Binder Full of Email Templates
This reference is super niche, but let's see what's going on in the prop firm space and the markets this week.
1/13/20255 min read
Each week, I'm going to start the week off by covering a little bit of what's going on in the prop firm space, a little bit of what's going on in the markets, and anything else I feel like talking about (the perks of being in charge, after all). So... let's get right to it for this week of January 12, 2025. But not before I say... TRADERS! If you want to stay up-to-date on the latest in the prop firm space, the best discounts, and some market news and commentary, then just click here to subscribe for some fun stuff coming straight to your email.
The Prop Firm Rundown
Before I even talk about it--no, I have not updated my website so you'll still see an affiliate link to Apex floating around. I'll get around to moving that to an appropriate place eventually, and you're going to get my unfiltered thoughts here.
It's been a zesty couple of days in our weird little corner of the internet. All anyone wants to talk about is the latest updates from Apex, so let's talk about it. If you missed it, over the weekend we saw some Apex financials come out thanks to a lawsuit from their former CTO. The lawsuit claims that Apex was raking in anywhere from $7 to $15 million in profit each month during the summer of 2024. Based on the lawsuit, the CTO is alleging that Apex still owes him a cut of each month's profit, which if you do the math adds up to a whole lot of money.
Apex, of course, has been a case study in "what not to do" over the past year. Rapidly changing rules that they claim aren't rule changes at all, a sudden Discord shutdown, denied payouts, strange requests for video proof that you're actually executing trades, and more. It all reeked of a firm experiencing liquidity trouble and looking for ways to deny more payouts to keep the business afloat. As someone who used to trade with Apex, I always said it was a fine firm to use until they stopped paying. Well, they stopped paying. Gone were the days of no-questions-asked payout approvals and in were many-questions-asked payout denials.
Now the lawsuits are rolling in and we're peeling back to curtain to reveal the seedy underbelly of Apex. This weekend also saw a video released from an internal Zoom call where a very familiar voice detailed how they have a variety of ways to deny payouts to traders. Perhaps the most damning was the claim that they have "50 templates" ready to go to send out to traders getting close to approval for payouts in what can only be called a psyops against their own customer base. These emails would essentially go out saying Apex would be monitoring or reviewing a trader's trades over the next few days. Not stated in the video, but seen by myself from many friends who received one of these emails over the past year, was that these emails basically said they'd be reviewing your trades with the aim of moving you to a live account. As alluded to in the leaked Apex video, the hope was that the added pressure of being "under review" in some way would mess with a trader's mental and cause them to blow their account(s) or at the very least no longer be eligible for a payout.
The next detail revealed was that several traders on X showed how they had payouts "approved" and moved to "paid" status but they never received the funds. Now the veracity of these claims can't be verified, but nothing would surprise me. One trader stated they had their attorney involved who discovered lawsuits in the works against Apex worth about "$10 million+" for unpaid payouts.
Now... here is my one piece of commentary. When it became painfully obvious that Apex did not have actual live accounts and no trader was ever trading real money in the markets, that was the only sign I needed to confirm that their business model was more or less a Ponzi scheme. Rope in new traders with the promise of big payouts on 20 accounts, get them to blow up hundreds of eval accounts and the occasional PA account, use that money to pay out the traders who actually managed to earn a payout, and repeat the process until it all falls apart.
If your prop firm doesn't have live accounts--run, quickly, to a firm that does and don't waste your money on any firm that does business that way.
I promise this won't always be a negative segment about what's going on in the prop firm world, but this was worth talking about. And yes, I'll update the website... eventually...
Rearview Markets
Last week, the market was in a bearish mood. After briefly trying to appease the bulls on Monday, it was bear mode engaged. Buoyed by good news as bad news (a better-than-expected jobs report on Wednesday), the market decided to finally make a new low for the year on Friday when Bank of America came out and said they were projecting the Fed would not cut rates at all in 2025. This--on the back of the last FOMC meeting where the SEP dot plot revealed FOMC participants were now forecasting fewer rate cuts in 2025 than in their previous dot plot--really dashed hopes that rates would continue to come down this year and make real estate agents everywhere jump for joy.
Shit You Should Care About This Week
My favorite segment... here's what's going on this week that you should probably know about. (All times in United States Eastern Standard time)
Monday
11am - Consumer Inflation Expectations
Tuesday
8:30am - US PPI
Wednesday
2am - UK CPI
2:45am - French CPI
3am - Spanish CPI
8:30am - US CPI
10am - FOMC's Kashkari Speaks
10:30am - Crude Oil Inventories
11am - FOMC's Williams Speaks
2pm - Beige Book
Thursday
2am - UK GDP
2am - German CPI
8:30am - US Jobless Claims
8:30am - Philly Fed Manufacturing Index
8:30am - Retail Sales (MoM - December)
10am - Business Invetories and Retail Inventories (November)
11am - FOMC's Williams Speaks
9pm - China GDP
Friday
5am - Euro CPI
8:30am - Housing Starts + Buidling Permits
9:15am - Industrial Production
That is all to start off this second full week of January. Trade well!
