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

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Quote from Maverick74:

No way. I'll make a market on this. I have a slight edge as I've been in their chat room and saw the number of badges in there. My exact guess would be around 75 or so but I'll make the market at 100 current combines of which 80 are paid for. That's current as in Friday's numbers. My guess is they had much bigger numbers in the spring. I would also guess that the numbers are very cyclical. Meaning, when the market starts moving and becomes very tradeable, they probably see a spike in combine starts. When the market is dead like it is now, people probably hold off. That is my guess.

Edit: I misread your first statement. You were not asking how many were in there now. I have no idea back in April. The market was much better then so I'm sure they were at a cyclical high. I have no idea how high they get, I'll throw a number out there of 275 though. Just a wild guess.
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ok, i thought i heard this correctly, the title says this was april 12th, 2012. fwd to 14:30 and check it out. maybe i am confusing something, if so it would be very helpful to learn the actual numbers.


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Quote from Redneck:

GMST

Respect for calling it like you see it



Mav

For someone who profess not to have a dog in the hunt regarding patak – you are sure going out of your way trying to defend him / it


Just an observation

RN
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I'm not defending Patak, I'm defending the business model. There are other firms doing something similar. The model works. It should be defended.

Let me give a little more color on this. There is a guy on this thread, Lucias, who has been begging me for 6 months to back him. He has a small account and needs money. The only reason I even went back to TST's site after looking at it several years ago is because Lucias wanted me to get him a job at a prop firm. I gave him a list of several firms to contact. He was not able to get anywhere with them and I suspected he wouldn't. He didn't have the resume. Which is fine. Most guys here don't. I was trying to help the guy out and find an alternative for him. I had no interest in backing a guy that did not sit next to me in my office. So I dug around a little and remembered this firm. I went through the website exhaustively and saw that it made sense for Lucias to do this. I then told him to give it a shot. We debated for months on this back and forth causing me to go back and forth and keep reading the website which is how I know the content on it cold. I still think he should do it. He is trading a very small account and he is very very over leveraged. He is not going to get hired by anybody and he can't start a fund. I gave him what I felt was the most honest and sincere advice I could. As I do for anybody that e-mails me and asks me for help. Which btw Lucias, is why my inbox is full a lot.

I have spent 10 years on this site helping guys get jobs, get funding or just helping guys make connections. It's not completely altruistic. I get a lot out of it too as I learn about who is doing what, who is hiring and where capital is getting allocated. It benefits me greatly. So I learned about this company and studied it forward and backwards. I do get annoyed when guys come on here after glancing over it for a few minutes and then post inaccurate info so that always forces me to correct it. That's an old bad habit but I'm very detailed oriented. If I thought TST was a scam, if I truly thought that, I would NOT have told Lucias to try it. But based on his circumstances and the fact that I will NOT back him, this might be his only alternative. I wish the guy the best of luck. He is young and ambitious. He has that going for him. But he is going to have to pay his dues like we all have. There are no shortcuts and TST is certainly not a path to easy riches. I think for most guys, it's a cheap way to find out if you even like daytrading. Most guys don't and the daily grind for most is intolerable. But you don't know till you try.

Now, I've never met Michael but would love to grab a beer with him. That's the kind of guy I am. I like to deal with people face to face or at least over the phone which is why I told gmst to call me vs conversing on a message board. I'll have that beer with Michael. I think I'm a pretty good judge of character. If my opinion changes on TST, I will come here and post it. But that is how I came to find out about it. I was simply trying to help another guy out.
 
Quote from Maverick74:

This is pure hyperbole. You are accusing him of having too strict rules and you are equating this to a CFTC investigation? What are you charging him with? Get it on the record and put your name on this thread so he can sue you properly for slander.
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I haven't accused him of anything YET. I as others are simply asking questions NOW. Lucias mentioned a CFTC case which sounds very similar to Patak. I stress it sounds similar only - I haven't accused Patak of anything YET!

And, eventually if I do decide to accuse him of anything (say, misrepresentation, misinformation etc.) I will not brag about it here on ET. I will go and file a complaint with CFTC, either anonymously or with my full name displayed. Then, Mr. Patak can put his case before CFTC and face a CFTC investigation.

