders" operation will do anything but make it easy to understand what is being bought, what is being traded, and who is selling these schemes
Big loss for TTT as Mr Guttman was perceived as stabilizing and transparent personality of an "influencer" firm with questionable history.
Being CEO of a company facilitating CFD trading out of and into US is likely a very unappealing gig going into late '24, early '25.
GL to all involved, DYOR.
Two weeks ago I made the extremely difficult decision to resign as CEO of TopTier Trader. I will sincerely miss the incredibly talented and hard working team we built and wish everyone there the best.
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AstraCapital Done
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Thank you @tiltboybenny96 and @salmanmunir96 for your work.
Far from a victimless existence, but better now than later as they were planning to expand into futures and tech.
From sending me a cease and desist, to closing down in less than 34 hours? Come on , this was too easy 🤣
I told you guys I would make my 22k worth and we would shut them down 😎
Once again credits to @salmanmunir96 (MVP) , notable mentions @Sarofx @0xrisks @tjthetrad3r
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1,200,000 USD difference?
Underdiscussed: Futures Live Demotion and Queue
It is now common knowledge that Futures eval companies will be required to have a path to Live Funding, not just operate full-time simulated hamster wheels.
This has already gotten out of control and 50+ new evaluation companies are launching soon.
Rule #1: If the company doesn't advertise and disclose the exact details of the "move to Live", it is safe to assume it will be unpleasant.
Profits
What happens to earned profits at the time of promotion?
The current range of options:
Best - Can be withdrawn - more drawdown is provided for you.
Good - Transfer balance to live environment, all withdrawal rules remain the same.
Average - Can withdraw part of earned profits, the rest is your cushion.
Bad / Confiscation - The evaluation company makes all of your earned profits unavailable and "invests" [part] of your profits into your Live trading.
Queue:
Many companies allow 10, 20 to an unlimited amount of queue accounts.
During live demotion/promotion:
Best - queue remains
Average - queue is forfeited
Below average - queue is forfeited and new purchases are banned.
Earned profit withdrawal/confiscation + earned drawdown range between futures evaluation options is estimated to be over $1.2M USD.
To add to the confusion - the best eval fee ROI options are companies with a theoretical live promotion scenario, but very few custom offers.
Allowing unlimited eval purchases for fee income and using profit & queue confiscation aka Live "promotion" is the most lucrative way to operate this business.
With it being impossible to undercut current offerings while remaining profitable, it is safe to assume that many offerings will be managed through rule changes, hidden rules, or Live demotion.
If you are buying evaluations and have no idea what this post is about, please, DYOR, it could save you lots of frustration and maybe even over $1,000,000.
While nobody is owed to be provided unlimited drawdown and investment, evaluation buyers are owed clarity and transparency when buying 99+% failure rate products.
Fortunately, it's illegal to make deceptive potential earnings claims and cause injury disguised as a promotion. Will be handled over the next 6-18 months.
For now, GL!
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🚨 Apex mass requests video recordings hours after releasing video about speeding up payout approval process.
10s of millions in payouts impacted over the last 3 months.
++++
Apex Updates the Process
Vows to speed up the payout process and to improve detection of rule violations.
No significant format changes announced yet.
Apex took a fake-it-till-you-make-it approach with advertising "two payouts per month" and are finally developing the technology and staff to grow into the claim. Due to reviews, video requests, outages and days traded requirements, it has been nearly impossible to accomplish 2 approved payouts in a month recently.
"Much much more" to be released later will be the defining moment for the trajectory of the evaluation company.
Trailing drawdown evaluations with 30% payout consistency and trading style restrictions are losing their luster, unless heavily discounted.
TopStep + MFFU combined payouts are expected to surpass Apex by Q4.
Apex payouts were ~4x TST+MFFU earlier in the year.
Fascinating futures eval race continues.
GL out there.
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ThinkCapital abandons USA restriction.
Will more regulated CFD broker backed "education services" follow suit?
FTMO/5Ers/Funded Next/most broker-backed and few other trusted names sitting on the sidelines leaves a big opportunity to capitalize on US fees during FX eval turmoil.
---
Mentions are never recommendations.
ThinkCapital by ThinkMarkets
Another broker joins the evaluation space via UAE entity.
Notable:
- $100K virtual max account size. $300K max total.
- One, Two, and Three Phase evals with pre-sale prices slightly above the industry average.
- No USA. Yes Europe [Minus Croatia]. Much less restrictive than other broker-backed launches.
- Extensive FAQ that is vague enough to breach any accounts, if necessary. [industry standard]
Broker-backed evals will likely start registering on top "traffic" charts soon as they are assumed to be better backed and less likely to participate in customer abuse.
Mention is NOT a recommendation. Don't trade underfunded without understanding that you are expected to read 1000s of pages of faqs daily to understand new meanings of each 4% drawdown with a 100:1 leverage.
