Topsteptrader

[Commodity_Trader]

Because I have been involved in this thread I wanted to be up front and say that I voluntarily left TST last week. It was under good terms and I left profitable.

There are no regrets on my end. TST/Patak has been great. And I would recommend them to anybody that wanted to try day trading futs to go with a few combines and at least figure out if it's something they can do/scratch at before dropping many thousands in your personal account.

Essentially after reviewing 200 days/trades worth of my data(Mar 2013-Nov 2014) day trading the ES I have come to the conclusion that the return was not paying me enough to warrant the time I spent on the instrument and time frame. However, the time spent and the data mined was not for naught. I made money. And I learned a great deal from the last 20 months about myself, risk and psychology. I am not leaving trading by any means. But I am leaving day trading index futures behind me.

@Crispy
if possible, please tell us about results of these 200 days of trading with TST.how did u scaled up your contract sizes ?and also other advices to ET members regarding TST...

 

[Crispy]

@Crispy
if possible, please tell us about results of these 200 days of trading with TST.how did u scaled up your contract sizes ?and also other advices to ET members regarding TST...

I dont mind being an open book in regards to some things. But I will not talk money.

That being said -

Yes, I scaled up. My personal risk management plan allowed for 1 ES per every 1000 earned. And vice versa I scaled back on DD`s. They were more liberal I think. I could have sized faster. I chose slower.

General advice worth $.01usd =

Know the long term statistics for your approach. One Example - If you do not know what your avg MFE/MAE is but you know what your favorite sports team stats are then you are not giving 100% to trading. This was critical in taking me from scratch to profitable.

Bad news gurus. You dont know where the mkt is going. Ever. Dont let that frustrate you because nobody else does either. And if you profess otherwise you`re a liar. Dont lie to yourself. But the good news is you dont have to know wheres its going. Making money in trading is about managing the losers.

Which segues into my largest lesson learned...

My strength has always been my ability to stop out. I know where I am wrong. Then its done and over. Simple enough. But forever before and during some of TST I was a huge proponent of taking profit targets. 1/2 or 1/3 risk/reward minimums were typical. I have proven my own theory dead wrong via my own compiled real time stats. Putting a profit target on a winning trade is the absolute wrong thing to do when you have 6.5 hours to try and make money.

In the beginning I was using 3pnt stops/6pnt tgts. Then as my rolling stats moved I found I could tighten stops and set wider tgts and adjusted to 2/7 and get better results. However this was still too conservative. As it stands today my average winner in ES went on average .79 against me and 8 and change handles with me. And at least 25% of those winning trades went north of 10 handles and into the ether of mid teens+. And heres the kicker. Holding a winner from entry till the close of NYSE biz made the most sense for maximizing profit gained. Essentially making managing winners a non-event! My hit rate was only 37% for context.

I have been trading live since October 2001 with Worldco near the end of their demise. On and off again since then. But I never really truly appreciated the old cliche of "letting winners run" until recently. I have an amazingly hard head. Or perhaps the human instinct simply goes against all that is right in trading so hard, that changing that behavior if you are not born with those traits takes a long time...

 

[volente_00]

Essentially after reviewing 200 days/trades worth of my data(Mar 2013-Nov 2014) day trading the ES I have come to the conclusion that the return was not paying me enough to warrant the time I spent on the instrument and time frame.

If you were profitable why did you just not scale up to increase profit ?
Or was tst the limiting factor ?
When you left was that still under the 60% payout ?
Thanks for your openness and honesty about your experience.

 

[volente_00]

It's subjective, and depends on how much equity you've built up. Here's what TST says on the site regarding scaling up:

"All account sizes will start with a 2 lot maximum position, and the lot size will increase according to the graph below, as you build equity. In order to maintain the buying power you've earned, all traders must maintain the correlating account balance. Once your account balance is greater than $10K, you can request more buying power."

According to their chart, you have to build at least a 7k cushion to start trading 20 lots on the 150k live account, so by that logic, in order to trade "50 to 100" lots my guess is you'd have to build even a greater cushion than 10k to get that size.

http://help.topsteptrader.com/knowledgebase/articles/411527-funded-trader-scaling-plan

However, the account balance can never go back to zero. In other words, you have to start out positive from day 1, or my guess is you will get sent back to the combine, especially if you exceed the max daily loss. It's not very clear on the FAQ's except that the P&L must be positive after 10 days of trading in the funded account.

The scaling makes absolutely zero sense.
So I need a $7,000 balance to trade a 10 lot if I did the $150 combine yet they allow a 20 lot on $7,000 balance if you paid $375 for it ?

 

[ScalperJoe]

The scaling makes absolutely zero sense.
So I need a $7,000 balance to trade a 10 lot if I did the $150 combine yet they allow a 20 lot on $7,000 balance if you paid $375 for it ?

I think the scaling up graph is more of a guideline, to show that everyone starts with 2 lots regardless of the combine they passed.

 

[Pekelo]

I think the scaling up graph is more of a guideline, to show that everyone starts with 2 lots regardless of the combine they passed.

So what is the point of approving special Combines with up to 40 cars, I mean beside taking the extra Combine fee? Maybe it is a sort of IQ test...(if you are an idiot, you deserve to pay the extra fee)

 

[Crispy]

If you were profitable why did you just not scale up to increase profit ?
Or was tst the limiting factor ?
When you left was that still under the 60% payout ?
Thanks for your openness and honesty about your experience.

I did. But avg pnl per car was still small. I would need to swing 100 cars per trade to realistically re-create the income I need to make a full go at it.

I got the new split.

Officially ending my participation in this thread now./

 

[Maverick74]

I did. But avg pnl per car was still small. I would need to swing 100 cars per trade to realistically re-create the income I need to make a full go at it.

I got the new split.

Officially ending my participation in this thread now./

Crispy, you're a class act. Great posts above. One of the few people on this board that is honest and sincere. The ES is a very efficient market and needs to be traded sparingly. Guys that brag about going in there everyday and pulling money are completely full of shit. It's just simple economics. You just need to find your niche in this business Crispy and that takes a lot of trial and error. It seems like you got a lot out of the combines. Good for you. Good luck on your search for an equity firm.

 

[vit007]

Interesting discussions here. But no body mentioned huge tax disadvantage trading with topstraders . I live in Toronto and trade futures with IB, so my gain treated as capital gain and I pay 25% to tax man . Income from topstraders treated as regular income and you in a 40- 50% tax bracket. In US maybe different but not so much .So do your math here.

 

[ScalperJoe]

So what is the point of approving special Combines with up to 40 cars, I mean beside taking the extra Combine fee? Maybe it is a sort of IQ test...(if you are an idiot, you deserve to pay the extra fee)

Ya, go figure. It would make zero sense to even request such a combine for approval unless you can trade more lots to start in the live account. Since the new rule is 2 lots regardless of combine, then paying extra for any type of special combine is rendered moot.