Contents
Apex Trader Funding Review
APEX Funding is currently running a massive launch and holiday sale on their trading exam, making them the top value online funded trader industry.
Pay as little as 74$ and have access to the live trader evaluation within minutes. Let’s break down their very simple funding tests offerings ranging from 25k to 300K nominal account value.
Most Popular APEX Trading Plans
Apex Funded Trader Program Breakdown
APEX account size or Starting Capital: 25k through 300k represents the starting balance in your simulated trading live data environment. That number is roughly the amount of funds you would need in your online brokerage account to cover the initial margin for the maximum available positions size in the program. You are getting an opportunity to leverage a small dollar amount into a significant leverage real money trading account.
Contracts: Maximum position size or most futures contracts you can have traded in your trading exam account. You do not have to trade full size at once, and you can trade just one at a time. And if market conditions get too crazy, you can now trade micro contracts too (for example, MES/MNQ are 1/10th the size of ES/NQ). A maximum number of futures micro contracts is listed next to full contract size.
Profit Goal: Pretty Straight Forward, reach the profit goal, and as soon as you place a trade during ten different trading days and have funded account balance above starting balance + profit goal, you will advance to funded money account to trade for real money profits.
Daily drawdown: NONE! There is no daily drawdown. Competitors make you adhere to Daily and sometimes weekly account drawdowns. With Apex trader funding, you have all the breathing room you need to trade with one drawdown or trailing Threshold.
Trailing Threshold: or maximum allowed drawdown for trading exam account. Drawdown is the dollar $ trailing your highest reached balance. For example, suppose you have a 7.5k drawdown in a 300k account.
When first starting, the balance can not cross below 292.5K. As you make profits, the drawdown trails. If the balance reaches 303K, the level you can drawdown to becomes 295.5k.
What is the Trailing Threshold Max Drawdown? – Apex Trader Funding (zendesk.com)
Scaling: Once again, another big advantage of working with APEX is to achieve a real withdrawable money account. Many competitors ask you to scale your positions, sizing up as you make a profit, and try to trap you for violating the contract sizing rules if the balance is in the wrong position sizing bracket. Here you have the freedom to trade maximum allowed contracts from the first trade.
NinjaTrader License: One of the most popular and powerful trading platforms is included with the Apex Funding program and is ready to go from the start. Just Ninjatrader’s lease for just the platform is $225 quarterly. So here, you get a chance to get funding for the cost of software alone. And that’s not all; you get more.
Real-Time Data:
In the Apex funding program, you get immediate access to all the live data, including the most popular products from CBOT, CME, COMEX, NYMEX. In addition, you can earn funding trading the products of the following futures:
- Index Futures – ES, NQ, YM, EMD, RTY American indexes and even get crazy with wild NKD Nikkei futures.
- Interest Rate Futures – ZB, UB, ZN, ZF, ZT, GE
- Currency Futures – Aussie Dollar, British Pound, Canadian Dollar, Euro FX, Japanese Yen Futures (Inverse of USD/JPY), Swiss Franc, and New Zeland Dollar
- Agricultural Products – Lean Hogs (HE), Live Cattle (LE), Feeder Cattle (GF), Corn (ZC), Wheat (ZW), Soybeans (ZS), Soybean Meal (ZM), Soybean Oil (ZL)
- Energy Futures – CL, NG, QG (mini natural gas), HO, RB
- Metals Futures – GC, SI, HG, PL, PA, QI, and QO
Newly added micro futures that are 1/10th the size of full contracts:
- Index Micros: MES, MNQ, MYM, M2K
- Metal Micro: MGC
- Currency Micros: M6A, M6E
- Micro Crude Futures
As you see, there is a full array of financial instruments available for you to trade with a very flexible position size.
Commissions: Like in real-world trading, during the Apex evaluation account, commissions are charged for trading. Round Trip commissions:
Equity Index Futures: $3.98 bet round turn
Interest Rate futures: $3.12-4.02 / RT
Currency Futures are $4.72 per round turn trade
AG Futures: $5.58 RT
Energy Futures: $3.96
Metals: $4.62 for full contracts and $3.02 for the minis
Micro Futures: $1.02/RT or less
Another place APEX shines, commissions are in line with the lowest rates at online brokerages. Some of the competitors overcharge on commissions, especially punishing scalpers.
Reset: If you reach the drawdown and fail the evaluation. You can reset it for only $80 and start over. Likewise, you can get aggressive with large accounts and restart for only $80. While not ideal for a disciplined trader path, it is an approach you can take with this program.