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The "CFTC" "No-Action" Pings but it has nothing to do with reliable players shifting the landscape of FX evals... 💔
CFTC / MFF most recent update here:
x.com/MDiamondFinance/status…
(Non-event for customers getting clarity)
One year MFF anniversary next week, as one of best eval options got shut down without opportunity to unwind or correct. Meanwhile scams, schemes and rug pulls are running wild ever since.
Boring MFF Update! #MyForexFunds continues to battle the @cftc about documents the CFTC still refuses to produce, despite a court order.
In a new letter on Friday, MFF asked the judge to review the materials privately to see if they are relevant, since the CFTC won't directly give them to MFF.
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EOP Innovation via Nexgen Futures
End-of-Position Trailing Drawdown makes it into futures from the FX world.
Splits the difference between live trailing and EOD drawdown.
Removes the game theory associated with EOD drawdown for firms, and agony of live trailing for customers.
Mentioned this here about a year ago as perfect common sense solution to one up the LMTAB without the EOD exposure.
Nice work here @nexgen_futures!
---
Mentions are never recommendations, DYOR.
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Earn2Trade Launches Sister Company Funding Trading
Who:
One of the oldest futures evaluation companies
Tech:
Tradovate + CQG
Interesting:
Rollback add-on - erase any day
Refund add-on
Late to the party:
Parachute add-on. Turns hard breaches into soft breaches.
Most viable competitors have none or soft breach daily DD, with lot limit managed by the risk manager. All this does is accentuate the weakness of the main product.
(Elite launches soft breach add-on this week too)
Earn2Trade has been an excellent company with a friendly payout schedule, live path, and unique career path programs. Welcome innovation with a more gamified format attempt.
E2T stuck to the format and product they were comfortable offering to protect their risk. 10-day evals and no copied multiple accounts. Would have likely gone more parabolic during the futures eval bubble phase if they opened it up a bit.
Earnings more funding through TRADING, not BUYING?? Is this 2010?
In-game purchases and add-ons are going to go wild once a clear regulatory framework is established and eval sellers know what is allowed, and what is not:
x.com/FundTraders/status/168…
Undo a bad day has recently been brought to market by Fast Track in the "funded" stage, and now E2T is here in eval via pre-purchase.
GL & DYOR
The global gaming market is valued at over 1/4 of a TRILLION USD.
Over 67% of purchases are made in-game
Most software is now subscription based
While this has been an amazing month for the prop firm industry, we are currently in the Stone Age
Gamified entertainment and serious trader versions of the product will look very different from what they do today.
In the Forex prop firm space, we will likely see things from boring:
- Add 2% drawdown
- Expedite payout
- Increase leverage
To some fun things
👾 CAN'T LOSE - $99 for 1 / $249 for 3
Risk $1000 in evaluation. Losses don't count, profits are yours
👾 STREAK BOOSTER $199
Make 5 consecutive winning trades, get 1 extra % of drawdown or lower profit target
👾 BUY Trades
Cheap evaluations where you can only trade 2 times a week. Can buy extra trades for a fee
💎Diamond Membership $250/m or $2500 Yearly💎
Every evaluation extra 10% off, an extra 1% drawdown, 1% lower profit target
👾 UNDO Breach
Broke daily DD? Keep trading for 1/3 of eval cost
💎Index Specialist $500/m💎
Trade Index CFDs with a reduced spread
.. and many others
Prop firm in-game purchase and subscription models are completely untapped at the moment. That will change
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Funds For Traders Officially Closes as Well
Smells like Eightcap Partners is unwinding
CFD brokers are carefully entering the evaluation industry and are avoiding the US , testing stricter rules.
Eightcap for some reason decided to let what essentially amounts to fraud schemes to use their likeness for credibility. Including marketing CFD trading services to USA customers.
It is entirely unclear why they chose this business path in a very lucrative industry.
Maybe payback for the eval industry tarnishing their reputation, despite liquidy settings being set by eval firms?
We will never know.
Eightcap partner firms remain on the Avoid list.
---
Would encourage visible persons like @BerndSko to not give exposure to clearly unsustainable offerings, despite opportunities being zero risk and lucrative.
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FTC Finalizes Rule on Fake Reviews and Misuse of Fake Social Media Indicators.
2022 proposal becomes a rule at the right time for the trader evaluation industry.
How is it relevant?
Social media influence indicators:
- Bought reviews/rankings, without proper disclosure [Already an unfair / banned practices x.com/FundTraders/status/180…]
- Paid evaluation promotion with proper disclosures
- Engagement contests/paid or bot-like engagement
- Company affiliates uncritically posting praise and often falsehoods, while being contractually obligated to only speak positively of the company.
