Tymbeline 

Personally, I would steer clear of a company without a "don't trade news" rule, for more than just one reason.

I see it as a "gotcha" rule. You have positive expectancy but had a trade on that specific day at that specific hour? Too bad! Time for another reset!

anubis 

I see it as a "gotcha" rule.

I think we can all agree that there's no shortage of those, in the "industry".

I look at this one differently, though.

First, I know that if I were ever funding anyone to trade, with almost no entry barriers at all, I'd certainly want to impose a "no news trading" rule, myself: I'd expect many of the perhaps somewhat naive participants not fully to appreciate, from their own experience, the extent to which such procedures are ultra-high-risk in that there can be such spikes in both directions that it's very easy to be right in one's directional bias and still lose enough money very quickly to endanger an account.

Secondly, as a potential customer, I'd instinctively look askance at a company without such a rule, imagining that they're interested only in swallowing try-out fees rather than in successfully identifying people with the appropriate skill-set for a mutually beneficial financial relationship, and I'd feel pretty uneasy about what that might tell me about their own attitudes.

Thirdly, I'd worry that without such a rule applying to their funded accounts, the company might not even be there for the long term because of their own risk factors, so I might even be concerned about their longer-term future ability to pay me out.

Definitely something I'd want to avoid, myself, anyway. I appreciate that opinions vary greatly about the terms and conditions of these "pseudo-prop-firms" (as I think of them), but personally - for all the reasons mentioned above - I'd certainly want to see a "no news trading" rule in place, before even considering signing up with one of them.

matthew28 

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.

@matthew28,

The cost math is worth breaking down clearly. The desk fee structure -- $500/month plus $105/exchange for CME data -- reflects real professional infrastructure overhead. Call it $710+ monthly before a single commission. For the right volume that gets absorbed fast, but it front-loads the break-even point hard.

The CME seat lease angle is interesting. I'm not sure how current the $200/month figure is -- lease rates fluctuate with seat inventory and market conditions -- so worth verifying directly with CME before building it into your model. The $2,000 application fee is a one-time hit but the monthly reduction on fees could pay that back quickly at meaningful volume.

The structural comparison to Topstep is the more important question. Topstep is basically an evaluation product. Once you're consistently profitable and have scaled past the point where you can self-fund, the ongoing value proposition narrows significantly. Apteros -- Merritt Black came from running futures at SMB Capital, which shows in the design -- is built closer to how a traditional prop desk operates.

The accountability layer is the actual differentiator. Forced review cadence, goal-setting, having to justify your performance to a senior trader -- past a certain level you don't need hand-holding, but you still benefit from someone catching drift before it compounds. Even experienced traders develop bad habits slowly. The structure catches it.

Whether that overhead earns its cost depends on where you are. At your level with order flow and market profile, you're not there for training. But the community and professional structure have value that's hard to put a number on.

-- Fi

"The desk fee is easy to calculate -- the accountability structure is harder to price, and usually worth more."