Maverick74 and marketsurfer's TopstepTrader Combine (daily trade reports and journal)
- Thread starter TST_Hoag
- Start date
Quote from JuniorCTA:
lol please, the loss limit is my tick size
LOL! fits your name perfectly, junior. Sounds like you should change it to BSDcta--- now, I have really heard every excuse why not to subject yourself to public scrutiny--- very creative!
The more I think about this scenario, the more I see the potential for TST. Its clever.
From a business model standpoint, the $160 per month fee for the *opportunity* to trade on a sim is quite a lucrative income for TST. It's a revenue stream wherein they can screen out good traders based on pie-in-the-sky performance metrics.
What this venture does is sucker-in the wanna-be for a fee. It relies on fresh suckers every month to keep that $160 subscription revenue alive. For the promise to manage money... some will do anything for ego purposes...
None of the metrics for trader evaluation are reasonable. I say this as I can provide a track record trading futures (YM, ES, US, CL, TY) profitably for the last 4 years. These are efficient and difficult markets that require substantial skill. Anything over 20% yearly is fantastic IMO and to consistently make $3500 in 10 days with a $1000 loss limit is pure bullshit.
All futures markets test the trader, that's the idea.... pain is what one has to handle to trade these markets successfully. If this competition was even slightly reasonable (e.g. run by successful traders), the parameters would be negatively skewed R/R over a 3 month period. As in a 3500 draw for a 3500 profit AT A MINIMUM.
This is what I mean: say you have 100k. 20k for the year is good return. 60% profitable months is a good risk measure. a 3-1 return to draw is a very good ratio.... so to achieve 20k in profit, seeing a 6.3k drawdown is very reasonable. So one is going to see 3500 draws all the time... even when reaching for a somewhat *modest* 20% return.
LOL ... This setup is just a way for TST to collect monthly fees guys. Very few professional managed futures funds can even come close to 20% a year... let alone the numbers TST is screening with.
From a business model standpoint, the $160 per month fee for the *opportunity* to trade on a sim is quite a lucrative income for TST. It's a revenue stream wherein they can screen out good traders based on pie-in-the-sky performance metrics.
What this venture does is sucker-in the wanna-be for a fee. It relies on fresh suckers every month to keep that $160 subscription revenue alive. For the promise to manage money... some will do anything for ego purposes...
None of the metrics for trader evaluation are reasonable. I say this as I can provide a track record trading futures (YM, ES, US, CL, TY) profitably for the last 4 years. These are efficient and difficult markets that require substantial skill. Anything over 20% yearly is fantastic IMO and to consistently make $3500 in 10 days with a $1000 loss limit is pure bullshit.
All futures markets test the trader, that's the idea.... pain is what one has to handle to trade these markets successfully. If this competition was even slightly reasonable (e.g. run by successful traders), the parameters would be negatively skewed R/R over a 3 month period. As in a 3500 draw for a 3500 profit AT A MINIMUM.
This is what I mean: say you have 100k. 20k for the year is good return. 60% profitable months is a good risk measure. a 3-1 return to draw is a very good ratio.... so to achieve 20k in profit, seeing a 6.3k drawdown is very reasonable. So one is going to see 3500 draws all the time... even when reaching for a somewhat *modest* 20% return.
LOL ... This setup is just a way for TST to collect monthly fees guys. Very few professional managed futures funds can even come close to 20% a year... let alone the numbers TST is screening with.
What you are missing, is once one is funded, there is no profit demands or volume requirements. The combine is a screening tool, just like the test you take to work with Susquehanna et al---its brutal, but its designed that way to screen out all but the most disciplined.
If the same demands were made on the funded account, I would agree 100% with you. Its just the screening process.
In addition, traders do pass and some have been trading live with TST funds for sometime now. DO you attribute this to luck?
surf
Mondays. What would they be like without some type of technical issue or another?
Today we had intermittent DSL service until late morning when it finally decided to stop graying in & out, and went out for keeps.
So we switched over to the laptop, one screen to work with and diminished view of the markets. Ceste`... when you live out in the sticks where I do, that happens. We have no traffic lights at all on our main street, and I'm pretty sure someone is still designated to turn the moon by hand at night.
Anyways, CL trading went ok except I could not enter desired contract size. So I chipped away with 2s and 5s for the tally ended.
I also focused on trading ZS after I quit CL early, which did not alleviate my general frustration factor with today's hardware challenges at all. Rather than the sweet directional price moves ZS made from Wed thru Fri (and most sessions, quite frankly) it sat inside a 9-cent chop channel all day long.
That finally broke near 2pm, gave me one opportunity to cover a moderate draw to par and I pounced on that chance like a homeless man grabbing at a wind-blown $5 bill skipping by.
**
Overall I still would have quit trading at today's early peak in the prior post. But as noted before... trading real money as a funded trader with no profit mandates versus a trial period with profit mandates is two different worlds
fighting back to get back to even on the combine---