See more of The Best Funded Trader Programs for 2022
APEX Funding User Experience
Apex Trader Funding team has put in a lot of work behind the scenes to improve their very popular trader funding product. The new dashboard covers all the technical and account management needs for traders whole journey.
Most Features Are self-explanatory, new additions that make the experience easier and more stress-free.
You can see all the subscriptions on the home page of the dashboard. All important information is included in the snippet – expiration, profit goal, drawdown, and account ID for multi-account traders.
Account Summary – a very welcome addition to the trader dashboard.
Before you had to go into the Rithmic dashboard and manually scroll through days to count how many days have had a trade, after reaching 10 days trader and profit target traders would have to submit advancement to funded account requests manually.
In all new Account Summary Tab, all accounts lists balance and days traders for each account. Traders may also view the chart with the running balance and location of the trailing drawdown. Great quality of evaluation improvements here.
Payout Requests can now be handled from the dashboard.
Flatten Accounts Feature. Things happen in the fast-moving trading world. Power goes out, volatility causes trading software to crash. Orders get stuck somewhere between your click and the data feed provider’s servers. No more need to panic and scramble to figure out what to do with hopes of reaching support in time to avoid disaster. Simply log into your trader dashboard online and request to flatten the accounts. Significant time and potentially account saving feature.
Data and Second login management can be handled from the dashboard and be activated in 15-30 minutes.
New account sign up can be handled from the dashboard as well, select new account of your choice, enter discount code XMAS50 to save 50% and start new evaluation.
Going Live - Becoming Funded Trader
Once system detects that Profit Target and Min Day Traded requirements have been met, traders are sent a funded trader contract and request to pay set up / data fee.
Contracts is fairly simple, goes over funded account rules and payout instruction. No super intrusive inquiries and disclosures necessary like with some of the competitors. The accounts we got funded in May, contracts were filled out 7 am, live accounts were ready before the market open at 930am. Process is very smooth. Very Important to note: contract has to be completed in two business day from being sent out. Not sure why such a rush is necessary. But please pay attention to your emails after completing the evaluation.
Getting Paid - Apex Payouts
Good News! Apex is a very trustworthy company. Low fee evaluations allow you to be funded in 10 days and be on the way to trading for 100% profit split at first.
Keep 100% of your first $10,000 profit withdrawals.
Not so good news: It is not a get-rich-quick scheme. Traders are encouraged to grow accounts and not make large withdrawals at first. There is a minimum trading day requirement for requesting withdrawals. There are many opinions on this format. While it is great for growing account and having sufficient cushion to work with, many traders would like to have an option to get paid for great performance. Fourth withdrawal is when things finally open up and unlock full value of Apex Trader Funding:
- Low Fee
- Fast Funding
- Trusted Company
- High Available Leverage
- Trading software included in evaluations and live phases
Withdrawals are paid out on the last day of the month.
Let’s take a look at our two favorite accounts the 50K and 150k which in our opinion offer the best value.
Payout Requirements
Traders are asked to successfully complete multiple criteria to make withdrawals at Apex Funded Trader Program:
- 25 Days Traded to request the first payment
- Keep a cushion above which you will be withdrawing
- Request a minimum of $1000 withdrawal
- Make sure you request withdrawal under the max allowed amount
- Request payout so it can be paid out on the last business day of the month
Things open up nicely after first payout. Next two months only 10 trading day requirement with same minimum and maximum amounts in place.
Fourth month on trading live with Apex traders are only required to trade 10 days and no maximum withdrawal limits are imposed.
This format is very common is in the funded trader industry, it allows companies to get better sample size of trader’s performance to know how to handle the live accounts on their back end. No worries, you will still get paid, companies just might let reckless traders blow up without copy trading them.
Get Paid More For Same Performance at APEX
Firstly, when purchasing evaluations, use discount code XMAS50 to only pay half price for evaluations. Big savings right there
There are techniques and approaches to being funded at APEX thanks to them allowing multiple evaluation accounts under one master account (DO NOT create multiple logins, only one per person is allowed)
Let’s pull our two best programs at APEX:
Firstly, a 150K account is the best if you would like to get a large drawdown and only operate a single account. 25K account is a good starter account with a 1:1 profit target to drawdown ratio.
50k Account brings the best value – good drawdown to profit target ratio with a great low price.
