See when to buy, short or wait on futures — and your odds of passing a prop-firm challenge
A free web tool that reads futures markets from their own past prices. Pick a market and it says, in plain words, whether tested rules point to buy, short or wait — then shows how often a strategy would have passed a prop-firm challenge at Apex Trader Funding, Topstep or 4 other firms before you pay for one.
- ✓ 13 futures markets
- ✓ 6 prop firms
- ✓ Buying and shorting tested
- ✓ No sign-in to start
Updated
How to use it, in 5 steps
Start with a market, end with a funded account. Each step is one tab — skip to the one you need. Steps 1 and 2 are about the market; steps 3 to 5 are about passing a prop-firm challenge.
- 1Read the market
- 2Check the chart
- 3Check your pass odds
- 4Backtest the rules
- 5Trade your own account
- 6Get alerts and track the challenge
Ask the market: buy, short or wait?
Open Trade and tap a market. You get one word — Buy, Short or Wait — and the reason in plain English. Every rule behind it was tested on that market’s own history, buying and shorting, and counts only if it made money and beat simply holding in both halves of that history. Below it, a Today table shows how often the session closed higher from each time of day, given how far it had already moved.
Tip: Wait is an answer too. Most days no tested rule fires — trading anyway is trading without an edge.
Look at the chart
Real futures prices on a chart you can zoom and pan, from 5-minute to weekly bars. Trend lines, support and resistance zones, volume profile and VWAP are drawn for you, with a plain read of the coming week and month — and it says so when the picture is just “as usual”.
Tip: The chart opens with an account — sign in on the Chart tab.
Check your odds before you buy a challenge
Pick a prop firm, a plan (say, 50K end-of-day) and a strategy. Pass odds starts a challenge on every session of real history under that firm’s rules and counts how many passed, failed or ran out of days — next to a coin-flip baseline: the same trades with a random direction.
Tip: If a strategy can’t beat the coin flip, it has no edge yet — keep the fee.
Test and tune the rules
Backtest replays a strategy minute by minute on years of prices — 9 strategies, from momentum breakout to overnight drift — buying, shorting or both. Compare them all in one table, or let it search for better settings in your browser. For Apex it carries on into the funded account: payouts, and what a challenge bought was worth.
Tip: A result that made money in every third of the period is an edge; one good stretch is luck.
Find a strategy for your own account
Strategies is for trading without a prop firm: trend following, mean reversion, overnight, calendar and breakout rules — each tested on up to 26 years of prices with your contract, your costs and no challenge rules, against simply holding. Change any setting and see every trade; switch on day trades only to need the much lower day margin; run one rule across several markets in the Portfolio. The research behind each family is on the page, with sources.
Tip: A rule that made money in both halves of 25 years and on the real futures of the last two is worth your time; one that shines in a single stretch was fitted, not found.
Trade with alerts, and track the challenge
Turn the rules you tested into phone alerts: a push the minute they say buy, sell short or get out, sized for your account. You place every order yourself — prop firms ban automated trading. Then track each challenge you buy: balance, liquidation threshold, daily loss limit, consistency and days left, by hand or from your platform’s CSV.
Tip: The tracker shows how much you can still lose before the challenge fails, and how many contracts fit that room — most challenges fail on the drawdown, not the target.
What the words mean
- Buy · Short · Wait
- Buy: after signals like today’s, the price tended to rise over the next days. Short: it tended to fall — a short profits when price falls. Wait: no tested rule fired today.
- Held up
- A rule counts only if it made money after costs, beat simply holding the market, and did both in each half of its history — so one lucky year can’t carry it.
- Coin-flip baseline
- The pass rate of the same challenge traded with the same sizes but a random direction. It is what luck alone gives; a strategy worth paying for beats it clearly.
- Prop-firm challenge
- Also called an evaluation, combine or test. You pay a fee, trade a practice account to a profit target without breaking the loss limits, then trade the firm’s money and keep most of the profit.
- Liquidation threshold
- The balance you must never touch, also called the trailing drawdown. It follows your highest balance up — during the day (intraday) or at each close (end-of-day) — and is how most challenges fail.
- Consistency rule
- Some firms cap how much of your profit may come from your single best day, for example 50%.
- Take the pass
- Close the trade the moment its open profit completes the challenge target, instead of waiting for the usual exit.
- Futures session
- Futures trade from 6 pm to 5 pm New York, overnight included. A trade after 5 pm counts for the next trading day — the day prop firms use for their limits.
- Micro contract
- One tenth of the full contract (MNQ for NQ, MES for ES). It lets a small account size each trade’s risk.
What’s inside
13 futures markets
Real 1-minute prices for about two years, whole 6 pm–5 pm sessions; index ETFs scaled to futures points before that, back to 2016.
