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

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I will definitely call on Monday when I am back in town. You failed to attempt to explain this:

"Since we are a member firm of the CME Group, our traders benefit from direct clearing relationships, a cutting edge trading platform, and the capital required to manage a trading account."

You claim that your membership allows you to benefit from "the capital required to manage a trading account" . This is a complete lie!! According to CME website, 106.H firms "Are not subject to CME capital requirements, periodic financial statement reporting or financial and compliance examinations."

So I ask again how does your membership benefit "the capital required to manage a trading account" You are implying that you are well capitalized since you are a "member of the CME" but your membership type requires nothing of the sort, nor does it require any SRO to review any financial or compliance requirements. Regular CME members do....you do not....that is why you are not allowed to hold yourself out as a CME member.

There is nothing wrong with this requirement. However, by implying otherwise is deceitful and dishonest. Please address this.






Quote from MichaelPatak:

traderCND- Appreciate you looking into that for us. Your email went to market reg. They do not handle that type of stuff as it is not a market regulations type of an issue.

You will need to send it to the membership audit department. Here is the CME switchboard number to get their email or contact them directly: 312-435-3500. Contact Ellen over there. She handles membership review and knows us. They are really helpful and nice people. She will inform you that we are well within the rules in how we hold ourselves.

Again I do appreciate you taking the time to thoroughly review TST and PTP.

mp
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Quote from gmst:

Michael, Thanks for answering the questions. I was silent the whole day. Wanted to relax myself, so that I could have a nice conversation with you. So, here we go:

Your website clearly mentions the rules of what it takes to go from combine to live. However, there is no mention of what has been the historical passing rates. If you can release this information, it will help potential traders to better gauge their chances of moving from combines to live trading. Thanks in advance.

So, to help remove some of the doubts, please give numbers for the following questions:

1) Total number of traders that have participated in combines, starting from TST inception till today.
2) Total number of traders who have ever been live, from TST inception till today.

Nothing speaks like success and failure is an orphan. So, if you are truly successful in discovering good traders using your current model and those good traders are also making money, you should be happy to share following numbers:

3) Total number of live traders who have made more than 20k till today, in their live account.
4) Total number of live traders who have made more than 10k till today, in their live account.
5) Total number of live traders who have made more than 5k till today, in their live account.

And I hope you didn't mind my suggestion to Maverick and others to open TST clones. If the whole industry develops, you might make a bit less coin than otherwise, but you will be remembered as THE PIONEER, as the guy who started it all. :)
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Michael, You have not answered this question yet. Please answer it.
 
Quote from Lucias:


...you could drop a lot of money on combines. Lose 5x and you could be down nearly $1,800.

Lets be frank, the TST program is a game where you win (profitable) you win your own money back. You lose, TST takes your money. Only if you win HUGE do you win anything and then at the lowest level.. your "winning" only $500.. of which can only be exchanged for trading and not tangible goods.

Also lets look at it from my perspective... I'm never going to risk money on a combine unless I'm pretty sure I can hit it. If I'm pretty sure I can hit it.. then i can be much more sure that I'm more likely to make at least some money in the market.

They have to increase the risk capital to make it worthwhile... I've addressed this game and shown how it works over many pages. i encourage anyone who wants to kno whow it works to read through all my posts.

I don't have time to bother with this game anymore.. I will monitor but as is now, i wouldn't recommend this for anyone.
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Lucias, I've read your posts. I agree with your logic regarding not wanting to risk money on the combine unless you're sure to hit it. That makes perfect sense. If you don't need the education tools, access to chat, etc, then you can get a free sim account with several vendors, set the parameters to match the combine that you're considering, and see if you can pass. If you can, only then sign up for the combine, since you'll already have achieved the objectives and will know whether it's doable or not.

There is no reason for any trader to be "losing 5x and being down $1,800" on the combines! That means the trader has not developed a game plan, or was not serious enough about the opportunity to use a practice account to test out their strategy.

