What it costs
Mesa is free forever. The numbers below are the only ones that exist.
Mesa cockpit · free forever
The institutional data feeds inside (live market + AI + macro feeds) cost the partners ~USD 2,000 / mo. Mesa absorbs that bill so a LATAM trader doesn't have to spend USD 3,000+ / mo renting "institutional grade" anywhere else. We trade our own book on it; opening it to the public costs us nothing we weren't already paying.
Three speeds. Crypto in your wallet at close.
Scalpers + intraday.
Short-to-medium-term theses.
Fundamental-heavy. Watch-party closes at Insurgentes 1446.
Score = return % − ½ × |max drawdown|. Tiebreak by lower drawdown. The leaderboard is the product.
The price is the floor that keeps it serious.
Three reasons the entry is USD 5 Daily, USD 30 Weekly, and USD 100 Monthly:
- Anti-spam. A free tournament with USDC payouts attracts bot farms and multi-account griefers. Even USD 5 in front of every entry kills 90% of that overhead. We don't want to spend ops cycles auditing fake names.
- Skin in the game. USD 5 is small enough that any LATAM trader can decide in three seconds. Big enough that you actually try — paper trading where nothing is at stake breaks the muscle memory of real risk.
- The pool funds the prize. Of every USD 5 that enters, USD 4 goes back to the leader (80%) and USD 1 funds ops + payout rails (20%). With 100 entries the Daily pays USD 400 to the winner, settled in USDC same day. The math is the entire economy — no advertiser, no upsell, no course.
If the seats fill, the math holds. If they half-fill, the prize is half. Always public. Always settles in USDC.
80 / 20 split, end of story.
- 80% → traders. Top of the leaderboard at close, paid in USDC same day.
- 20% → the house. Pays for APIs, ops, and the occasional Acapulco / Cancun trip.
No fees on top. No reset penalties. No monthly subscription that quietly eats the pot.
Things we do not sell.
- — A monthly subscription on the cockpit. Free is the price.
- — A USD 3,000 'institutional trading' course.
- — An offshore broker license. We tell you who we are: HBG Markets, an operator-owned holding.
- — A funded-account challenge. The 30-day Monthly already shows whether you can hold a thesis.
What we do invite — over a mezcal in person at Insurgentes 1446: fixed-income products from the firm side, custom system builds from HBG Markets (CRMs, matching engines, BI), or just market talk with people who've actually been at it for 10+ years.
Numbers above are the live state. The cockpit page (/mesa) shows the upstream cost meter in /api/status; if anything changes we update it the same day.