- Nasdaq-100 (NQ / MNQ)
- S&P 500 (ES / MES)
- Dow (YM / MYM)
- Russell 2000 (RTY / M2K)
- Gold (GC / MGC)
- Crude oil (CL / MCL)
- Natural gas (NG / QG)
- Silver (SI / SIL)
- Copper (HG)
- 10-year note (ZN · not on Apex)
- Euro (6E / M6E)
- Yen (6J)
- Bitcoin (MBT)
6 prop firms
Every plan’s price, target, drawdown, daily loss limit and consistency rule, dated from the firm’s own help center.
- Apex Trader Funding
- Topstep
- Take Profit Trader
- MyFundedFutures
- Tradeify
- FundedNext Futures
8 daily rules
Behind the buy / short / wait read on the Trade tab — each tested buying, shorting and both ways.
- 200-day trend
- 20-day breakout
- Pullback in a trend
- Outside the 2σ band
- 3 closes in a row
- Big day
- Close near the low / high
- Turn of the month
9 day-trading strategies
Backtested minute by minute and replayed under each firm’s challenge rules.
- Momentum breakout
- Opening range breakout
- VWAP trend pullback
- VWAP band fade
- Opening gap fill
- Candle range (CRT)
- 10am open (Power of 3)
- Overnight drift + day trades
- Opening range scalp
What it won’t do
- It won’t trade for you. Prop firms ban automated trading in challenges; alerts tell you what the rules say and you place every order.
- It won’t promise a pass. Every result is a replay of past prices, shown next to what luck alone would have done.
- It won’t hide bad news. When no rule has an edge, it says Wait — and many strategies don’t beat the coin flip after costs.
- It isn’t advice. An educational tool. Futures carry a substantial risk of loss; check each firm’s rules on its own site before you buy.
Questions
What is the Futures tool?
A free web tool that reads futures markets from their own past prices. Pick a market and it says, in plain words, whether tested rules point to buy, short or wait — then shows how often a strategy would have passed a prop-firm challenge at Apex Trader Funding, Topstep or 4 other firms before you pay for one. It also draws trend lines, support and resistance on real futures charts, backtests strategies minute by minute, and tracks a challenge against its firm’s rules.
Is the Futures tool free?
Yes. Trade, Pass odds and Backtest are free and need no account. Tracking a challenge needs a free sign-in, and so do the real futures prices on the Chart and in the Simulator. Live alerts are a paid add-on you can request on the Alerts tab.
Does it place trades for me?
No. Prop firms ban automated trading in challenges, so the tool only tells you what the rules say — by push alert if you want. You place every order yourself on your own trading platform.
Which prop firms does it cover?
Apex Trader Funding, Topstep, Take Profit Trader, MyFundedFutures, Tradeify and FundedNext Futures. Each plan’s price, profit target, drawdown type, daily loss limit and consistency rule comes from the firm’s own help center and is dated — firms change them often, so check the firm’s site before you buy.
Which futures markets can I analyze?
13 markets: Nasdaq-100 (NQ / MNQ), S&P 500 (ES / MES), Dow (YM / MYM), Russell 2000 (RTY / M2K), Gold (GC / MGC), Crude oil (CL / MCL), Natural gas (NG / QG), Silver (SI / SIL), Copper (HG), 10-year note (ZN · not on Apex), Euro (6E / M6E), Yen (6J) and Bitcoin (MBT). Micro contracts are used wherever the firm offers them.
How are the pass odds worked out?
By replaying history, not by guessing. A challenge is started on every session of the newest real futures prices and played out trade by trade under the firm’s rules until it passes, fails or runs out of days. The share that passed is shown next to the coin-flip baseline.
Can I short futures with it?
Yes. Futures sell short as easily as they buy, so every rule and strategy is tested three ways — buying only, shorting only, and both — and each way is shown on its own.
Which strategy passes prop-firm challenges most often?
It changes as new sessions come in, so the Challenges page shows the latest result for every strategy and market, recomputed after each session and set against the coin flip. Many strategies don’t beat it after costs — worth knowing before you pay.
Where do the prices come from?
Real 1-minute futures prices for about the last two years — whole sessions, overnight included — updated after each session. Older years use index ETFs scaled to futures points, back to 2016.
When does a futures trading day start and end?
It starts at 6 pm New York the evening before and ends at 5 pm. A trade placed after 5 pm counts for the next trading day, which is the day prop firms use for daily loss limits.
Is this financial advice?
No. It is an educational tool that shows what happened in past prices. Futures carry a substantial risk of loss, and past results don’t promise future ones.
Start with one market
Open Trade, tap the market you follow, and read its one word. No sign-in needed.