Beat the Beast: After Dark

• Beat the Beast: After Dark was ETF's first overnight futures trading prop firm challenge, built for international traders and the U.S. night owls trading the Asia and London sessions.
• The window ran 9 PM Eastern on July 22 to 10 AM Eastern on July 23. Only new End-of-Day (EOD) or Static evaluations, purchased with code AFTERDARK and traded inside that window, qualified. 1-Step evaluations were excluded.
• $1,000 or more in realized profit inside the window earned an automatic pass, verified after market close on July 23, no submission required.
• Roughly 45% of every account that entered slayed the Beast and got auto-passed. Roughly 28% blew the evaluation, 10% fell short of the target, 3% stopped trading before the window closed, and 15% reset to run it back.
• Asia opened higher and oil spiked on fresh Middle East tension while the window was open, real overnight volatility traders had to read before the U.S. session ever opened.
• An auto-pass isn't the finish line. Eligible accounts still have 48 hours to activate into Elite Sim-Funded or the pass reverts to Active and voids.

ETF is a futures prop firm for traders who want uncapped Live Elite payouts, and Beat the Beast: After Dark is the version of our one-day prop firm challenge built for the traders our usual daytime hours miss. Every earlier Beat the Beast ran during the New York day session. After Dark flipped that: a challenge timed for the Asia and London sessions, open to international traders and the U.S. night owls who are already awake and at the charts while most of the country sleeps.

The mechanics carried over from the daytime version: land the profit target inside the window and the evaluation gets an automatic pass, no extra submission, no waiting on a review queue. What changed was the clock and the markets underneath it. An overnight futures trading prop firm challenge means the Beast shows up in a different arena: thinner liquidity in spots, headline-driven moves out of Asia and the Middle East, and a handoff into London before the U.S. session even opens.

It's also the first Beat the Beast built around plan type instead of speed. Earlier runs excluded Fast Track evaluations; After Dark excluded 1-Step evaluations instead and required a new End-of-Day (EOD) or Static evaluation, purchased and traded specifically inside the window.

Four things had to line up for an account to qualify, and once again the rules were specific on purpose.

1. New EOD or Static evaluation, purchased with code AFTERDARK. Only a brand new End-of-Day or Static evaluation counted, bought and traded between 9 PM Eastern July 22 and 10 AM Eastern July 23. 1-Step evaluations were excluded entirely. Code AFTERDARK had to be applied at checkout, and it did double duty: 90% off the first month, 80% off the second, and 70% off the third month and beyond. Full detail on how each plan runs day to day is on the help center: How the EOD Plan Works and How the Static Plan Works.

2. $1,000 or more in realized profit, earned inside the window. Same as every Beat the Beast: realized, not floating, and banked specifically between 9 PM and 10 AM Eastern. Profit from before the window opened or after it closed didn't count toward the target.

3. No submission required. If an account met the requirements, it was marked passed automatically after market close on July 23. No form, no ticket needed.

Up to five eligible evaluations per trader could qualify, the same ceiling as prior events.

The 48-hour catch. This carried over unchanged: passed accounts have 48 hours to activate into Elite Sim-Funded or the status reverts to Active and the auto-pass voids, standard evaluation requirements back in force.

Nine PM Eastern on a Tuesday isn't a quiet stretch for futures traders. It's when the Asia-Pacific session takes over, and this window opened with the region trading higher across the board: Japan's Nikkei 225 added about 0.55% (the broader Topix index was up 0.22%), South Korea's Kospi jumped 2.3% with the smaller Kosdaq index up 1.42%, and Australia's ASX 200 gained 0.72%. ETF traders had one contract that let them act on that move directly: E-mini Nikkei futures (NKD), traded near 66,325 on the overnight CME Globex session as the region's cash markets pushed higher. Hang Seng and ASX 200 futures told the same regional story, useful backdrop even though neither is among the instruments available on ETF accounts.

The bigger story overnight was oil, and it mattered to every account in the challenge, not just the ones trading crude directly, because it drove the volatility that either handed traders their $1,000 or wiped them out trying to get there. Brent crude, the global benchmark most oil headlines quote, briefly broke above $98 a barrel before easing back to around $97.80. The contract ETF traders actually had access to, CL (WTI Crude Oil futures), traded near $89.22 and moved right along with it. The rally traced back to rising Iran-U.S. tension in the Middle East, and it kept building as the window went on: Iran-backed Houthi forces claimed attacks on two oil tankers in the Red Sea, extending Brent's rally into a fifth straight session and reinforcing supply-shock fears heading into the London handoff.

That oil spike ran straight through the two contracts most ETF evaluations are actually built on. September E-mini S&P 500 futures (ESU26) and E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures (NQU26) were already sliding into the window as CL jumped more than 2% to a six-week high, pressuring bond yields and weighing on equity futures. By the time the window closed near 10 AM Eastern, Nasdaq futures were down more than 2% on the session, with Alphabet and Tesla dragging on tech alongside the oil move.

