TopstepTrader and Patak Trading Partners- Any and all questions answered here

[traderchi128]

Quote from Maverick74:

You nailed it traderchi. Here is our little gmst friend:

http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=239446

I looked at his journal for about 37 seconds, that's all I needed to see. The kid is delusional. I applaud you Mav for being so patient with him. I knew he was clueless, but not this bad.

The problem is, new guys see 5 lot max and think every trade has to be max. Any experienced trader knows that not every trade will be max size. You either wait for optimal set ups to trade the big size, or build up a cushion in your account then size up.

I traded around lots of guys over the years who put it into 5th gear every trade. They all eventually failed miserably. Some guys would put it into 10th gear once they got down enough.

 

[Maverick74]

See guys this is the problem. We have a lot of people here who subscribe to the "I'm going to take 2k to a million dollars" model. I respect this kids ambition and I'm glad he loves trading. He needs to get a job. Either a trading job that pays a salary (back office, support, etc) or any job and save up enough money to have a proper bankroll. At least 25k to 50k and that is being generous.

The funny thing is, the TST model is precisely made for guys like him. He is just too in-experienced to realize it. Maybe he should confer with his "mom".

 

[traderchi128]

Quote from Maverick74:

Wow......in all of my years I have never seen the "Mommy hold my hand" strategy.

LOL




Game........set......match.


GMST, stay down for the count.

 

[HurricaneUS]

Damn gmst.....Mav just ripped you a new one.....a full frontal assault with guns blazin'

what say you?

 

[traderchi128]

Quote from Maverick74:

Couldn't get out before Aussie rate decision. He probably had no idea they were going to make a rate decision as Central banks never give any notification of when they have a meeting and are going to announce a rate move.

Nice excuse.

 

[NoDoji]

Quote from marketsurfer:

being churned by noise

Quote from marketsurfer:

the confidence to stick out a position

Surf, can you elaborate on what you mean by these phrases?

How can a consistently profitable trader be churned by noise? I've studied excellent traders for almost 5 years and I've never seen evidence that any of them get churned by noise. They all advocate exiting losing trades at levels that clearly indicate the chance of success has greatly diminished. These levels are always far outside the realm of "noise" in their chosen trading time frames.

What does "stick out a position" mean? Does it mean to hold a position beyond the point at which the chance of success has been invalidated by subsequent price action?

Also, why is a "huge ego" required to achieve a state of confidence?

The first trader I got to know back in 2008 (Robert Weinstein) is one of the most confident people I've ever known and also one of the most humble.

 

[Maverick74]

Quote from gmst:

I completely agree with you that it seems hard to believe that anyone can double his account every 10 weeks .....that will mean 2^5 = 32 times account in a year. But I cannot and must not disbelieve the backtesting results that I see.

OK, so I should have read this guy's journal before I ever bothered to converse with him. My bad.

 

[Maverick74]

Quote from gmst:

Dom993 and ShanB,

I had tough time to type this out but finally I decided to do it. I lost more than 70k to the markets over the last 3 yrs when I was learning the craft, and had larger amounts of capital available. Now when I have finally learnt and have a solid trading plan in place, sad fact is that I have very limited capital. I am going to start a part time job that will allow me to save some capital. It seems that I will be able to add some capital to my account over the next 6-8 weeks. Till then, I will have to run the account constrained. Sadly this is the fact and I must face it.

On a positive note, with the risk I am running, on average, my account should double in value every 8-10 weeks. 4 weeks have already passed since I started the journal and I am at 2.2k starting from 2.5k. So, statistically, over the next 4-6 weeks, my account should be at 5k (assuming it doesn't go below 2k and stays there).

This is absolutely absurd. However, I'm not going to berate this guy anymore. I'm going to give him now the best advice he will ever get and it will probably be the same thing his mom is telling him....gmst, go get a job. You'll thank me when you get older. Trust me on this.

 

[gmst]

Quote from traderchi128:

Couldn't get out before Aussie rate decision. He probably had no idea they were going to make a rate decision as Central banks never give any notification of when they have a meeting and are going to announce a rate move.

Nice excuse.

You are completely wrong. Are you not aware of Fed meeting days in advance? Similarly, for other countries, Central Bank meeting days are known in advance, the time they would make an announcement is also well known.

 

[gmst]

Quote from HurricaneUS:

Damn gmst.....Mav just ripped you a new one.....a full frontal assault with guns blazin'

what say you?

Mav clearly lost the battle with me as far as numbers and logic are concerned. So, by quoting selectively from my journal (where I have written exhaustively about my development as a trader), he is trying to cloud the reader's judgement about the merits of my numbers and logic in Patak's case. He is basically trying to manipulate the reader. Thats all he is trying to do here.

It is true that I have blown up my account multiple times. I would like to ask - "Who doesn't when they start out trading futures"? Marty Schwartz kept blowing his account after account for 10 yrs before he became consistently profitable.

I also find it amusing that since I have blown up multiple accounts, it somehow means that I am not a Wharton MBA! COUNTER-EXAMPLES: Marty Schwartz blew his account before he became consistent, does it mean that he is not a Columbia MBA? I am not sure if many people are aware that even the billionaire Paul Tudor Jones (PTJ) also blew up his account 3 times in 1970s. And PTJ got accepted into Harvard MBA program but declined the MBA admission to keep trading, since he was already a successful pit trader by then. So, where is the connection between me blowing my account and whether I went to Wharton or not??

I started trading futures 3 yrs ago and I am still learning. Blowing up accounts is a part of the learning process. What matter is what a trader learns and how he improves his trading process from his experiences. I don't know if anyone can disagree with this!

Finally, every trader suffers from discipline issues. If involving your mom or your girl-friend or your sibling or doing visualization exercises helps you to sort out the discipline problem, whats wrong with this approach? I am not sure if Mav has any idea - but when Mark Cook lost 500k, he also confided in his mother.

I will be responding only sparingly. Mav can continue to write how great Patak is and mislead newbies. However, I don't have time to waste on Patak anymore. Thanks.