Thanks. Basically I should ditch TopStep and stop paying them a monthly tuition. That’s basically what I was trying to figure out.
Trading micros vs prop firm(IE: TopStepTrader)
- Thread starter MercForHire
- Start date
Treat it like a job, wake up early clean up as if your going to work. Rent space in a office building, and setup your infrastructure.
punch in punch out,.. otherwise ultimately it won’t be a serious endeavor. Keep an accounting ledger, be consistent with risk management.
develop confidence, than increase size.
Regards,
Chris
you think I should switch to trading live 1 micro instead? Perhaps I am not psychologically ready to handle P/L $20 a point, but at $2/point it looks much less threatening.
Congratulations on making a decision to trade full time, some spend years deciding if they should get in the water.
With a 20K account, if you want to be around more than a few months, you should limit your daily loss to 1% - 2% max. ( $200- $400 ). At $20 a point , you are going to have a lot of 10 minute trading days when your stops are hit a few times, and the NQ often does that in seconds.
This can introduce you to your new worst enemy "boredom". Dealing with boredom can entice you to break your risk control and will evaporate your trading account.
Staying at $2 a point ( MNQ ) will keep your head in the game a lot longer even on bad days, which also speeds up your learning process.
Good luck on a hopefully long prosperous journey.
Congratulations on making a decision to trade full time, some spend years deciding if they should get in the water.
With a 20K account, if you want to be around more than a few months, you should limit your daily loss to 1% - 2% max. ( $200- $400 ). At $20 a point , you are going to have a lot of 10 minute trading days when your stops are hit a few times, and the NQ often does that in seconds.
This can introduce you to your new worst enemy "boredom". Dealing with boredom can entice you to break your risk control and will evaporate your trading account.
Staying at $2 a point ( MNQ ) will keep your head in the game a lot longer even on bad days, which also speeds up your learning process.
Good luck on a hopefully long prosperous journey.
Thanks everyone. I knew there was something off about these prop firms. They mess with your psych with all the rules and even some seasoned traders can get stuck on their “hamster wheel”.
I managed to hit $2k of their $3k target but it feels entirely pointless trading in sim and I am not paying any more. At least with micro I would be up around $200 in real cash at this point.
Micro it is !
It is not that there is something "off" with them...It is just that they were all formed before equity E-micros existed. When it was just e-mini equities it made sense for these firms to provide their services. But as you and many others are finding out, the equity micros give so many people more breathing room to "work with their funds" without the higher pressures of the standard CME e-mini margins.
I would avoid those 1-5 min time frames. its just incredibly difficult to turn a profit with commissions and your stated issues of pulling the trigger, taking trades against the rules, exiting early, etc. trade the 30-60 min time frames. Huge stops, adjust accordingly. Look to capture an entire move. usually with 10 point ES stop you can capture around 1.5-2x of that on a decent move if you get in early enough and you avoid the algos / chop. If you get a 15-20 point ES move, your week is made. Take a full 10 point loser, you are still up 10 ES points for the week. Thats a great week !
I'm using ES as an example, but modify for NQ accordingly. I generally avoid trading NQ b/c I feel Es trades more methodically for my personality. I tried scalping for years. Realized its realistic for me to be right 50% of the time. Anything more just requires too much out of myself.
Thanks, I would love to be able to catch a big move on higher time frames but I use a trend following system and the market rarely move in one direction long enough to profit. There is no way to survive a drawdown like that on the TST program, P/L hit -$1000 and the account is blown.
All the issues I mentioned were psychological problems and could be fixed over time and effort, I was wondering which environment was better for me as a junior trader and I came to that conclusion.
My eventual goal is to move my trading activity to China/Korea and employ some young video gamers to trade for me using my system. They got the fast reflex and fingers without the self sabotaging emotions of a trader. If they can memorize all the build orders and unit counter strategies for their real time strategy games, trade systematically won't be too different. Anyone who has seen Ender's Game will know what I am talking about.
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Interesting approach.
There is this guy called Techlead, he claims to make 500K from software engineering at facebook. Then he just takes the income and gamble it. Much easier to trade and make money when you have so much base capital.
America is the best paying country for SW Engr, why would anyone quit ???
Well, you should never get rushed in trading bc that's how mistakes are made. Like other said, you should take it seriously like a job but in reality, you should treat it more than a job bc every trade you make it might become a trap if you don't follow your plan/setup carefully.
I showed a photo here on ET before where I printed out screenshots of my setups and laminate these photos so all I have to do everyday is to compare and trade without 2nd guessing it. If you are not ready to automate your setups or you think you can't automate them you should do the same thing like I do so you won't make other mistakes which aren't shown in your screenshots.
Lastly, if you really think your setups are profitable why not start trading micro using $500 to begin with? Once you are able to triple it to $1500 using the same setups over and over again, then it's time to switch to emini.
By the way, you should stop using TST because I think it's a waste of time. Their weekly stop loss in level 2 and funded account is are too tight. The only good thing about using TST is to force you to strengthen up your timing entry and exit skills for each setup. This is my opinion after using TST for a year to two after spending tons of money to reset and renew (Attached screenshot is a proof where you can see 16 pages of reset/renew my account.) Oh... I didn't mention that I got funded for few times and then violate one of their rules quickly due to Trumptard's randomly tweets. I always stay away from trading during major econ news or fed news so I can avoid 2nd guessing what market will do next.
You see? This is how much I went through in order to become successful in trading after many years of suffering losses trading stocks, ETFs and then Futures, but I didn't give up. lol Another thing is that I trade beyond US sessions because there are some good money to be made during Asian sessions too. If you take trading seriously, you shouldn't lay on your bed too comfortable for many hours everyday while trading full time.
I showed a photo here on ET before where I printed out screenshots of my setups and laminate these photos so all I have to do everyday is to compare and trade without 2nd guessing it. If you are not ready to automate your setups or you think you can't automate them you should do the same thing like I do so you won't make other mistakes which aren't shown in your screenshots.
Lastly, if you really think your setups are profitable why not start trading micro using $500 to begin with? Once you are able to triple it to $1500 using the same setups over and over again, then it's time to switch to emini.
By the way, you should stop using TST because I think it's a waste of time. Their weekly stop loss in level 2 and funded account is are too tight. The only good thing about using TST is to force you to strengthen up your timing entry and exit skills for each setup. This is my opinion after using TST for a year to two after spending tons of money to reset and renew (Attached screenshot is a proof where you can see 16 pages of reset/renew my account.) Oh... I didn't mention that I got funded for few times and then violate one of their rules quickly due to Trumptard's randomly tweets. I always stay away from trading during major econ news or fed news so I can avoid 2nd guessing what market will do next.
You see? This is how much I went through in order to become successful in trading after many years of suffering losses trading stocks, ETFs and then Futures, but I didn't give up. lol Another thing is that I trade beyond US sessions because there are some good money to be made during Asian sessions too. If you take trading seriously, you shouldn't lay on your bed too comfortable for many hours everyday while trading full time.