The bitter truth about Patak Trading

Quote from gmst:

Matter at hand is their max 50% trailing stop loss kicking in at 500$ open profit.
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It is not on open profits, but realized profits, such that if you realize $1000, you will stop trading if you go below a net P&L of $500. Or if you`re up $2000, you don`t go below $1000 for the day.

But it only applies to realized profits of the magnitude of $500/$1000 or greater, depending on the account size, such that if you`re up $1-499/999 dollars, the rule does not kick in.

The idea is to never let a winning day turn into a losing day. I think the rule makes a lot of sense.
 
Quote from Laissez Faire:

It is not on open profits, but realized profits, such that if you realize $1000, you will stop trading if you go below a net P&L of $500. Or if you`re up $2000, you don`t go below $1000 for the day.

But it only applies to realized profits of the magnitude of $500/$1000 or greater, depending on the account size, such that if you`re up $1-499/999 dollars, the rule does not kick in.

The idea is to never let a winning day turn into a losing day. I think the rule makes a lot of sense.
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Reviewed the PDF, its not written there whether it is on open profit or realized closed profit.

Yes, rule perse makes sense. My only point is that Patak should increase the trigger for trailing profit to come in at a minimum of 1000$ or 1500$ on a 50k account.

Till now I have used ES. Let me use CL example now - probably that will make my concern more clear.

Currently, trail kicks in at 500$ on a 50k account. Say, you are trading just 2 CL contracts - only 2 not 5.

So, if the rule applies on open profit, as soon as you are up 500$ = 25 cents on CL, rule forces you to put the trail at 13 cents. If you think CL is going to go 1$ in your favor, and you want to keep the original stop say at 20 ticks so as to give trade a little bit of breathing room, do you think it will help your position by moving trail to just within 12 ticks of the current price.

My point is this limit of 500$ is too low and has been designed so that traders find it extremely hard to make money and have an incentive to quickly take profits, thus increasing scaling and increasing comms income for Patak.

EDIT: Also, if they increase the trail kicking in at say 1500$, this will allow the trader to maybe trade 3 or 4 CL contracts when good setups arise. Otherwise a trader will only be able to trade 1-2 contract only because of such tight (and stupid) rules. So, Patak can claim that you can trade 5 contracts, but in practice these rules will force you to trade only 1 or 2 contracts.
 
Quote from gmst:

Reviewed the PDF, its not written there whether it is on open profit or realized closed profit.

Yes, rule perse makes sense. My only point is that Patak should increase the trigger for trailing profit to come in at a minimum of 1000$ or 1500$ on a 50k account.

Till now I have used ES. Let me use CL example now - probably that will make my concern more clear.

Currently, trail kicks in at 500$ on a 50k account. Say, you are trading just 2 CL contracts - only 2 not 5.

So, if the rule applies on open profit, as soon as you are up 500$ = 25 cents on CL, rule forces you to put the trail at 13 cents. If you think CL is going to go 1$ in your favor, and you want to keep the original stop say at 20 ticks so as to give trade a little bit of breathing room, do you think it will help your position by moving trail to just within 12 ticks of the current price.

My point is this limit of 500$ is too low and has been designed so that traders find it extremely hard to make money and have an incentive to quickly take profits, thus increasing scaling and increasing comms income for Patak.

EDIT: Also, if they increase the trail kicking in at say 1500$, this will allow the trader to maybe trade 3 or 4 CL contracts when good setups arise. Otherwise a trader will only be able to trade 1-2 contract only because of such tight (and stupid) rules. So, Patak can claim that you can trade 5 contracts, but in practice these rules will force you to trade only 1 or 2 contracts.
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I believe that by net P&L, they refer to realized profits.

I was also very concerned about this rule as it would put severe limitations on my trading and I interpreted it like you, but talking to John Hoagland on the phone, he confirmed that it applies to realized profits.

Your concerns make sense if the rule would apply to open profits and I would fully agree, but it doesn`t, so your examples do not apply.
 
When I failed the second combine, the original fees were not refunded.

