👀 Apex revises live program, Kraken launches prop firm

Hi everyone, back to business. Markets are open and there's lots going on across the industry, so let's get straight into it.

After receiving major backlash when announcing its live program last week, Apex has made some changes, and clarified how things will work. Here’s the breakdown:

Apex Live Program Structure

Level 1

• 1 Live Account

• $3,000 Drawdown

• No Daily Loss Limit

• Up to 10 Contracts

• No Scaling Rules

Once an account reaches $4,500 profit, a second Live Account is added. This process continues until a maximum of 5 Live Accounts is reached.

Level 2

• Achieved when an account balance reaches $10,000 to $25,000

• Up to 25 Mini Contracts

• $5,000 Daily Loss Limit (with some flexibility)

Level 3

• Achieved when an account balance reaches $25,000 to $50,000

• Up to 30 Mini Contracts

• $10,000 Daily Loss Limit (with some flexibility)

Level 4

• Customized portfolio structure

• Additional risk capital available

• Terms negotiated directly with the risk manager

• Traders may choose to remain at Level 3

Payout Rules

• Maintain a $3,000 safety net

• Withdraw any profits above the safety net

• No consistency requirement

• No minimum trading days

• No minimum daily profit requirement

• Minimum withdrawal: $500

• No maximum withdrawal amount

• 90/10 profit split

Bonus Vault

When a trader transitions to Live, their Sim account profits are transferred into a Bonus Vault.

• Every payout request receives an additional 20% bonus from the vault.

• During the first 30 days, payouts receive a double bonus.

Example: A $5,000 payout request during the first month would receive an additional $5,000 from the Bonus Vault, resulting in a total payout of $10,000.

If a Live Account is breached, the Bonus Vault is not automatically forfeited. Traders are allowed up to three Live Account attempts before losing access to the vault. Additional details are expected to be announced.

Despite the changes, it was not received particularly well.

Also, some major news in the CFD prop side:

Also big news on the crypto side!

Great to see the industry growing like this.

📢  Firm Announcements

• Tradeify continued expanding its content offering with additional Asia Session Live broadcasts on Tradeify TV, focused on overnight setups and market preparation.

• Alpha Futures launched a completely redesigned website and continued compensating traders following recent platform issues through subscription extensions, free evaluations, resets, and upcoming mobile apps.

• E8 Markets confirmed the return of E8 Pro, featuring static drawdown, daily payouts, no consistency rules, and no payout caps.

• Apex Trader Funding introduced new Five Pack bundles, offering discounted pricing for traders purchasing multiple accounts.

• Crypto Fund Trader teased a completely redesigned dashboard and invited traders to submit feature requests ahead of launch.

• AquaFutures removed restrictions on copy trading between accounts owned by the same trader and expanded bundle discounts for multi account users.

• Blueberry Funded launched a new Account Reset system, allowing traders to reset breached Phase 1, Phase 2, and even funded accounts directly from the dashboard.

• See all announcements → x.com/promojunction

• Set alerts for your favourite firms → promojunction.io.

Here are the firms who paid out the most over the last 7 days 🏆️.

🔥 Monitor prop firm payouts LIVE on Payout Junction - https://payoutjunction.com.

🕜 Red Folder News

Here are this week’s red folder news events. Non-farm payrolls on Friday is the biggest event of the week.

📈 Markets

June Seasonality

June typically sees choppy flows in equity markets. On a 20 year lookback, the S&P500 has only returned 0.2% on average. Last week was the 9th green week in a row, so it would not be surprising to see at least a minor pullback. However with the way markets are currently trading, another few up weeks would not be surprising either.

Gold Seasonality

June is an interesting month for Gold. Historically the end of June marks the low of the year. Current -20% off it’s January high, its been slow grind down for most of this year, so it would not be surprising to see us shake out the remaining longs this month and restart the rally. Keep an eye out for capitulation selling this month, it might provide a great entry.

Retail buying is back

Retail stock trading volume this month is on track to finish 10% above the previous record set during the January 2021 meme stock bubble. Bagholders or the real smart money? Since Covid, retail has usually been on the right side of the moves.

Melt-up phase ahead in semiconductors?

The worlds biggest “bubble” continues its parabolic run higher. Overlaid with the year 2000 dot-com mania, we’re still only about half way done :)

OK you’re all caught up. So much going on, so stay risk managed and have a good one!

Kieran

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