- Giveaways to gain traction and create the perception of being highly followed.
- Eval sellers forcing reviews to get a giveaway account, funded account, after a chess tournament, or before a payout. Most reviews are utterly useless and from those with no product experience.
- Negative review suppression. Contracts, NDAs, and individual arrangements that require you to not disclose your experience to get paid [often a fraction] or to not get sued. Honest, but negative experiences are the most important feedback a potential customer can receive.
Finservices with a 99% customer failure rate, extensive history of fraud, marketing fraud, and rug pulls are unlikely to get a pass when deceptively soliciting USA consumer evaluation fees.
Win for the buyers.
GL & DYOR
ftc.gov/news-events/news/pre…
FPR remains a wild and influencial cog in the broken CFD machine
Not only are there no visible affiliate or advertiser disclosures, they actually imply that they rank products through 700 pt criteria.
8 figures generated marketing companies that for most of the history led customers into subpar options, or soon to be insolvent companies. Awards to companies that are not operational and many other issues (x.com/FundTraders/status/175… one of many examples)
Good piece of business on their part, just a bit reckless considering what they are marketing and consequences(damages) associated with going with their recommendations
--
Smile Prep forced to place clearly visible affiliate and content-as-advertisement disclosure
ftc.gov/legal-library/browse…
YMYL niche marketing on large scale is no joke, especially when eval buying involves such high risk and significant time investment. Marketing these companies with 0 clearly visible risk, affiliate or advertising warning is an interesting choice. CFD + US component as well. Last but not least, with evaluation companies waving all responsibility for their product besides accepting payment [x.com/FundTraders/status/180…]
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CFD brokers are carefully entering the evaluation industry and are avoiding the US , testing stricter rules.
Eightcap for some reason decided to let what essentially amounts to fraud schemes to use their likeness for credibility. Including marketing CFD trading services to USA customers.
It is entirely unclear why they chose this business path in a very lucrative industry.
Maybe payback for the eval industry tarnishing their reputation, despite liquidy settings being set by eval firms?
We will never know.
Eightcap partner firms remain on the Avoid list.
---
Would encourage visible persons like @BerndSko to not give exposure to clearly unsustainable offerings, despite opportunities being zero risk and lucrative.
4 Months Later, going about as expected
The "Eightcap Challenge" stamp is best understood as an AVOID stamp.
Marketing unsustainable offerings at low prices, give or take HFT. Then managing the product through T&C traps and payout denials for obscure reasons.
Do whatever you please with your money, but if somebody needs to use this prop tech, it's not because they set out to reshape and lead the evaluation space.
CFD space remains broken, and after 4 months of experience-based customer feedback, doesn't appear that EIGHTCAP CHALLENGE STAMP will be the one to fix it.
Will revisit in 12 months
GL out there.. DYOR
Sidenote:
There is no more useless review in evaluation space than - we provided high following influencers large accounts to "review" our firm.
What do you think is going to happen here? Are they going to deny payouts or accuse marketers of anything? Of course not. Good business on the influencer part, absolutely useless for potential customers.
Managing influencers' promo accounts could cost more than the whole backing of most of these firms.
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MetaQuotes forces FXIFY to stop offering MetaTrader to US traders / IPs.
The last remaining major MT + USA combo will migrate traders to DX.
The industry-wide "Platform5" gimmick is likely to be cleaned up next.
FXIFY Futures launch is imminent.
FXIFY recently joined $3M / mo payout club and the Top 6 of FX eval "traffic".
Growth, payout volume, and a significant US footprint will likely require cleaning up some of the customer management "techniques" of otherwise very lucrative offerings.
---
Mention not a recommendation. DYOR.
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Saw them on here, no idea about anything else besides that offering having little chance of being real.
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What's with the fetish of getting burnt buying unfinished website products with clearly unsustainable offerings?
$5000 futures static drawdown for $100
$3000 --- for $50
Up to 15 accounts 😂
It's just not happening...
It's heartbreaking, but nobody out there like us enough to set $1000s on fire per person.
Not sure why Quanttower is adding these things as "official partners" on their site.
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Tradovate fix is expected after the Wednesday (7/17) close.
Rough times for feed / platform stability in Evalandia.
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Blueberry 🫐 Funded backed by Blueberry Markets continues the broker parade into the evaluation industry.
Detail / rules / jurisdictions unclear at the moment.
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Evalandia FX ladies and gentlemen...
Attempt to require you to report your address for 3 YEARS?
Your kids lose their right to free speech if they find company products unappealing?
Bullying desperate underfunded customers with this nonsense is disgusting.
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Apex Tradovate Issue
With Discord unavailable, many are reaching out about the inability to place TDV orders.
Apex has posted an update in purchase windows and in their "Help Center"
Purchases and trading will resume once issues are resolved.