You mention on several of your posts that they aren't giving enough capital in the account. The way I see it is this: what is the net capital outlay required to have your own account vs. the net capital outlay required to pass the combine and get the same account you'd get if you trade live with PTP?

Go on several vendor's sites and compare the initial account opening deposit requirements, initial capital per contract, and intraday maintenance requirement. If you're going to trade the three main contracts which TST's trader are currently trading (CL, ES and 6E), then compare what the capital allocation cost is to have 5 lots of intraday initial margin AND allowing for a 1k daily draw with 2k maximum total draw (the same parameters with the 50k live account on PTP).

That is a fair way to compare what your opportunity cost is in doing the combines vs. opening a live account and funding it yourself.

Since there are no minimum requirements and only a $25 fixed chart package costs, if you start making money and QUIT before generating the $5,000 cushion required to take a distribution, Patak stated that the firm will STILL give you your distribution, plus they'll refund you the price of the last combine you took before you got the live account.

The dilema arises when you start to generate a significant revenue stream on the funded account. If you're consistently profitable and decide to keep trading, you take the haircut, but ONLY on the PTP account, which has no volume requirements or minimums. Maverick posted that nothing stops you from opening another retail account.

Lucias, you posted on another thread regarding Pulsar, but they want 360 GBP to join their combine, and as you stated your max size with them is 1 ES lot. There is another firm called Index Elite trying to compete for business, you may want to research their parameters as well.

Best of luck.
 
It seems like their website is pretty clear on what they are, offer and the terms. I don't see where they keep charging your credit card if you fail or simply decide it won't work. You make the call to keep trying or not, and if you are successful the terms are clear. As has been pointed out a lot you can always go open your own retail acccount after you start making your own cash, and take 100% of your profits and losses.
Good luck to the finders of evil, but you may want to move onto some of the zillions of other vendors out there, as this one seems pretty above board.
No vested interest. Never tried their services, no relationship to anyone associated with them, etc. And yes, I am more than willing to call b.s. when I see it, I just don't see it here.
 
Quote from tango29:

It seems like their website is pretty clear on what they are, offer and the terms. I don't see where they keep charging your credit card if you fail or simply decide it won't work. You make the call to keep trying or not, and if you are successful the terms are clear. As has been pointed out a lot you can always go open your own retail acccount after you start making your own cash, and take 100% of your profits and losses.
Good luck to the finders of evil, but you may want to move onto some of the zillions of other vendors out there, as this one seems pretty above board.
No vested interest. Never tried their services, no relationship to anyone associated with them, etc. And yes, I am more than willing to call b.s. when I see it, I just don't see it here.
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I'd have to concur.

Although in my opinion, Patak is not a good option for newbie futures traders because they can't even produce more than 12 traders making at least 30K a year after the hundreds of candidates that have tried the combines and after being in business for more than 2 years


other than that, they seem pretty above board.


I would only recommend Patak to experienced but small capital traders that have developed a solid workable methodology themselves and have traded it for months and months on a free simulator like ninjatrader. In addition, the simulation should be conducted in accordance with Patak's selection guidelines.


Edit: Ninjatrader is free so long as you do not connect to a broker. However, you will have to pay for your own data fees....duuuh
 
Just reading through the answers and read this page

http://www.topsteptrader.com/deposit

I had mistakenly had the understanding that one only had to be profitable to get refunded. But we see now that there are more requirements to get the refund.

With these additional requirements... there is no way I would enertain try this.

Deposit will be refunded once all Combine trading days (10 or 20 days) have been completed, if the following requirements have been met:


1. Daily loss limit has not been hit or exceeded

2. Overall Winning Day % of 50 or greater

3. Each product traded has a Trading Average greater than zero ($0)

4. Each product traded has met 2 out of 3 performance requirements, which are as follows:



- Overall Average Win greater than Overall Average Loss

- Overall Average Win Duration greater than Overall Average Loss Duration

- Total Win % of 45 or greater
 
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