Alpha Capital Group

Our reviews are based on a thorough investigation into how a prop fund works, their rules, their history of payouts, and often our own personal experience as we sign-up for most of the prop firms we review.

We have spent several months evaluating Alpha Capital Group to ensure that their mediocre trading environment was not just a fluke we were experiencing.

Deceptive Practices

Spreads

Screenshot from Alpha Capital Group describing their spreads:

ACG claims to offer raw spreads, presenting itself as an attractive choice for traders with the promise of zero commissions. Unfortunately, they fail to deliver on their promises of raw spreads or an “institutional environment.” Their spreads are so terrible that attempting to enter a trade on a major Forex pair results in significant slippage, making it impractical to execute market orders. Unfortunately, even if you are using limit orders, price will often move significantly past your entry before tagging you in at a significant loss. Whenever the price pierces the entry point and then moves in the trader’s favor, it is rare for the trade to be executed. This amplifies your losses, as every losing trade that moves significantly against you will get filled. This is all under normal trading conditions.

No genuine genuine institutional-level broker with raw spreads has difficulty fulfilling EURUSD limit orders of 5-10 lots. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that they are using a raw spread broker. It is more probable that they simulate the market themselves and introduce their own slippage.

We reached out to ACG and expressed our concerns. The representative stated that they were sorry the “raw spread account doesn’t meet your trading criteria.” When we requested a refund due to misrepresentation, we were informed that the raw spread account was not available when our account was registered. This contradicts the website’s claim at the time of purchase, which stated it was a raw account. For full transparency, ACG did refund the account when we informed them that we review prop firms. However, it is a little too late. Our commitment is to providing accurate information and holding prop firms accountable. Had they refunded, believing we were a nobody trader, this review would be very different, and we would have rated them highly for trust and fairness.

Hidden Rules

We have no objections to prop firms prohibiting martingale strategies, but there has to be transparency. Martingale strategies are not mentioned anywhere in the FAQ or elsewhere on the site, yet they are explicitly forbidden in the Terms of Service—a detail ACG fails to highlight. Their FAQ page lists “prohibited strategies,” but conspicuously omits martingale, despite banning traders for its use.

Furthermore, every prop firm these days seems to have their own unique interpretation of what constitutes a martingale strategy. At ACG, if you open a second position on a pair while the first is not yet profitable, you’re considered to be violating this rule. Given ACG so heavily regulates EAs, I have to calculate my position size by hand. Consider this scenario: I mistakenly enter a position at half the lot size I intended. No problem, i’ll simply add to my position. But hold on—if your account was down by even -$1.00 when you “added” to your position, congratulations, you’ve just terminated your account. Does that sound foolish? Absolutely, it does! This is NOT Martingale. And the fact that it is a hidden rule, not disclosed to traders, clearly shows it is intentionally created to fail traders.

Using EAs

While using EAs is technically ‘allowed,’ the hoops you have to jump through are a bit ridiculous. Basically you have to send them the EA, and they must approve it. No trader should be required to provide private proprietary trade software to a prop firm. Not even a simple position manager tool is allowed without asking for permission.

Alpha Capital Group Challenge

Their challenge is pretty much a clone copy of FTMO.

* Max daily loss is calculated based on close of daily candle at broker time 00:0 0

Fees and Spreads

Alpha Capital Group operates its own brokerage under the name of ACG-Markets. Although they assert that they are separate entities and deny any conflict of interest, the arrangement appears dubious. The website for ACG-Markets states “coming soon,” and their only apparent service is acting as the backend for the prop firm ACG. This raises suspicions and adds to our concerns about whether they might simulate slippage, similar to what MFF did. Obviously, we cannot confirm this at the moment, however, slippage is really bad at times.

Spreads

Forex Lowest Volatility Spreads:

Forex from 4-6PM Spreads

Crypto, Metals, Indices: (NOT ADDED YET)

Commissions

Alpha Capital Group is one of few prop firms that charges zero commissions for all their tradeable assets. This would be an incredibly attractive offer, and would probably earn them a #1 rating from Prop Fund Judge, if spreads and slippage weren’t so bad.

Prop Fund Fees

Alpha Capital Group does not charge any fees apart from the evaluation/challenge cost. Any fees associated with withdrawing profits would be related to Crypto fees.

Verdict

Overall, Alpha Capital Group fails to impress us. With high hopes we examined their commission free trading and found the spreads and slippage to be unacceptable. The fact that certain rules are not disclosed properly to traders, and customer service’s apathy, leave us with no choice but to rule that Alpha Capital Group should not be your first choice for a prop firm. While they may not be as egregious as Smart Prop Trader, they nonetheless leave much to be desired.