FundTraders

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

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.

Apex Comeback? Sep 1-5 Payouts Requests with Sep 15 payout decision date processed. User reports indicate Apex returning to more trader friendly payout approval methods. Many customers approved early, shortly after requests. On Mon, Sep 16th, mass-processed remaining requests. No widespread video requests. With the new payout schedule announcement imminent, Apex will attempt to reverse the market share trend. Early this year: Apex eval+data fees were multiples of Top 3 competitors, combined. Today: Topstep, MFFU & FTT combined sales/fees exceed those of Apex. Apex new format play is forced here as evaluation shoppers are becoming more savvy and Apex is trailing major competitors in payout and downtime expectancy. Only major live trailing drawdown evaluations company also has up to 12 days of downtime per payout and wields lower end 30% soft payout consistency requirements. The new format will also help capture lucrative single account buyers, not just degenerate 20 account recyclers. Very interesting to see if the new payout schedule will be applied to old accounts or new purchases only. New payout schedule applied to current PA accounts would be a great indicator of strength, as 8 figures of extra profits would become available to traders. GL to all involved. Don't trade evals without being a peace with eval company potentially disappearing.

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.