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Apex of Apex & New Chapter
Apex begins major multi month site and format redesign to comply with upcoming regulatory requirements and to improve user experience.
We have likely seen the apex of Apex payout number for a long while.
Old "payouts" = payout requests(everyone used to be approved despite breaching some rules) + affiliate/marketing compensation.
On wild account recycling of 20 accounts with unlimited queue.
"New payouts" = approved payouts.
On smaller max account/queue amount and more clear sim to live funded path. Curbed recycling.
Very fascinating developments to follow as company that sold more accounts than most of the futures/FX industry combined enters new chapter.
April $25M in payouts
Would have crashed into $35-40M in "old payouts" in June, but all requests could not be freely approved anymore, "schemers and scammers" weeded out and code of conduct / rules had to be enforced.
Apex did suffer a good amount of reputation damage amid payout denial drama and lack of trading platform stability. For the first time in a long while we saw a significant drop in existing customer re-purchase rate.
Projecting Apex won't be seeing $30M "payout" number in new format for a very long time, if ever.
Doesn't mean they won't be a solid funding firm, they'll actually have a more trader friendly format.
Simply won't be a wild account recycling circus far detached from normal trading.
For reference how massive the payout number was:
Only FTMO, MFF & TFT have ever crossed the $10M/month mark. (5Ers unknown)
Topstep recently eclipsed $10M/mo trajectory and will eclipse $20m pace by EOY.
MFFU approaching $2m/mo pace by August.
Absolutely wild scenes loading in the futures space as many FX crossovers, influencer and other firms are entering the space over next 3 months.
(Baintz of BG with most recent plan announcement)
Apex complaints triggering accelerated introduction of stricter framework is a huge blessing for futures evaluation buyers. It was tracking to become a disaster like the CFD space.
DYOR, Diversify & GL
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Funding Pips Madness Continues
10,000+ accounts breached then unbreached via 3% rule introduction and removal.
Approximate timeline:
- Introduction, "it was always there", "we quantified toxic flow"
- Breaches
- Public backlash
- "International forgiveness day" restoring select accounts breached for 3% rule over the weekend.
- Unbreaching all accounts today
3% single trade rule is actually great for all firms.
Don't believe many had a problem with the rule, just how it was communicated and implemented.
Sales have dropped sharply as FP is trying to find its footing in the post Freedom Pips era.
Many customers are citing payout delay games, trust and communication issues as reasons for not returning.
Mention is not a recommendation, DYOR
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ThePropTrading re-coming soon as Evalandia madness continues
Seems legit
You first
Where's our money?
[No idea what's going on here, assuming someone bought IG acct]
The Prop Trading AU Forex Prop Firm posts ASIC letter
Denies allegations of fraud
Continues to work to resolve the situation
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When you forget to drip release the meaningless cliche and quote rolodex and just keep dumping them 20 at a time. Easy way to earn a mute.
Regardless, few questions about the launch of this new firm "CKCAPITAL"
No Exceptions: 6Month+++++ and $1M+++ payout spotless track record to consider. Unless some backing/payout guarantee miracle takes place.
GL & DYOR
The Prop Story
Chapter 1: The Beginning
A trader who blew countless accounts at FTMO/MFF/Topstep realizes money is on the other side and thinks it can be done better
Approaches his Tech/Web/Seo/Risk friend and they hopefully find some money to back their business.
Prop tech slaps together a site.
Here comes the "Built Different" email and social media quote/content Rolodex
Then you think the rest is just marketing, hopefully with the help of popular traders or influencers
That's how most prop firms started.
...
Inevitably on the first week of the launch, all parts from the web host and payment processor to the broker completely malfunctioned.
Chapter 2: Welcome to 20hr day hell
Wait! It doesn't just run smoothly & automatically print money?
We need 15 people to run this properly? And nobody competent wants to work for free?
Chapter 3:
Scammers, Stress, and Turkey hair transplant trips
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CFTC / Traders Global Group (MyForexFunds)
2 Public Statements & Remarks
cftc.gov/PressRoom/SpeechesT…
cftc.gov/PressRoom/SpeechesT…
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ThinkCapital by ThinkMarkets
Another broker joins the evaluation space via UAE entity.
Notable:
- $100K virtual max account size. $300K max total.
- One, Two, and Three Phase evals with pre-sale prices slightly above the industry average.
- No USA. Yes Europe [Minus Croatia]. Much less restrictive than other broker-backed launches.
- Extensive FAQ that is vague enough to breach any accounts, if necessary. [industry standard]
Broker-backed evals will likely start registering on top "traffic" charts soon as they are assumed to be better backed and less likely to participate in customer abuse.
Mention is NOT a recommendation. Don't trade underfunded without understanding that you are expected to read 1000s of pages of faqs daily to understand new meanings of each 4% drawdown with a 100:1 leverage.
