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so im sure youve all seen me making a ton of posts about apex. when apex first launched it was best in slot by miles. i pitched it to friends, i staked my reputation on its integrity and competence and that of its staff.
at this point, as things stand, i cant comfortably maintain that position.
the problem is basically this; apex is a victim of its own success.
apex makes its money off resets, blown accounts, and the rather ugly but statistically accurate assumption that the overwhelming majority of its clients will never cash out, they will just keep on chasing losses and blowing accounts. and every time they blow a live account, apex rakes at least $85. and every time someone blows a trial account, apex pockets between $20 and $700 depending on what sales/promos are active on which accounts.
and the thing is, that was fine because we all knew what we were getting into, all this was very much above the boards. and when we had a good run, apex paid us. i say this from personal experience; apex paid me tens of thousands of dollars.
but yeah thats why apex let us register *20* live accounts at a time. they wanted us to register those accounts, blow them out, and then register new ones.
because, and this is hugely important, apex runs risk management software that makes sure that even tho you might have just blown $2500 on your account, apex quietly closed your positions on their end before that happened. the second you start to go red, apex closes your bets. you dont see it, but it happens. and if your bets recover, hey apex just jumps back into your positions invisibly. see, thats the hustle, thats the business model. thats how apex can afford to front you $2500 on an account that cost you about $100. if you pooch the account, it costs apex exactly fuckall. if you somehow ran up $1000? well apex just made thousands of dollars off the people who didnt; they can afford to cover your winnings.
please understand; none of this is somehow amoral or underhanded. this is their business model. and if you trade well / profitably, they can afford to pay you. plus they rake 10% of that payout after a point so yeah, everyone makes out well.
except of course the 90%+ of people who lose more than they win.
but folks the game is the game. everything i just described is the business model at the core of all prop firms.
so lets talk about where the math went horribly, horribly wrong;
first off, things got complicated abouuuuut... id say 2 years ago. thats when the scummers started to show up. the same people who sleaze around the internet looking for freerolls and +EV poker tournaments and shit, they realized they could do all sorts of greasy shit to game apex and pocket a couple of months living expenses by arbing/hedging on separate accounts, running up accounts on a single trade at max leverage then cashing out the winnings, etc etc.
so apex started to tweak policies to discourage them. because unlike amateur retail futures traders (like me), the scummers were actually costing apex money because they were cashing out much more than they were putting in, over and over.
and these new policies started to really put the pressure on the people who signed up for apex looking for a prop firm that wasnt looking to burn us outright. suddenly we had to show consistency, we had to wait 6 weeks to get cash in hand, we started to get dinged for using max leverage, etc etc. we will get more into this shortly but its important to clock.
second off, apex started to overwhelm its exchange, rithmic. rithmic is the company that actually executes trades for apex, and maybe 80% of the other prop firms. you can think of prop firms as skins, to borrow online poker parlance. they have various policies but most of them are essentially front-ends / middleware for the actual company executing transactions and providing market data. so simply put; i cant overstate how important rithmic's role in all this is. without rithmic, apex probably shuts down.
im not going to belabor this point; apex has overwhelmed rithmic's infrastructure. the results of this are trades that are executed after a delay, often 20 to 30 seconds later, and cant be closed for another 20 to 30 seconds. 'phantom' trades are taking place, aka trades no one executed but mysteriously take place.
at first the problem was just like, 'slippage'. yeah sometimes things go wrong. you dust yourself off and keep going. but this problem has escalated. in the last year it went from a once in a blue moon situation to something thats happening more often than not. i can tell you from personal experience that its been present in at least half the trading days in the last week on apex.
at first, apex re-instated the accounts 100% of the time. then it was 80%. then it was 50%. now id say its about 20% of the time. i had 16 accounts blown earlier this week and not only did they not reinstate them but they didnt even respond to the ticket i opened about it.
now rithmics solution was to build out entirely new sandboxed servers to deal with apex's traffic and guess what, they have overwhelmed that brand new system as well.
basically there is absolutely nothing apex can do right now but radically change their offerings / policies. the current state of affairs is unsustainable. they need to cap everyone at 10, maybe even 5 accounts. and they need to speed up cashouts because all of us traders have ADD so we are totally time blind and the notion of cash in hand in 5-6 weeks yields exactly zero dopamine.
apex's current response is; we dont want gamblers, we want traders.
basically they are blaming their clients for not trading the way apex wants them to trade.
which is a very, very important concept to put a spotlight on; the traders they want us to be would be absolute smoothbrains to stay on apex because prop traders lose the tax advantage that trading futures comes with. the whole point of apex was we can lower our exposure, up our risk a bit, and in return, string together some substantial cashouts if we do it right and fade the most competitive casino in the world; the market.
thats literally the point of propping.
and you know what apex is doing to emphasize their position?
they are refusing payouts.
a lot.
i mean... a lot a lot.
so now the max window for cash in hand has shifted from up to 6 weeks to up to 8 weeks.
remember that scene in casino? where ace is like always keep the whales at the table?
yeah.....
so yeah i dont know whats going on here. in about a week, july 4 hits. apparently apex are about to make some big changes to their account structures/policies that add some carrot to the current stick-centric changes.
im really, really hoping i get to update this thread with good news. i want to believe in apex again and it wouldnt take much for them to make it happen.