Very important: for the sake of this exercise, traders need to be able to spread the risk amongst multiple accounts manually, or use trade copier software.
For sake of the comparison, we are working with:
Two 50k accounts vs a Single 150K account
The trader is performing well, profits well in excess of the maximum withdrawal limit
Position sizing should not be an issue as 50k accounts allow more than half of 150k account position sizing 10 x 2 vs 17.
Total available drawdown:
$5,000 in both accounts
Profit Target to Funding:
$6,000 to $9,000
2x50k requires $3,000 less in profit target to get funded for the same amount of drawdown as the 150k account.
Once Funded:
Both scenarios require the same amount of cushion to be able to withdraw above – $5,000
Now for withdrawals during the first 3 months:
$4,000 – Max Withdrawal for 2x50k
$2,750 – Max Withdrawal for 150k account
Traders will be able to withdraw $1,250 a month more and a total of $3,750 more over the first 3 months, while trader performance is the same. And let’s not forget that it takes $3,000 less in profit to qualify.
Advanced Strategies and Aggressive Futures Trading
Trading and Funding Multiple Accounts and Strategies at once, under one main APEX account!
Most will settle for just one evaluation account, and it is common for the trader funding industry to limit traders to only one evaluation or trading exam account at once. However, Apex allows you to trade multiple trader evaluation accounts at once. Which allows you to tackle your trading goals in different ways and use more advanced trading strategies:
- Spread out the risk: if you would like to trade large positions and lower the chance of hitting drawdown, scaling into multiple accounts will lower the chances of hitting the drawdown than putting the same risk on in a single account. It is also much easier to look at ten times $200 loss than one $2000 and have plenty of room to trade out of the small drawdown.
- Push the leverage – a trade copier is available to copy the trades into multiple trading accounts from one DOM. You could get multiple accounts on a great sale, hook up the trade copier and go. You can trade as many accounts as you want.
- However, Apex reserves the right to limit the number of Live accounts one trader can have, so to be safe, they recommend not going over ten accounts (read high trading leverage breakdown only if you are an extremely aggressive trader, look away if having more than two futures contract position makes you queasy)
- 10x 300k Full accounts cost $657; with this great funding program sale, you can get 10 of these programs for $3285; using the trade copier, you can trade up to 350 futures contracts with a drawdown across all accounts of $75,000.
- That is massive leverage and opportunity that would require well over $1,000,000 in even the most aggressive margin brokerage accounts. And then guess what, you do not succeed right away, you can reset all those accounts for only $80 each or $800 total, you get to give 350 contracts and a $75000 drawdown account another chance to get funding.
- This type of extreme aggressive leverage is not for everyone; to be honest, it is for almost no one. Leverage is a double-edged sword with extreme downside risk, and that risk almost always catches up with overleveraged traders. But if you are going to take such substantial risks, it is probably favorable to do it for $3285 after passing the trading test, rather than in a million+ trading own money account.
Apex - Trusted Company and Trader Community
There have been a lot of funding companies that have gone and gone, so it is fair to be concerned that the company that is offering seems too good to be true deals.
APEX has been around for almost 14 years operating in trader education and trader development space. They have a massive community of over 30,000 traders spanning most of the world. Founder Darrell Martin has worked with many funded trader funding programs before to take away their best features to bring you simple trader funding opportunities without adding too many hoops to jump through even to pass a single step.
Sounds Great! Right?! Well… they are also running a massive holiday sale of 50% off! Extremely rare to see such a high funded drawdown to cost ratio, possibly never before seen in the industry.
Start your funded trader journey with APEX today.
Risk Disclosure: This content is provided for informational purposes only. We strive to make the content accurate and current by updating it often. Sometimes, the actual data may differ from what is stated on our website. onlineproptrading.com operates independently. Although we are an independent platform, advertisements and sponsored products may compensate us. We also receive compensation for clicking on links on our website. Authors and contributors are not certified or registered financial advisors. Before making any financial decisions, you should consult a financial professional.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Romain is an independent trader and investor specializing in financial market analysis and trading systems. He worked as a professional long/short equity trader for a trading firm in New York and has a passion for building mechanical trading strategies. He has been in the industry since 2008.
DISCLAIMER
This post expresses the opinions of the writer and is for information, entertainment purposes only. Romain is not a registered financial advisor or certified analyst. The reader agrees to assume all risk resulting from the application of any of the information provided. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future returns and financial trading is full of risk.) Please read the Full Disclaimer