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Funded Peaks Welcomes New Shareholder
Joshua Dentrinos will step in as the interim CEO of the evaluation firm.
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Bailouts/Valuations via Random Guy:
As is common with CFD things, the spread between the bid and the ask is rather wide, as trade outcomes are very unpredictable.
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FX Evals... Not a Lame Day... One of the more eventful ones
FTMO/5ERS .. doing their steady, low drama thing.
[Risk artist formerly known as 5ers Ruben joined Prop Firm Match]
FundedNext - Top "traffic" firm leans into industry turbulence with one of the biggest refund offers we have ever seen.
MyFundedFX - adds a minimum of 3x 0.5% days, as all firms that hope to survive are cleaning up their flows thru clearly defined trading rules using trading terms and are inviting more normal trading thru rules, not after-the-fact word salads. (x.com/FundTraders/status/173…)
ACG & Funding Pips are navigating entry into the futures evaluation market. MUCH more difficult than 6 months ago.
Buyouts/Liquidity Infusions:
- Funded Peaks and My Flash Funding are nearing a bailout.
- Multiple brokers are open to scooping up firm(s) that might be worth saving
- Amongst many seeking liquidity, FE is most notable. FE is assumed to make another repair attempt after a deal.
Other than that, demand for insolvent garbage with liabilities, that can be replaced with $3000, isn't that high.
- Some planted "leaks" circulating about SFT bailout that makes zero sense.
E8 introduces a raw spreads option
AscendX - spicy newcomer continues rebalancing and dealing with growing pains. Will they be the first to be able to handle flows associated with such lucrative offering? TBD......
Next Man Up:
FXIFY capitalizing on turmoil thru heavy ad spend and some unique offerings, find themselves in their highest all time traffic spot.
Smaller:
Instant Funding, CFT and Maven are stepping over corpses up the popularity ladder to see if they can scale their offerings.
TFT?!? 6 months and $30M too late.. is actually working on their product now by developing automated restricted trading style violation detection and trading condition transparency.
While this battle ⚔️ is lost, assumed to be re-entering the industry thru "clean" proxies and registration gymnastics.
These are just a few notable events .. absolute insanity behind the scenes.
Mentions are not a recommendation. Do not trade underfunded without understanding that evaluation firm marketing materials are meaningless - new meanings are assigned to most words in deeply hidden FAQs or T&Cs.
GL
Forex Evals 2024: Industry Re-Start
Intro to CBEEN Series
Accepting payment for and advertising a service or business opportunity that the seller has no technology, backing, or desire to service isn’t too far from FRAUD.
Large balances, cheap, static drawdown, unlimited trading style, high scaling & high leverage evaluation products can not exist.
Serious evaluation industry players with longevity in mind will not be getting there by:
- Denying payouts (adding legal exposure by refusing to service advertised business opportunities)
- Making a bet on company T&C superseding international data privacy laws
- Deceptively inflating the value of the product to drive sales
- Mocking customers for using advertised product’s features
Serious evaluation world players will be getting there by:
- Risk management
- Cleaner Data Monetization
- Lower Exposure
- Transparent advertising
- New ways to attract less experienced customers
- Getting rid of some profitable customers (gently)
Evaluation companies will have to be able to stand on their own merits no matter what else goes on in the evaluation world circus.
How do we get there?
CBEENs = Circuit Breakers + Edge Eroders + Nudges
Circuit Breakers - company risk management tools preventing windfall profits of a single customer or market event from blowing up the company.
Edge Eroders - trading rules and evaluation features that will erode the edge of those using evaluations for their infinite, undetectable, and significant non-normal-trading edges.
Nudges - offering traders decisions that often result in removing risk from the company
Over the next month, a series of Prop Gazette - CBEEN Series posts will give readers a look into the industry's future by addressing the above points
The industry restart era will be busy, and products won’t appear as sexy.
Higher Prop IQ and understanding which CBEENs your trading system works best with will significantly improve payout per fee expectancy.
As always, great trading solves all underfunded trader problems
GL & DYOR
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Lame Test by Funding Pips after an employee exploited @MatchTradeTech
vulnerability?
Evalandia is stranger than fiction, whatever is going on here ...
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🚨 Customer Data Leak
Please be alert when receiving various emails soliciting evaluation purchases
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20,092
There are costs, but activation &or data fees are used to balance the low upfront costs more than anything.
Top of book sim connection $10-15 range + free charting license
New tech players trying to bring data costs down further.
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FPR remains a wild and influencial cog in the broken CFD machine
Not only are there no visible affiliate or advertiser disclosures, they actually imply that they rank products through 700 pt criteria.