By the time London traders picked up the session, Brent's move was already reshaping European equities. The FTSE 100 held up better than its peers, down only about 14 points, because energy names like Shell and BP were catching a bid (up roughly 2% and 1.5% respectively) on the same crude spike. The broader STOXX 50 fell 1.1% and the STOXX 600 fell 0.9%, weighed down by the Middle East headlines and traders digesting a fresh batch of earnings.

That's the environment After Dark actually ran in: a rising Asia session, a geopolitically driven oil spike, and a London session split between energy strength and broader risk-off pressure, all before the window handed off to the early U.S. morning. Traders chasing the $1,000 target overnight weren't picking a quiet shift to grind through, they were trading directly into one of the more headline-driven overnight stretches futures markets have seen recently.

Here's what happened across every account that stepped into the arena after dark.

• ~45% slayed the Beast. Target hit in the dark, auto-passed, funded.
• ~28% were devoured. Blew the evaluation trading blind against it overnight.
• ~10% came up short. Drew blood but missed the kill before dawn.
• ~3% fled into the night. Tapped out before the final blow.
• ~15% retreated to hunt again. Reset, reloading for the next moon.

Just under half the field walked away funded from a single overnight session, in markets most of them don't trade during the New York day. That's a different result than the daytime version of this challenge produced back on July 15, when roughly 58% passed. After Dark's pass rate came in lower, and the overnight volatility described above is the most likely reason why: thinner liquidity and headline-driven whipsaws cut both ways, they can hand a trader their target fast or take the account out just as fast.

The 28% who blew their evaluations overnight are worth sitting with. That's a meaningfully higher blow-out rate than the daytime event's 22%, and it lines up with a market that was moving on Red Sea tanker headlines and a fifth straight session of oil gains rather than a normal overnight drift. The Beast doesn't get easier just because the sun is down. If anything, After Dark's numbers say the opposite.

The traders who passed overnight weren't guessing at unfamiliar hours. They came in with a plan built for exactly this session: instruments they already know trade actively overnight, like NQ and ES moving on the Asia open, or CL moving hard on Middle East headlines, and a size they were comfortable holding through a thinner book.

That's the same pattern behind the traits that separate traders who make it: discipline that doesn't bend when the tape gets choppy, and the willingness to sit on hands when a setup isn't there instead of forcing size into a move that hasn't confirmed.

The traders who blew their accounts overnight likely made the opposite bet: sizing up into the Brent spike or the Red Sea headline without a plan for how fast that kind of move can reverse. An overnight session with real geopolitical risk attached doesn't create bad habits, it just exposes them faster than a quiet New York afternoon would.

If your account got marked passed after market close on July 23, the 48-hour activation clock is already running. Log into your dashboard and activate into Elite Sim-Funded before it closes, or you'll be back to the standard EOD or Static evaluation requirements: the full profit target and minimum trading days, no shortcut this time.

Once you're activated, you're on the same path every funded ETF trader walks: Elite Sim-Funded first, with sim profits split up to 100% up to $25,000 per payout cycle and a $150,000 lifetime cap, then a track toward Live Elite once you hit the qualification triggers. Live Elite pays daily, Monday through Friday, with an 80/20 split and no payout cap. Our breakdown of how prop firm payouts actually work walks through sim versus live versus what other firms mean by "guaranteed."

Full detail on what happens right after you clear any evaluation, After Dark or otherwise, is on the help center: Reached Evaluation Objectives, What's Next.

A prop firm challenge is any structured test a firm uses to decide whether a trader gets funded, and up to now, every version of Beat the Beast at ETF ran on New York day-session hours. That works for most of our community, but it leaves out a real chunk of traders: the ones based outside the U.S. trading their local morning, and the U.S.-based night owls whose best hours line up with Asia and London instead.

After Dark exists for both groups. If you're an international trader active while Asia and London are open, or a night owl who trades those sessions from the U.S., you got a shot at the same auto-pass mechanic on a schedule that actually matches when you're at the charts, not a compressed window during hours you're normally asleep.

We'll run more of these, and not always at the same hours. How to Pass a Prop Firm Evaluation: 7 Rules That Work covers the fundamentals that hold up whether your session is New York's afternoon or Tokyo's morning.

• ELITE Tape | Beat the Beast Edition
• Swing Trading Prop Firms: Which Allow Overnight Holds (2026)
• How to Pass a Prop Firm Evaluation: 7 Rules That Work
• How Prop Firm Payouts Work: Sim vs Live vs Guaranteed

Missed After Dark? Beat the Beast runs again, on hours that will vary. Stack up points between challenges with our reward points program, browse open evaluations to get in position for the next one, and see real trader results. If you've got a network of traders active in other time zones, ETF's affiliate program pays you for sending them our way.

Ready to test yourself against the next one? Start a 50K EOD evaluation and see where you land.

Pricing, promotions, and product details referenced in this article reflect information available at the time of publication and may have changed. Visit elitetraderfunding.app/evaluations for current pricing.