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A ponzi is a ponzi when payouts only come from new signups, and you have to continuously bring in more and more people to keep the payouts going. Fantasy isn't a ponzi because the casino makes money when people lose. Not sure if you were going for a different point here?
The MyForexFunds signup fee was like 300-1.5K though, Apex is only 15-60 depending on the sale at the time. Thats why I think the monthly intake isnt that high. I would love to see the revenue breakout between the software, signups, and training courses. I would assume it goes signups then course then software -but the courses have much lower overhead
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
Honestly I don't know what you're talking about? I haven't defaulted to anything, I merely mentioned what some of the bad reviews are saying, and also the fact that Apex put you on a sim when you pass. So when they pay you they lose money as the trade didn't hit the live market.
There is no arguing with this as it is a fact. They may copy trade a select few people and make money from that, but we don't know. However the fact remains that if they pay you it comes out of their profit.
I have never claimed that you can't make money from Apex. Please refrain from creating any more straw man arguments, or stating things that I haven't said.
100% agree. It's a fact that majority of retail traders lose money. These prop firm traders are no different.
But from a business perspective, Apex doesn't necessarily lose money when they payout because each payout is marketing. The payouts may actually have a good ROI for them.
Also not everyone signs up with companies like Apex for the same reason. For example when I first signed up with them, my goal was to practice trading. I had just blown up another self funded account and was down nearly 50k. I wanted to keep practice trading, but couldn't trust myself or afford putting more money into my NT brokerage account, and this is where Apex became a life saver because for about $25, they give you an account with live market data. The live data alone costs $15 per month, so having the live data included means $10 per month for a sim account. But because it's not a locally hosted sim101, it keeps you accountable and more likely to trade it as if it was a real account.
Reaching a payout was the icing on top, but the goal was always to practice with a little skin in the game, which was impossible for me on sim101. Eventually when I got better and figured out the game, I started getting payouts, and Apex has never missed a payout, so I trust them completely because I know that 95% of others are going to fail the evals and PA accounts at first, so there will always be funds for my payouts.
The CFTC has alleged, among other things, that: (a) the Defendants entered into leveraged foreign exchange and commodity transactions with retail customers, and those transactions qualify as “retail forex transactions” and “retail commodity transactions”; (b) Traders Global has never been registered with the CFTC as a Registered Foreign Exchange Dealer and has never entered into any retail commodity transactions on an exchange registered with the CFTC; further, Traders Global has entered into, executed, and transacted in retail commodities not on any exchange registered with the CFTC; and (c) Defendants have made, with scienter, material misrepresentations and misstatements to customers and omitted material facts regarding Traders Global’s role as a counterparty to customers’ trades
Forex is different from Futures in that there isn't a centralized exchange like CME. So by running a B-book style sim trading business, they become the counter party?
Is that inherently different with Futures sim trading?
And that I agreed with the other poster that just because you trade poorly I don't think you should leave a bad review. Shouldn't the review reflect if the company is good or not, instead of if you had good trade ideas?
Im not arguing they put you in sim, I've even said so a few times myself. I also don't feel the sim puts me at a disadvantage in my trading, and I have made 5 figures so far from trading with Apex. Also to spend thousands at apex is a lot, I haven't even reached that myself until I had 20 accounts with them
Anyways, this is a thread about the MFF fraud fiasco and legality of prop firms, so I guess my stand is that putting you in a sim isnt illegal, and having requirements for payouts isnt illegal (but not the best deal either). If the sim prop firms do similar things that MFF did (adjust orders, adding undisclosed spread) I would consider that crossing the line of course and possibly illegal.
I would be incredibly interested in seeing the revenue split from any prop firms. And if the revenue from new user fees is over 50% then I would definitely start to worry the company
I think it may be if they don't tell you that it's what they're doing, i.e. if they lead you to believe that someone else, rather than themselves, is the counterparty? That's dishonest, surely? (It was certainly held to be dishonest, when FXCM did it.) That's the difference between "We win when you win" and "We win when you lose," I think?
They should openly say it. If they hide it in a 100 page terms and condition page, thats officiation and just shady. If they don't tell you then thats a problem.
And I see the sim and counterparty as two different things.
The sim is less of an issue for me personally, I would like it if my account is real, but also I pay fewer data fees for being in sim and I haven't seen a fill issue in tradovate with apex.
If they are the counterparty then that gets into the brokerage issue that MFF got into. I definitely want to know who is the counterparty, and if there are any adjustments to the spreads.
The "we win when you win" argument only work when the vast majority of the firm revenue is from copy trading. In this scenario, they are actually making money when you are, and they should want you to keep making good trades so they can copy your more (or sell your trade signals). If they aren't successful at copy trading, then that incentivizes them to generate revenue through other means. If that other means is signup / rest fees, then they will try to get as much as possible.
To begin to understand the CFTC vs. Traders Global case, we must start with reading the actual court documents: the CFTC's Complaint and the judge's Statutory Restraining Order. Both are ATTACHED.
Please note: the CFTC will soon amend its Complaint. …
After reading the documents, I would summarize the issues as:
1) they acted as counterparty to the trades
2) the trades qualified as retail trades
3) they failed to register as an exchange dealer for these trades
4) they failed to publish these …
To summarize the issue MFF got into, is that they were the counterparty to these real trades, and actively gave bad fills or transaction fees. All of this without disclosing to users, and not registering as a broker (since they were processing the trades and being the counterparty).
If all of this was in a sim I believe the case would have been much harder to make (although the business practices still shady and dishonest)
So basically just another business acting as a forex B-Book broker (unregistered), the founder must have thought swapping deposits with eval fees would protect him.
I suspect they chose the wrong tech for their ops. They must have chosen one of the white label broker as a service techs, like B2Broker.
At this point, I feel like B2Broker is actually a honeypot.