8 figures generated marketing companies that for most of the history led customers into subpar options, or soon to be insolvent companies. Awards to companies that are not operational and many other issues (x.com/FundTraders/status/175… one of many examples)
Good piece of business on their part, just a bit reckless considering what they are marketing and consequences(damages) associated with going with their recommendations
--
Smile Prep forced to place clearly visible affiliate and content-as-advertisement disclosure
ftc.gov/legal-library/browse…
YMYL niche marketing on large scale is no joke, especially when eval buying involves such high risk and significant time investment. Marketing these companies with 0 clearly visible risk, affiliate or advertising warning is an interesting choice. CFD + US component as well. Last but not least, with evaluation companies waving all responsibility for their product besides accepting payment [x.com/FundTraders/status/180…]
New Look FTMO - "Monetize Your Demo Trading"
Marketing & Contracts around Evalandia
FTMO cleaned up their marketing compliance as they further separated themselves from the rest of the industry who are taking risks:
- Marketing/Earnings Claims
- Advertising of key features of the product
- Advertised product delivery history
- Staying out of the US market and reducing the percentage of lifetime sales to the US.
Notably absent from last week's version [img2]
Leverage + No Limit on Trading Style
APEX
Beefed up the funded contract from 2 pages to start the year to 28 pages this week.
Attempting to combat "toxic flows, schemers and scammers" and square the two universes where it's possible to:
- Have a product implying that it is possible to evaluate responsible trading in 0 days by having traders return 230% via unrestricted trading.
- Having much stricter rules in funded accounts, restricting some of the more common trading styles.
Notable change in communications and contracts.
"BEST SPREADS"
Many FX companies are finally removing this from their highly visible marketing. Easily quantifiable and almost always a false claim. Zero ability to prove it true if requested by a regulator or courts.
Most Ambitious Practice
Nobody likes internet lawyers or opinionated bloggers, yet these humans continue harping on various marketing practices and their legality. One of their positions is that making a false or inaccurate marketing claim and clearing it up later after capturing a click or a visit constitutes an illegal/unfair practice or essentially amounts to marketing fraud. Who knows if these bloggers know anything, but they do happen to hold key positions at FTC and regularly share guidance on their blog. With the evaluation niche rumored to be squarely in FTC crosshairs, we should learn more in 2025 at the latest.
The Most Ambitious Practice - some evaluation firms are attempting to grant themself de facto marketing fraud and unjust enrichment immunity by inserting verbiage into terms and conditions that distance them from liability for all claims, transparency and product delivery.
In many cases key advertised features don't apply to:
- All
- Most
- Many
- Some
- Few
But literally ZERO non-partner customers in evaluation firm history.
To make it worse, in some cases, using those advertised features would breach the accounts.
Fascinating to monitor how this plays out.
ACG
Appears to have abandoned the approved path and is resuming grey-area US FX/CFD evaluation service today. Facing a major decision if any of the recently revamped Safeguards rules and international equivalents apply.
Evals in Turmoil could produce hundreds of pages of content these days.
These are the notable maneuvers drawing attention to start the week.
Evalandia... stressful, but NEVER dull.
DYOR
Don't trade underfunded without understanding the risks involved.
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45 minutes later
Alpha futures makes a big splash with largest 100/150k drawdown and amazing for future T:DD ratios
Also notable, no daily DD
We have a game
Alpha Futures deletes format launch tease and scrambles back to the drawing board
Notable:
- Smallest 50k acct drawdown of trusted names
- "Trailing" potentially means EOD trailing
- Nothing else clear
- Their content seems to be geared towards marketing to FX crowd transitioning to the futures. Explaining newbie things like front month contract, micros etc.
- No industry reshaping formats, yet. Appear to attempt to establish themselves as a trustworthy company.
Very very interesting launch as own tech FX firm becomes a drop-shipper [S2F?] in the futures space.
Value and futures industry positioning will depend on withdrawal rules, trail format, number of accounts, restrictions, sales.
ACG was cooking at Top 3-4 FX eval firm pace until March or so.
Then as the last remaining bastion of uncheck trader freedom and while marketing full DD aggressive traders, ACG invited an overwhelming amount of "toxic" groups/flows/id fraud and degens. Causing them sputter and feel massive growing pains.
ALFU was originally projected to battle MFFU for #3 immediately.
Then at the very wrong time of US FX re-entry stumbled into a series of blunders that have even the biggest ACG fans wincing and in a months-long state of WTF.
Apex, TST and MFFU are clear industry leaders in payout volume at the moment.
ALFU still projected to insert themselves not too far outside Top 3 because of their FX prominence.
Still no idea what we are getting here. What ranking will their offering deserve and what market position their FX prominence and marketing push secure .. 🍿
A simple "we allow DCA" and "no trading style restrictions" could put them above many key players who regularly refresh their extensive ruleset.
They are fresh from injury of such things in FX world and it's not ideal for managing flows, however is most lucrative to customers.
