TopstepTrader Q & A

[snowman80]

It's aimed only at people with some trading skills but without enough capital to trade futures themselves.

majority of people in the group you are referencing are inexperienced, eager and desperate to trade. So desperate and innocent, in fact, they are willing to fork over hundreds if not thousands of dollars out of the capital they so desperately need to participate in these combines or gauntlets.

Sure, some will go through the process successfully and end up with their mugshot in the testimonial section.

Same can be said of the Payday loan businesses. Some people have taken these loans when they were desperate and lived happily ever after. but majority are trapped in an endless debt trap.

 

[Xela]

majority of people in the group you are referencing are inexperienced, eager and desperate to trade. So desperate and innocent, in fact, they are willing to fork over hundreds if not thousands of dollars out of the capital they so desperately need to participate in these combines or gauntlets.

I'm sure that's right.

There are large numbers of people taking Combines who don't have the required trading skills, and they ignore the suggestion above that they shouldn't pay for one until they've proved to themselves, on a free demo, that they can actually pass it. (I just think it's a pretty clear indication of prejudice speaking, rather than reason, when people try to blame TST for that!)

 

[SimpleMeLike]

Shaking my head. I guess I'm just different or something.

This is very funny to me. I honestly can't believe someone thinks TST is a rip off. I was there for 5 months, paid them monthly and traded. I didn't pass the combine cause what I was doing wasn't working.

Am I missing something? Why in the world would someone trade their own money when TST will let you risk their? Now if I have $100k sitting in the bank idle and all my debt paid off, yeah sure, I risk about $20k trading a verified profitable strategy. But guess what? I dont have $100k sitting around. I wish I knew about TST 4 years ago when I was losing my own capital.

I don't even care about TST business model or know what it is or what other funded traders are doing. I just want to meet the profit target and get to the next stage and follow the rules.

 

[snowman80]

Why in the world would someone trade their own money when TST will let you risk their?

it’s not really ‘their’ money that they are risking. it’s your money that you’ve paid to participate in the gauntlet.

money they collect up front from you(i mean collective ‘you’) offsets any potential losses.

i don’t disagree with Xela’s point of view that one should only pay to play if he/she ‘is’ ready but i’m pretty sure most ppl in their target demographic simply do not have the discipline to follow that advice.

 

[Xela]

it’s not really ‘their’ money that they are risking. it’s your money that you’ve paid to participate in the gauntlet.

Not so much, for some people.

One of the people I mentioned (on a previous page) paid for one Combine, once, and was then funded to trade an account with a $3,000 daily loss limit. That wasn't her $3,000 per day that was being risked, of course. She didn't have that kind of money, which is of course why she was taking a Combine in the first place. So the comment that "TST is risking nothing" (not your comment, I appreciate, Snowman80, but wrongly claimed by some, here!) is obviously nonsense.

Of course, there are also others who pay again and again for Combines and fail them again and again. Fortunately for TST, who have to rent premises, pay staff salaries, and so on.

How else could it work?

Speaking for myself, if I were taking a Combine, I'd want TST itself to be a viable, profitable business, otherwise I'd worry about my funded account later on, but some people here seem to begrudge TST having a viable business!

i don’t disagree with Xela’s point of view that one should only pay to play if he/she ‘is’ ready but i’m pretty sure most ppl in their target demographic simply do not have the discipline to follow that advice.

I'm sure you're right. And that TST probably wouldn't/couldn't exist at all, if that weren't so.

They make some of their income selling Combines to people who never benefit. Clearly. ("Shock horror"!!

).

It is what it is.

Nobody forces people to take part, if they can't do it. But if they can, the rewards can be huge: successful careers have been started off this way, without any trading capital at all.

 

[lcranston]

The chief refuge of the loser lies in finding someone else -- anyone else -- to blame for his own failures.

 

[snowman80]

How else could it work?

I’m not sure it could.

Countless lambs have to be sacrificed to pay rent, salaries and launch few successful careers.

i guess i’m ok with that. i have to take a quick shower - saying that makes me feel a little dirty.

 

[SimpleMeLike]

it’s not really ‘their’ money that they are risking. it’s your money that you’ve paid to participate in the gauntlet.

money they collect up front from you(i mean collective ‘you’) offsets any potential losses.

snowman80,

It's not my business to know who money it is, I am just there to trade, meet the profit target, follow the rules, get to funded stage and get paid. Nice and simple. Not my job to worry about where TST money comes from.

 

[volente_00]

Neither would I.

But TST isn't aimed at you and me.

It's aimed only at people with some trading skills but without enough capital to trade futures themselves.

This is why it's so ridiculous of people in this and other threads (not meaning yourself, LL) to keep saying that you're better off trading your own account and that "therefore nobody should use TST".

Of course a profitable trader is better off trading their own account, if they have the funds to.

No big mystery about it: one really doesn't need to be Einstein to see that they're precisely 20% better off!

But to try to twist that obvious reality into some kind of "fault-finding" against TST is just nonsense: those people aren't TST's market.

(This is also why it's nonsensical constantly to claim, as Pekelo habitually, repeatedly does, that the fact that successful traders don't stay with TST for as long as a year somehow "proves" that it's all a scam and a trick of some kind. Of course they don't stay beyond the point at which they've made enough to establish their own account, and have enough margin not to need to give up the 20% indefinitely.)

Perhaps those people could save up enough capital to daytrade the emini's if they weren't pissing away $200 monthly on a dangling carrot

 

[sss12]

I’m not sure it could.

Countless lambs have to be sacrificed to pay rent, salaries and launch few successful careers.

i guess i’m ok with that. i have to take a quick shower - saying that makes me feel a little dirty.

It is called capitalism. You realize you are in a trading forum, right ?