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I saw via twitter that Merritt Black has joined a new trading firm:
I was excited, because I'm open to any route to trading full-time. However, it looks similar in structure to many of the other current "trading combines" ie. you pay to tryout.
It looks like they throw in free training once you pass the tryout, that might be considered an added incentive here, not sure how much training the other combines are offering.
Comparing their $50k "Tryout" with TST's, they want to see a $10,000 profit (TST $3,000) and they're charging twice as much for it ... also their profit-split when funded is 70/30 (TST 80/20). All rather surprising?
I agree, none of these combines ever seem to be a good fit for me personally, for various reasons. If I am expecting that I can make a $10k profit in a reasonable timeframe, before I have a $4k drawdown I definitely want to be trading my own account but that is just me.
-Their clearing partner is edgeclear
-Company was registered August 6, 2020
-You have to trade minimum of 30 days, so even if you complete the tryout in 30 trading days, the total minimum cost is 2*$315.
-No trailing drawdown, but with 1.5k daily losslimit.
-$50,000 worth of buying power and use 100% CME maintenance margin sounds good on paper but unrealistic that you will even trade over few contracts due to 1,5k daily loss limit.
Looks like any other generic prop shop out there. And if you pass you can "Celebrate your accomplishment. You have earned it!"
I hadn't noticed that - in that case, they're actually charging four times as much as TST, for (almost) the same thing. I find this very strange: they're apparently going into a market with a well-established, well known, 8-year-old "market leader", at 4 times the price?
I kind of got the impression that this was Merritt's shop. The website alone tells you there isn't much money backing the whole thing. It's a hard pass for me.
I think the higher pricing, the longer evaluation, etc. makes them more legit, anything cheaper/shorter than that is clearly designed to keep you on the reset account carousel, and probably will never give you access to a real account with real money.
No trailing drawdown, no "don't trade news" rule, really low commissions, etc. these look like really good propositions to me.
Not my perspective, but I understand that you're far from alone in thinking that. Some might imagine that the higher pricing speaks of a business model in which the try-out fees are intended to be the company's primary income.
Not so "clear" to me, especially when you bear in mind that two of the most well-known and longest established companies known and proven to give people access to real accounts with real money at stake in a live market (Topstep and Earn2Trade) both have much lower prices.
Low commissions, yes - that's always a plus, I suppose. Personally, I would steer clear of a company without a "don't trade news" rule, for more than just one reason.
Yes but you have to pay a $500/month "desk fee". That is on top of the professional CME data fee of $105/exchange that you would pay at a lot of other companies for data as a professional due to trading other people's money.
I heard the other day that leasing an exchange seat on the CME can actually be very cheap these days, as little as $200 or so/month was mentioned, and $2,000 for the application fee. Leasing a seat doesn't reduce fees as much as owning a seat, but it does make a big difference. As would negotiating with a broker if trading any decent volume. If not trading many contracts per day then higher fees wouldn't make as much difference anyway.
I do think an advantage of Apteros is the mid morning virtual meetup four days a week, as well as expected to do daily monthly reviews and set monthly goals, so behave like a professional and have to justify yourself to your boss if you repeatedly aren't following your plan or trading recklessly. This puts it above say Topstep again ( the only company I have any actual experience of using), where it is very hard to see that there is any actual benefits to staying with it if one starts making consistent profit and can build enough with them to comfortably fund ones own account instead.
