Shiko, Pekelo is an ass. Ignore him. He does NOT trade for a living and he admitted this on previous threads. Nothing wrong with that btw, just stating so you have some perspective on his views. Pekelo had a "paper journal" on ET where he averaged into a losing ES position and held it for months while it went 150 handles against him and went it came back and he was in the black he called it a good trade. Anyway, just some background on the guy.
Regarding TST, Shiko you get it. Anyone who has EVER traded gets it. Look, I ran a prop firm for years in Chicago. I recruited in total about 40 traders. We had options guys, futures and equities although our firm was options based. It was my job to manage their risk, help them with their trading, and keep things moving slowly. Now, while admittedly I did bring in a few "green" guys who were new to the business, a majority of the guys all had plenty of trading experience. Most of it at the retail level, like most of ET, but never the less, they all had experience, most of them were profitable, but not all.
So I agree with your point about this so called "newbie" status pekelo uses is a joke. I had a guy who made markets on the floor for 30 years who owned a 4 million dollar home in Highland Park come in to trade. Was he a newbie? Well, he gave futures a try and blew 200k. I guess Pekelo would call him a "newbie". The thing with futures is, a lot people come over from stocks and options and even FX for whatever reason. A lot of the equity prop guys I use to trade with in NY moved to futures. It seems like a logical progression. Although the markets are very different. So with TST you are going to get a lot of guys who had some success with options or stocks or whatever, but were running into capital utilization issues so they move to futures. It's a very rough transition. TST is absolutely the BEST thing for those guys. And none of them are newbies.
I went into a rant a few pages back about the real issue and that kind of died out but the real problem TST has and really anyone is that in my personal opinion, and this is only my opinion, full time intra-day futures trading is a losing proposition. It really is the market with the least amount of edge to extract. Especially if you are trading things like ES or the EUR/USD in my opinion. Now, before anyone blows a gasket, let me say I do believe there are "opportunities" from time to time and I certainly try to partake in them myself. And during those "opportunities" there is the potential for an experienced discipline trader to take money out of the market. The problem is, that does not exist every day or most days really. I think one has to be opportunistic. I mean do you think it would be easier to catch this last 100 handles up in the ES over the last few weeks or daytrading it every day with 4 tick stops? Everyone's answer is different I'm sure, but I have mine.
I think TST is probably late to the party. Had they started this venture 10 years ago they would have been insanely successful. And perhaps if the VIX spikes again and we have another crisis they will find some success. But the real question is and should be, is that your mo? Are you going to be a guy who can only put food on the table if there is a crisis market because we have the data on this going back 150 years and it's not frequent. If one is going to be in the market each and every day, this business is insanely difficult, "newbie" or not. I traded with bar none of some of the best traders in the country when I was in NY. These guys were lights out. Almost all of them left the business. Some tried their hand at futures, I guess "pekelo" would call them newbies, but few if any made it.
There is a reason why most of the futures prop shops have either shut down or moved into HFT trading with much less staff, and it's not because they are "newbies". You see Shiko, this is the conversation I tried to have on here because I think it's the central question that has to be answered. But the Pekelo's of the world have so much hate and animosity from their life failures that they make this into a debate about whether TST is a scam or how many billions the owners are making. All of which are non sequitor.
Of course on the amusement side, I enjoyed TST coming to ET. Because we had a lot of billionaire futures traders on ET that rambled daily about how easy it is and ran for the hills at the challenge of doing a combine just for fun. And the ones that did, well, the results are all in the journal section. Suddenly the net work of this web site dropped dramatically. LOL. So that has nothing really to do with TST obviously, it was something I already knew having run a prop shop, and that is the talk that is on this web site is just that, all talk.
I even told the funny story of how I actually brought in a lot of guys from ET to trade at my shop. Many of them had journals on ET showing never a down day or never losing yet with a real prop trading account and unlimited capital at their disposal, they blew out in months. Some even returned here to continue the charade. For the life of me I have no idea why they do this.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to be a Debbie downer here. I just thing there are more important questions to be answered. Yes the rules are important and they have been discussed ad nauesum on here. I even joked that if traders had used their time working on their edge instead of trying to get around the rules, they would be far more successful.
So in the end, here are my thoughts. If you truly have an edge, the rules don't matter. If you don't have an edge, getting rid of all the rules will not make you profitable. I will tell you real quick what guys ultimately do when they admit to themselves they don't have an edge. They sell options, fade large moves or average down. All techniques that give the "appearance" of having an edge because of their high win rates. Of course these are not edges. And if one tries to do that at TST, it won't work and there in lies the rub. If you remove the averaging down part and the fading large moves part, trading starts to become awfully difficult. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you can't fade moves. I'm saying they are doing it in a thoughtless manner.
At the end of the day Shiko, a mirror reveals all a man needs to know about himself. That is the reason most cowards never look into one. Well, TST is that mirror. Shiko, you're a smart guy and while you may not have this all figured out yet, your understanding of the game is notable. Hard work will pay off. Just work smart.