They changed objectives since then. Originally it was a pure profit objective of 5000 and you can't hit then 1000 max loss per day. I think i hit it 3 times but ultimately still made 17k for the 20 trading days. 5 lot limit was in place.
 
Quote from gmst:

Reviewed the PDF, its not written there whether it is on open profit or realized closed profit.

Yes, rule perse makes sense. My only point is that Patak should increase the trigger for trailing profit to come in at a minimum of 1000$ or 1500$ on a 50k account.

Till now I have used ES. Let me use CL example now - probably that will make my concern more clear.

Currently, trail kicks in at 500$ on a 50k account. Say, you are trading just 2 CL contracts - only 2 not 5.

So, if the rule applies on open profit, as soon as you are up 500$ = 25 cents on CL, rule forces you to put the trail at 13 cents. If you think CL is going to go 1$ in your favor, and you want to keep the original stop say at 20 ticks so as to give trade a little bit of breathing room, do you think it will help your position by moving trail to just within 12 ticks of the current price.

My point is this limit of 500$ is too low and has been designed so that traders find it extremely hard to make money and have an incentive to quickly take profits, thus increasing scaling and increasing comms income for Patak.

EDIT: Also, if they increase the trail kicking in at say 1500$, this will allow the trader to maybe trade 3 or 4 CL contracts when good setups arise. Otherwise a trader will only be able to trade 1-2 contract only because of such tight (and stupid) rules. So, Patak can claim that you can trade 5 contracts, but in practice these rules will force you to trade only 1 or 2 contracts.
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Having a trailing stop on a $ value basis when trade size varies is illogical if not downright stupid. It should be on a tick basis.

I did a couple of months work on intraday swings in CL and 6E, tracking how far a move goes before the pullback. You would be pretty surprised at how consistently pullbacks are 9 ticks when a move is 20 ticks, 15 ticks when a move is 40 ticks, and 20 ticks when a move is greater. And yes when you see a 20 tick pattern, suddenly a 21 tick pullback comes in.

Some may ask why such consistency. Well people are creatures of habit and computers only do exactly what they are told to do, so you get repeating patterns intraday, sometimes longer.

If anyone wants to pursue this I'm pretty sure you could work out an edge. I've lost interest in day trading (swing trading is more my style) so no loss to me sharing this.
 
Quote from justrading:

Having a trailing stop on a $ value basis when trade size varies is illogical if not downright stupid. It should be on a tick basis.

I did a couple of months work on intraday swings in CL and 6E, tracking how far a move goes before the pullback. You would be pretty surprised at how consistently pullbacks are 9 ticks when a move is 20 ticks, 15 ticks when a move is 40 ticks, and 20 ticks when a move is greater. And yes when you see a 20 tick pattern, suddenly a 21 tick pullback comes in.
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Thank you for a useful contribution! Yes, $ based trail stop doesn't make sense in a varying contract framework. PATAK - something more for you to explain!

Justrading - If you are open to discuss, maybe a good idea to share your findings in a new thread and it might result into some interesting research on CL's intra-day behavior. Cheers.
 
Actually, now that I think back, I received a refund for my initial combine after it finished. I was busy with real life changes so didn't want to start up another combined. Then a couple weeks later, they allowed me to do a follow up combine for free.

In my books, TST was a good experience and they weren't pushy when I wanted my refund. If the objective was to make the combine fees off every trader, I would think they would have pushed harder for me to continue onto a second combine right away and not refund my money. Further, they wouldn't have bother offering me a combine attempt free of charge at a later point in time.
 
Quote from gmst:

I had a quick look at Patak around a month ago, when one ET ll write how I arrived at my conclusions about Patak.
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This Patak smells to like a fish laying in a sun for a few days on a shore.
 
Quote from lindq:


Because Maverick is a licensed professional nature of your attacks in a public forum, my advice to him would be to seek you out and file a suit against you for libel.

Only your sincerest apology on this thread should keep him from doing so.
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Bernard Madoff
was also was "a licensed professional"
Please disclose that you, lindq, are not in a criminal gang defending Madoff and similar, in misusing free market competition. Thank you.
 
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