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

[MichaelPatak]

Quote from volente_00:

How much did the top producer earn in 2010 and 2011 ?

We did not really start getting talent that produced well until we changed our program to evaluating on performance not just profits.

We made this change at the beginning of February 2012. When we make a change it takes months for it to show up in the talent that we have coming through the Combine as they then start changing their habits to meet the criteria.

So to answer the question. 2010 was a building year and most if not all of 2011 was an evolving year, so nothing substantial there with traders. We are NOW finding better talent and are starting to generate producers so check back with me at the end of this year and I will get you an update when 1099's are printed.

I do want to say that this is a new concept that has taken over 2 years to put together. After 2 years we now have enormous confidence in our program and are excited about what will materialize from future prospects that take the opportunity we provide which allows them to develop and get a risk free shot at the markets.

mp

 

[Lucias]

Actually.. my analysis was wrong. You're not really given $800 risk capital because you do essentially a 50/50 split (60/40 at lowest level unless you spend even more for coaching, etc).

So let's look at this to pass the minimum objective combine

$175 Combine Fee Risked
$825 Return on Risk

But then we have to take reduce that for splits... take 60% of it and you get $495

What this means is that a trader only needs to come up with $495 to have the same risk capital that TST/PTK awards at lowest funding level (+$500 non risk money for intraday margin + find any broker that will allow you to open a sub 5k account futures account which is not likely because its ludicrious).

If you get a $500 risk cap at TST/PTK then trading on own it is equivalent to $300 risk cap... same concept.. only need to make $180 on own for $300/day equivalent at PTK.

The concept is good. But the math just doens't work. Daily risk limit too... risk capital given too small... objectives too high.

I will continue to monitor for future improvements but righ tnow.. just isn't worth the combine fee or time. I'd dare say lowest combine is barely worth it for free.

 

[Maverick74]

Michael,

When you go live with Ninja, will there be any additional costs using that platform? Will there be any other material differences with traders who choose to use Ninja?

 

[optionbull]

Quote from Lucias:

Actually.. my analysis was wrong. You're not really given $800 risk capital because you do essentially a 50/50 split (60/40 at lowest level unless you spend even more for coaching, etc).

So let's look at this to pass the minimum objective combine

$175 Combine Fee Risked
$825 Return on Risk

But then we have to take reduce that for splits... take 60% of it and you get $495

What this means is that a trader only needs to come up with $495 to have the same risk capital that TST/PTK awards at lowest funding level (+$500 non risk money for intraday margin + find any broker that will allow you to open a sub 5k account futures account which is not likely because its ludicrious).

If you get a $500 risk cap at TST/PTK then trading on own it is equivalent to $300 risk cap... same concept.. only need to make $180 on own for $300/day equivalent at PTK.

The concept is good. But the math just doens't work. Daily risk limit too... risk capital given too small... objectives too high.

I will continue to monitor for future improvements but righ tnow.. just isn't worth the combine fee or time. I'd dare say lowest combine is barely worth it for free.

+1
great work uncovering........ realize you have to have signficant capital to make decent returns.....

 

[MichaelPatak]

Quote from volente_00:

Why is it relevant what others can do ?


The only thing that matters at the end of the day is what you can do



I will venture to say 95-97% fail at the combine


Of those that go live I will estimate 88-90% get sent back down eventually.







My question for Mike is



Why do you have such high profit targets with small risk ?


I think there is a big pool of traders that could make you a lot of money if you backed every profitable trader that shows $1500+ in the smallest combine who over multiple combines show consistent lower profit targets with the same risk parameters.

Volente- you are about correct with the above.. SO for simplicity purpose I am quoting you and sorta answering gmst prior. Though those that you mention FAIL do not necessarily fail many receive rollovers (deposit refund or you can roll it over to a new Combine which 90% or so I believe do).

Also you are correct that trading is a PERSONAL journey... meaning what other around you do is irrelevant. It is what YOU do with the opportunity that defines who you are as a trader.

Now to your question. Why do you have such high profit targets with small risk ?

First the reason would be PTP which is the equity backer want to see those that can produce. We also know that when someone goes from Combine to LIVE there is a drop off in performance.. So if you were to be taken live (aka financially backed) on a 30k account giving you 3 lot max buying power and a $500 daily loss limit.. You would have shown that you can produce a $250 trading average.. This drops a bit when you go live so we do have higher exceptions when you are not on real money accounts. We do NOT expect you to meet ANY profit target live. This is only during evaluation (aka the COMBINE). As for the risk.. we think that $500 a day loss limit for the account mentioned above up to $3,000 a day loss limit for the biggest accounts we evaluate on are extremely reasonable assuming that we are asking you to have a trading average (you daily p&L average out over the number of days traded) just greater than $250 for the smaller account or $1,200 for the largest account that give you $3,000 a day loss limit.

Lastly a recruit can propose different evaluation criteria with different profit targets or objectives and send in their proposal for approval. The scout team meets and reviews these every other day and when approved we ask you to trade as advertised going forward.. So you can put together how you would like to be evaluated. If you put the profit target low we may counter with ok that is fine but we want to see this or that. So we do work with a trader if he or she feels our standard evaluation criteria does not fit with their trading methodology/plan/style etc. You can find the customized objective details here: http://www.topsteptrader.com/customevaluation


Let me know if I answered that correctly. Sometime it is hard to know what one is asking over a post.

mp

 

[MichaelPatak]

Quote from t0pd0g:

I think these are some relevant questions that have purposely not been answered. Can someone at TsT please answer.