Mention not a recommendation to trade underfunded, nor indicative of a successful launch, nor indicative of S2F allowing anyone to undercut TS offering.
Very wild eval year continues
DyoR & GL
P.s.
Also very interesting if S2F/X will introduce cross eval firm copy functionality. Delicate balance between blocking nonsense associated with unchecked copying and losing the business of MULTI account traders.
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Alpha Futures deletes format launch tease and scrambles back to the drawing board
Notable:
- Smallest 50k acct drawdown of trusted names
- "Trailing" potentially means EOD trailing
- Nothing else clear
- Their content seems to be geared towards marketing to FX crowd transitioning to the futures. Explaining newbie things like front month contract, micros etc.
- No industry reshaping formats, yet. Appear to attempt to establish themselves as a trustworthy company.
Very very interesting launch as own tech FX firm becomes a drop-shipper [S2F?] in the futures space.
Value and futures industry positioning will depend on withdrawal rules, trail format, number of accounts, restrictions, sales.
ACG was cooking at Top 3-4 FX eval firm pace until March or so.
Then as the last remaining bastion of uncheck trader freedom and while marketing full DD aggressive traders, ACG invited an overwhelming amount of "toxic" groups/flows/id fraud and degens. Causing them sputter and feel massive growing pains.
ALFU was originally projected to battle MFFU for #3 immediately.
Then at the very wrong time of US FX re-entry stumbled into a series of blunders that have even the biggest ACG fans wincing and in a months-long state of WTF.
Apex, TST and MFFU are clear industry leaders in payout volume at the moment.
ALFU still projected to insert themselves not too far outside Top 3 because of their FX prominence.
Still no idea what we are getting here. What ranking will their offering deserve and what market position their FX prominence and marketing push secure .. 🍿
A simple "we allow DCA" and "no trading style restrictions" could put them above many key players who regularly refresh their extensive ruleset.
They are fresh from injury of such things in FX world and it's not ideal for managing flows, however is most lucrative to customers.
Mention not a recommendation to trade underfunded, nor indicative of a successful launch, nor indicative of S2F allowing anyone to undercut TS offering.
Very wild eval year continues
DyoR & GL
P.s.
Also very interesting if S2F/X will introduce cross eval firm copy functionality. Delicate balance between blocking nonsense associated with unchecked copying and losing the business of MULTI account traders.
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12,270
Prop Tech Getting Busy
Sim2Funded launches imminent
MyFundedTech
Astra Tech
XlTradeTech
The most impressive achievement for tech companies would be if working with them immediately assigned credibility to the evaluation seller.
For Futures:
Only those who are deeply involved in futures evaluation buying need options to go beyond 30+ accounts.
It is difficult for a new company to establish a purpose without undercutting so severely that sustainability becomes a concern. Can they establish credibility to justify taking a risk? Will tech companies provide infrastructure to obviously unsustainable offerings and poor track record eval sellers from the FX world? It will be fun to watch how they go about it.
For CFDs: 2yr+ track record or major brand launch to even consider. Broken niche. It won't be an XL launch for a while, if ever.
Viable options and competition are always welcome, GL to all involved.
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4,995
New Look FTMO - "Monetize Your Demo Trading"
Marketing & Contracts around Evalandia
FTMO cleaned up their marketing compliance as they further separated themselves from the rest of the industry who are taking risks:
- Marketing/Earnings Claims
- Advertising of key features of the product
- Advertised product delivery history
- Staying out of the US market and reducing the percentage of lifetime sales to the US.
Notably absent from last week's version [img2]
Leverage + No Limit on Trading Style
APEX
Beefed up the funded contract from 2 pages to start the year to 28 pages this week.
Attempting to combat "toxic flows, schemers and scammers" and square the two universes where it's possible to:
- Have a product implying that it is possible to evaluate responsible trading in 0 days by having traders return 230% via unrestricted trading.
- Having much stricter rules in funded accounts, restricting some of the more common trading styles.
Notable change in communications and contracts.
"BEST SPREADS"
Many FX companies are finally removing this from their highly visible marketing. Easily quantifiable and almost always a false claim. Zero ability to prove it true if requested by a regulator or courts.
Most Ambitious Practice
Nobody likes internet lawyers or opinionated bloggers, yet these humans continue harping on various marketing practices and their legality. One of their positions is that making a false or inaccurate marketing claim and clearing it up later after capturing a click or a visit constitutes an illegal/unfair practice or essentially amounts to marketing fraud. Who knows if these bloggers know anything, but they do happen to hold key positions at FTC and regularly share guidance on their blog. With the evaluation niche rumored to be squarely in FTC crosshairs, we should learn more in 2025 at the latest.