Finally, as I have said many times before, I have never done business with Patak nor do I have any intention of doing any business with Patak and I truly think it is AN AMAZING waste of my time that I am going on and on, in this and the other thread. I have been wanting to move away from this topic for last 2 days now. But, you keep coming in and putting in your false logic (and other diversionary tactics like how hard the industry is, entitlement generation etc.) again and again and I feel obligated to respond. So, that newbies don't read this thread and come up with the impression that everything Patak has been doing is fair. So, if you stop protecting Mr. Patak like a shield and let him respond instead, I think conversation will proceed much smoother and most likely my attention would fade away from this and other Patak thread eventually. My work is seriously getting impacted because of my involvement on this issue.

Finally, is this not labor day weekend for you Maverick?! You have all the time in the world to reply and defend Mr. Patak and his firm. All ET members are wondering why! LOL.
 
We've already established that TST/PTK has posted some misleading figures. They show on their website that they fund one with 30k account when in reality they provide 1k risk. We are trying to establish the basic nature of the TST/PTK business. Is the TST designed to keep traders in a never ending revolving door of combines that too difficult to pass? A game that appears to be designed as a negative expectancy game where a player is only able to win back his own money when he wins in the market but loses his deposit when he loses and even when he wins huge: he only wins a small amount.

Michael skipped my question even though it was the second one asked but preceded to answer subsequent questions. Then later an answer appeared out-of-sequence where TST_HOAG stated that whether or not that they have traders who've produced tangible profits doesn't matter. It does matter because it gets to the heart of the type of business they are running and it mattered to the CFTC when they found that Richard Regan under rather similar circumstancs. I'm not a regulator and can't say how they look on this but as a layman, I do see similarity. If no TST/PTK traders have produced tangible profits, which was the case under Regan (another floor trader running a similar not exactly same type of operation) then I think that's extremely relevant.

I've taken the time to go step-by-step through the math to show how poor it is. At the 1k level, you risked $175 to get that funding, so in reality a trader only has to come up $825 of risk capital (+$500 margin non risk capital) to get the same level of funding.

Now, let's show how the daily risk limit is a misrepresentation. Does anyone believe that risking 50% of your capital per day makes any sense? At the lowest funding level, you get 1k total risk. Let's figure out something more realistic working backwards, take the 1k and divide by 6 and that gives you a realistic risk max per day of only $166 and you'll get 60% of that or about $99/day. Even at this level you are risking nearly 17% of your account per day. From experience in running monte carlo simulations, I know that risking much beyond 8% puts one at a higher jeopardy of account loss. At the 8% level, your realistic risk cap is going to be $80 per day. Good luck trading the ES with $80 risk per day!

Michael did something else that's peculiar. He replied with a question "Do you think the combines pay the light bills?". I've seen this same phrase used before. I find this peculiar because by posing it as question, he's not stating that the combines don't pay the light bills. He's dodging.

And, yes it does get some of us real traders "hot under the collar" when we see a scheme that claims to try to produce successful traders but which may, in reality, be trapping them in a perptual losing cycle.

Yes, what Maverick claims about me and him are true. I have asked him several times for funding. And I believe him. Maverick, I thank you for trying to help me even though we don't always agree. Indeed, I've an interest in whether this is a scheme or a real oppportunity because I would be inclined to try it if I knew it wasn't a scheme.

Yes, successful traders do seek funding. I'll give my own case as an example. I went live 6 months with a small account. The first few months I was trading lightly, testing the water. Even so, I've been closing in on the 100% net return. Not quite but closing in. I don't believe I ever went negative equity -- good luck. I know many investors would kill for even a partial to such returns. I only have a small amount of capital, and so I have been genuinely considering to try the TST program. I would be extremely happy to find a legitament TST/PTK style program. There is virtually no opportunity for a trader who does extremely well with a small account to scale up. So, I am very interested in any opportunities.

I have had interviews with real prop firms and even had the opportunity to take them up. I want to explain the difference between TST/PTK and real props. Real props are tight on the risk when starting but they scale traders up to significant risk levels when they do well. This enables those traders to make a real living. The downside is that it is very hard to past the first 6 months to 1 year.