I am sorry guys. We do not give out info on the owners or investors in TopstepTrader or Patak Trading Partners.

mp

 

[MichaelPatak]

Quote from ScalperJoe:

I noticed there are two ways to join a Combine, with or without a paid membership. The membership allows for daily trade reports and journal on the simulator account, whereas paying for the Combine itself does not.

If a trader pays for the $150 membership in order to get the initial reduced rate for the Combine and access to their daily trade logs in the simulated account, do they still require a paid membership in order to access their daily logs when they go live?

I also noticed there is no platform fee, only the charts for $25/month (which is listed as optional). Since there is no recurring combine fee, a trader's fixed costs if required to maintain a membership is $175/month ($150 plus $25 for charts), is that correct?

Scalperjoe- Both options give you trade reports for your COMBINE account. In the membership you receive another account "Practice" that gets trade reports displayed on it as well. The Membership also gives you a 45 minutes sessions with a professional trading coach. ALL our coaches are on the CBOT trading floor and Trade both screen and pit.

The next part of the question you mention no platform fees but charts are $25... This is ONLY when you are LIVE (financially funded with PTP). You do not have membership fees when you earn your LIVE trading opportunity. The membership fees is what TopstepTrader charges to help develop you in the program to get you to the point you are trading well enough for funding. Providing you with all the tools to help you succeed and a trading coaching that you have access to once a month.

mp

 

[Maverick74]

Quote from Lucias:

Actually.. my analysis was wrong. You're not really given $800 risk capital because you do essentially a 50/50 split (60/40 at lowest level unless you spend even more for coaching, etc).

So let's look at this to pass the minimum objective combine

$175 Combine Fee Risked
$825 Return on Risk

But then we have to take reduce that for splits... take 60% of it and you get $495

What this means is that a trader only needs to come up with $495 to have the same risk capital that TST/PTK awards at lowest funding level (+$500 non risk money for intraday margin + find any broker that will allow you to open a sub 5k account futures account which is not likely because its ludicrious).

If you get a $500 risk cap at TST/PTK then trading on own it is equivalent to $300 risk cap... same concept.. only need to make $180 on own for $300/day equivalent at PTK.

The concept is good. But the math just doens't work. Daily risk limit too... risk capital given too small... objectives too high.

I will continue to monitor for future improvements but righ tnow.. just isn't worth the combine fee or time. I'd dare say lowest combine is barely worth it for free.

Lucias, I have no idea where you are getting this math and I'm pretty good with numbers. Your last 10 posts with numbers are just not adding up to me. I'm not sure if you are just not understanding this or if you are coming at this from a different angle.

I do believe you are sincere though so I want to make the effort to understand what you are saying. I think you are making an effort to figure this out but perhaps get stuck somewhere along the way.

Let's pretend I want to trade crude oil. Let's leave out the arguments about how volatile crude is for a moment OK and go with this. I think the overnight margin on one CL contract is 6800 or so. Not sure what the intra-day is, maybe 1k?

OK, as I've stated before, I think anyone who trades CL needs to be capitalized to trade it. I personally think one should have 25k for every one lot they want to trade. This contract moves 3k a day per contract!

OK, let's say I wanted to do the 100k combine which allows 2k daily loss limit. They will allow you to trade up to 10 contracts of CL which is a million dollars worth of oil.

Now at 100k I would not recommend anyone trading more then 4 lots at one time. So technically your intra-day margin is 4k but your risk, lol, it's much more then that. I'll tell you right now Lucias, anyone trading 4 lots of CL can easily drop 4k to 5k a day and can drop 25k in a month in a heart beat. Trust me on this.

Now TST says or claims they could let you re-set your account 4 times. Assuming they throw you off the combine that many times and let you come back and assuming they do that after you lose 4k each time means they are willing to eat 16k of your losses.

Now on a 100k combine they are asking you to make 10k in a month to get funded. That's very reasonable with Crude. So you obviously have to hit that to get funded which means you should be able to generate similar p&l when you go live.

So if you are a young guy with limited capital, I think it would be very difficult for you to come up with 25k or 100k to trade 1 to 4 lots of crude and be able to sustain losses of up to 16k. I think that is hard even for well capitalized guys.

So that combine costs $350 and if you are even profitable you can get that refunded to you. I think $350 is better for you then opening a 25k account and possibly losing half of it, say 12k trying to learn to trade crude. I just think you are not looking at this the right way.

BTW, there is a good journal on ET where guys are trading crude everyday and you can get an idea of how much they are making and losing. There are some veteran traders on that journal as well as total newbies. Check it out.

http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=178741

 

[MichaelPatak]

Quote from ScalperJoe:

You're right, but it seems confusing. On the site, here's what it says for the practice account:

"Members will have access to the Trade Report and Daily Trading Journal for their practice account. Non-member's practice accounts will not have access to these tools."

If you sign up for just the basic Combine, you don't get a practice account, however you are provided with daily stats once you're in the Combine.

If you are not a member and Enter the COMBINE and want a practice account along side your Combine account you can do this. BUT that practice account will not have trade reports.

Practice accounts are useful as it keeps you from putting or making that impulsive trade in your account that is being evaluated ie. THE COMBINE ACCOUNT.

mp

 

[CoolTraderDude]

Quote from MichaelPatak:


Now to your question. Why do you have such high profit targets with small risk ?

First the reason would be PTP which is the equity backer want to see those that can produce. We also know that when someone
mp

Sure... But you're Patak Trading Partners, your name is in the firms's name so you're the one who set it up.

Don't try to pass it off as PTP who is your boss who's making you do it.