@Mertik Trades no need to search, like I said, I might be wrong, and in this case it appears I am. Thanks for the info. I used to use tradovate, but now I just do Rithmic.

@Mertik Trades yeah, Im all about the DOM, Volume Profile, TPO, footprint and cumulative delta. Tradovate is such a resource hog on the computer, and I don't like their footprint charts at all. If I already have to have Ninja Trader up to run the trade copier anyways, there is really no reason to use tradeovate.

The contract is worth what the value of gold is when you bought the contract. If you hold a gold futures contract till expiration, you are agreeing to buy that much physical gold for that price at contract expiration. Most of the activity in the futures is hedging, like an airline buying oil futures because they think the price of oil will go up, and want to lock in a better price today. Or the food producers buying soybean or corn, while the farmers are taking sell contracts to deliver soybean or corn at expiration. Some are settled in cash like the indices. As far as cost/profit to you to trade, the point value is consistent and never changes. The more points it changes in your favor, the more potential you have to make money when you offload the contract.

Today was an abnormal Friday due to NFP news release this morning. I wouldn't use this Friday as your data set. Try some other Fridays, get a feel. Yes afternoons are tradeable, but they lack the momentum, volume, and volatility compared to the morning. and the second part to this, is New York and London are both open simultaneously from 9:30am est to 11:30am est. We have New York opening and London closing compounding the volume. Fridays and end of regular days can be good to catch the sell-off that happens late afternoon, usually some good opportunities there between 2pm to 4pm. Typically by 3pm or so the volume tends to dry up and not alot is going on.

The rules are in place for a reason. Apex is running a buisness, and they are only interested in doing buisness with people who have a trading plan that works and can generate consistent profit on a long timeline. The rules are there to protect the company from people trying to get over on the system and abuse the payout system with reckless windfall stratagies. All the firms have rules in place. Think about it, if you ran a buisness who would you want trading with you, and who wouldn't you want trading for you? The rules do say that you have to be able to explain your trading system to them, and there is the possibility that they may request to monitor your trading live to see your system in action. It is what it is. If you have a system that you know how to work, and explain, and you are following the rules, then the video is nothing to fear, if it even happens at all. The rules are not unreasonable, nor impossible to follow, and mainly revolve around shoeing away reckless news trading stratagies, and overall get lucky, get rich quick windfall traders with no system to ever make it a long term business endeavor, but rather a get lucky, get a big payout, and don't care whether they continue or not on their PA, because they can just earn another and rinse and repeat a get lucky system. If there weren't any rules, I could just buy 100 EAs, pass at least 30 to 40 on a 1 trade q day to pass system, activate them, then use that same 1 day 1 get lucky trade and get att least 15 to 20 of them at a point where I could take payout, take the full payout, lose the accounts and then just rinse and repeat indefinitely. That's not trading, that's not capital management, that's not a good buisness plan. That's an abuse of the system and what the company is designed for.

@Tim Morton also you do realize that the drawdown stops trailing you once you hit $52,600?. At that point it's just don't lose 2,500 and your good. $50,100 is the lowest your account balance can go to before you get liquidated, but the drawdown no longer follows your runup. Only actual losses count, hypothetical profits no longer count at that point. It's much easier to manage your risk once you get to this point.

@Tim Morton that's OK, I'm a tad bit overindulgent with words 😆