Understand that I am not attacking TST/PTK but giving them an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the nature of their business and if they have a legit business then I may become one of their traders. However, if they struggle to provide this information then it does tend to strongly indicate they are running a scheme.
 
Quote from Maverick74:


I have spent 10 years on this site helping guys get jobs, get funding or just helping guys make connections.
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Don't keep saying how great you are Maverick. It is irritating to say the least.

If you are so good and you have so many connections in Chicago, you should be working at Infinium, Jump, Getco as head of trading. Fact is - you are working as a Bright trader. It means your resume is neither that great, nor do you have the ability to get people into good jobs. LOL, this is such common sense!

I suspect even if you got jobs to guys, maybe you got them jobs that pay 25k or so.

Finally, I apologize to you for the above paragraph - in which I said you don't have the ability. But this constant referral from you about how great you are, and how many guys you have helped get a job - has left me really irritated. Instead of focusing on the main points of conversation, again and again you tell us how great you are so that you can influence the reader. Refute and argue using points mate, not using the line 'how great I am'.
 
Quote from gmst:

I haven't accused him of anything YET. I as others are simply asking questions NOW. Lucias mentioned a CFTC case which sounds very similar to Patak. I stress it sounds similar only - I haven't accused Patak of anything YET!

And, eventually if I do decide to accuse him of anything (say, misrepresentation, misinformation etc.) I will not brag about it here on ET. I will go and file a complaint with CFTC, either anonymously or with my full name displayed. Then, Mr. Patak can put his case before CFTC and face a CFTC investigation.

Finally, as I have said many times before, I have never done business with Patak nor do I have any intention of doing any business with Patak and I truly think it is AN AMAZING waste of my time that I am going on and on, in this and the other thread. I have been wanting to move away from this topic for last 2 days now. But, you keep coming in and putting in your false logic (and other diversionary tactics like how hard the industry is, entitlement generation etc.) again and again and I feel obligated to respond. So, that newbies don't read this thread and come up with the impression that everything Patak has been doing is fair. So, if you stop protecting Mr. Patak like a shield and let him respond instead, I think conversation will proceed much smoother and most likely my attention would fade away from this and other Patak thread eventually. My work is seriously getting impacted because of my involvement on this issue.

Finally, is this not labor day weekend for you Maverick?! You have all the time in the world to reply and defend Mr. Patak and his firm. All ET members are wondering why! LOL.
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Forgive me for calling it like it is, but you seem to have a short memory.

You dumped a truckload of bricks on Mav out of the blue, and then when the reaction was not to your liking, you said forget that, let's move on and focus on Patak. Mav has been patient with you in a way I could not possibly be.

A better way of going about what you did would have been to lay out your views, as you did, and then have asked Mav to respond as to why he seems to favour Patak despite the facts that you laid out. No implications, no innuendo.

Be a Ralph Nader, not a Joe McCarthy. You display many of the traits of a rabble rouser, and that is never nice.

Above all, stay objective and keep an open mind. Otherwise, in 20 years you will be claiming to have an MBA and 20 years experience, but what you will have is an MBA and 1 years experience 20 times.
 
Quote from justrading:


A better way of going about what you did would have been to lay out your views, as you did, and then have asked Mav to respond as to why he seems to favour Patak despite the facts that you laid out. No implications, no innuendo.
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I partially agree with this. My first post in which I wrote about Maverick - probably was not warranted. However, it was also important to 'some extent' - simply because so many people at ET think so highly of Mav that if I felt Mav is hand in glove with Patak, that needed to be exposed.

But, yes as I said I partially agree with you.

Also, it was partially proved in the other thread that in fact Mav is hand in glove with Patak. I hope no one missed it.

http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=3612178#post3612178
 
I will say it again. I think the negativity on Maverick is misdirected and unwarranted.. See my last post for fuller explanation.

What really matters is the nature of TST/PTK business model.. I've given them an excellent opportunity here to attract new customers (including myself) if they can find the right answers. If they can't then I've provided a lot of logic that should make sense.

If anyone here knows of other funding opportunities for those with small accounts then feel free to PM me. I am off for the weekend and don't feel any need to add anything more..

The ball is in your court, TST/PTK.
 
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