The Most Ambitious Practice - some evaluation firms are attempting to grant themself de facto marketing fraud and unjust enrichment immunity by inserting verbiage into terms and conditions that distance them from liability for all claims, transparency and product delivery.
In many cases key advertised features don't apply to:
- All
- Most
- Many
- Some
- Few
But literally ZERO non-partner customers in evaluation firm history.
To make it worse, in some cases, using those advertised features would breach the accounts.
Fascinating to monitor how this plays out.
ACG
Appears to have abandoned the approved path and is resuming grey-area US FX/CFD evaluation service today. Facing a major decision if any of the recently revamped Safeguards rules and international equivalents apply.
Evals in Turmoil could produce hundreds of pages of content these days.
These are the notable maneuvers drawing attention to start the week.
Evalandia... stressful, but NEVER dull.
DYOR
Don't trade underfunded without understanding the risks involved.
FTMO does get a completely free pass from twitter lawyers, prop owners and customers alike.
Why this is on their front page, nobody knows
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Blue Guardian:
-Early to pre-bubble market
-3 years of some of the industry's best deals
-Advertise 800K funding with NO RESTRICTION TRADING, including soliciting this to US customers
-Pump giveaways non-stop
-Featured on many bigger "review" sites
-Wield 4.2star Trustpilot rating
-As high as #6 in "traffic"
-They have Lambos, most popular affiliates, influencers, visible CEOS
-Trader-friendly guards/risk managers
- CEOs pals with many other CEOs
All reasonable industry models make it a statistical impossibility for a company with the above to have:
$9M lifetime payouts ($250k/mo)
ZERO $100K lifetime traders ($95k max as of May)
None of the 1000+++ $100K traders found one of the oldest companies with 3 years of most lucrative deals and friendly advertised features?
No one ever hit 12% on max funding yoloing NO RESTRICTION news spike?
Nobody ever hit 12% total over 3 years?
Nobody wants to make it their regular trading home to keep chipping away?
Serbian industry expert Occam Razorovic has some guesses, but what do YOU think? And what do you think happens next?
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Tradovate resumes onboarding evaluation firm clients
Via Scott Trieste of new launch Fast Track Funding
---
Rithmic drama, very high demand and Sim2Funded H2 projected boom has TDV returning for the sweet evaluation bucks at elevated rates.
---
Mentions are not indicative of future existence or ability to log into your trading platform ever again.
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Trade dot Com
Launches Cyprus evaluation entity
With massive openings and demand for serious players in the FX Eval niche, Trade com joins.
CBEEN: 2.5% daily profit limit, trade size consistency.
Restricted countries feature: USA, Canada, Japan
Instant funding is available at roughly 1/3 the cost of available drawdown
Full T&C challenges.trade.com/files/r…
Some broker entities under the umbrella are licensed with FINRA/FCA/Cysec etc
Many new players are circling and learning from the recent FX world mess. While entering without the US or the bubble era baggage.
Mention is not indicative of the future existence of any of the companies under the umbrella or a recommendation to trader underfunded. DYOR.
h/t @dezzifinance
🚨Another CFD Broker launches an Evaluation firm!
Trade.com launches their prop trading entity
They join the likes of many other licensed and regulated CFD Brokers that are entering the evaluation and funding space!
They will not be offering services or soliciting clients from Japan, Canada, Belgium or the USA.
#propfirm #propfunding
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Morning in the life of an evaluation buyer:
- Run webcrawler to see what FAQ changes have been inserted with zero notice or communication.
We have seen 2+ minutes average on all trades. Individual trade 2 minute minimum is a new one.
- Check which Emojis are legal to communicate with to retain funding and access to support
- Go to a tarot card reader to get the best guesstimate on how to interpret purposely vague word salad trading rules
- Go and see if any of the trading platforms are working today
- Get payout rejected by eval companies using rotating deny-anything payout policies
- Fall for another "expiring" sale
Evalandia in circus mode digesting massive growth
GL out there
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Breaking: Apex loses Serenity Status as 3rd week of outages rolls on
It has been a fantastic run.
Will revisit if/when things stabilize and new format is released
To their credit, they have reinstated near $100M of evaluation and millions of live funded losses, while honoring wins.
While that is nice, it's preferable to not have your trading home lit up by bad PR, platform issues costing millions before moving into lower margin evaluation format.
Strong established outage trend created a "strategy" of full porting $250k x 20++++ with the assumption that it's a win-win situation. Great for degens, very expensive consequences punted down the road.
Elite Serenity status requires stable daily trading and no drama.
GL to Apex in their stabilization
Imagine the Serenity & Peace:
Over last 3 years
Trade futures w/ TopStep and Apex
FX w FTMO and 5ers
Stay off social media
Mind own grind
-----
It's ok to trade what u have for now & react to new info next week, not noise & FUD
---
Past serenity not indicative of future state
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