but shit like this is not encouraging tbh:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNtmexQuNsY
fingers crossed boys.
at this point, as things stand, i cant comfortably maintain that position.
the problem is basically this; apex is a victim of its own success.
apex makes its money off resets, blown accounts, and the rather ugly but statistically accurate assumption that the overwhelming majority of its clients will never cash out, they will just keep on chasing losses and blowing accounts. and every time they blow a live account, apex rakes at least $85. and every time someone blows a trial account, apex pockets between $20 and $700 depending on what sales/promos are active on which accounts.
and the thing is, that was fine because we all knew what we were getting into, all this was very much above the boards. and when we had a good run, apex paid us. i say this from personal experience; apex paid me tens of thousands of dollars.
but yeah thats why apex let us register *20* live accounts at a time. they wanted us to register those accounts, blow them out, and then register new ones.
because, and this is hugely important, apex runs risk management software that makes sure that even tho you might have just blown $2500 on your account, apex quietly closed your positions on their end before that happened. the second you start to go red, apex closes your bets. you dont see it, but it happens. and if your bets recover, hey apex just jumps back into your positions invisibly. see, thats the hustle, thats the business model. thats how apex can afford to front you $2500 on an account that cost you about $100. if you pooch the account, it costs apex exactly fuckall. if you somehow ran up $1000? well apex just made thousands of dollars off the people who didnt; they can afford to cover your winnings.
please understand; none of this is somehow amoral or underhanded. this is their business model. and if you trade well / profitably, they can afford to pay you. plus they rake 10% of that payout after a point so yeah, everyone makes out well.
except of course the 90%+ of people who lose more than they win.
but folks the game is the game. everything i just described is the business model at the core of all prop firms.
so lets talk about where the math went horribly, horribly wrong;
first off, things got complicated abouuuuut... id say 2 years ago. thats when the scummers started to show up. the same people who sleaze around the internet looking for freerolls and +EV poker tournaments and shit, they realized they could do all sorts of greasy shit to game apex and pocket a couple of months living expenses by arbing/hedging on separate accounts, running up accounts on a single trade at max leverage then cashing out the winnings, etc etc.
so apex started to tweak policies to discourage them. because unlike amateur retail futures traders (like me), the scummers were actually costing apex money because they were cashing out much more than they were putting in, over and over.
and these new policies started to really put the pressure on the people who signed up for apex looking for a prop firm that wasnt looking to burn us outright. suddenly we had to show consistency, we had to wait 6 weeks to get cash in hand, we started to get dinged for using max leverage, etc etc. we will get more into this shortly but its important to clock.
second off, apex started to overwhelm its exchange, rithmic. rithmic is the company that actually executes trades for apex, and maybe 80% of the other prop firms. you can think of prop firms as skins, to borrow online poker parlance. they have various policies but most of them are essentially front-ends / middleware for the actual company executing transactions and providing market data. so simply put; i cant overstate how important rithmic's role in all this is. without rithmic, apex probably shuts down.
im not going to belabor this point; apex has overwhelmed rithmic's infrastructure. the results of this are trades that are executed after a delay, often 20 to 30 seconds later, and cant be closed for another 20 to 30 seconds. 'phantom' trades are taking place, aka trades no one executed but mysteriously take place.
at first the problem was just like, 'slippage'. yeah sometimes things go wrong. you dust yourself off and keep going. but this problem has escalated. in the last year it went from a once in a blue moon situation to something thats happening more often than not. i can tell you from personal experience that its been present in at least half the trading days in the last week on apex.
at first, apex re-instated the accounts 100% of the time. then it was 80%. then it was 50%. now id say its about 20% of the time. i had 16 accounts blown earlier this week and not only did they not reinstate them but they didnt even respond to the ticket i opened about it.
now rithmics solution was to build out entirely new sandboxed servers to deal with apex's traffic and guess what, they have overwhelmed that brand new system as well.
basically there is absolutely nothing apex can do right now but radically change their offerings / policies. the current state of affairs is unsustainable. they need to cap everyone at 10, maybe even 5 accounts. and they need to speed up cashouts because all of us traders have ADD so we are totally time blind and the notion of cash in hand in 5-6 weeks yields exactly zero dopamine.
apex's current response is; we dont want gamblers, we want traders.
basically they are blaming their clients for not trading the way apex wants them to trade.
which is a very, very important concept to put a spotlight on; the traders they want us to be would be absolute smoothbrains to stay on apex because prop traders lose the tax advantage that trading futures comes with. the whole point of apex was we can lower our exposure, up our risk a bit, and in return, string together some substantial cashouts if we do it right and fade the most competitive casino in the world; the market.
thats literally the point of propping.
and you know what apex is doing to emphasize their position?
they are refusing payouts.
a lot.
i mean... a lot a lot.
so now the max window for cash in hand has shifted from up to 6 weeks to up to 8 weeks.
remember that scene in casino? where ace is like always keep the whales at the table?
yeah.....
so yeah i dont know whats going on here. in about a week, july 4 hits. apparently apex are about to make some big changes to their account structures/policies that add some carrot to the current stick-centric changes.
im really, really hoping i get to update this thread with good news. i want to believe in apex again and it wouldnt take much for them to make it happen.
but shit like this is not encouraging tbh:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNtmexQuNsY
fingers crossed boys.
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