What to do with my life?

[MrMuppet]

@MrMuppet, I'm sorry you think our offer is "BS". On the futures side you absolutely have to pay SMB to try out. In fact, it's more expensive than ours and has more requirements including double the profit target. You also get only 50% of profits rather than 100% of the first $5k and then 70-80% of the rest.

Nope, just not true. If they think you have it, you just get a job offer, no matter which market you trade. No upfront equity, no course you have to pay and the split is individual after a while.

I would never pay 350$ for a 2500$ drawdown on a simulator. I'd rather scrape together 5 grand, trade on my own pace and lose 50% than to jump through some hula hoops to get access to 25k margin. Daytrading margins are so low that besides some exotic markets like the FDAX, you never really need 25k, so you basically get a max loss of 2,5-5k...which, as a prop deal is ridiculously low.
In addition to that, fills on the sim are completly unrealistic, so scalp strategies that are using PiQ do not work.
By the way: do your sheep get exchange membership fees and volume rebates or do they work with retail fee structure?


Pay2trade and topstep are just another iteration of the trading arcade: anyone can come, anyone can play. Arcades charged desk fees and you guys charge an entrance fee.

Of course that's just my opinion.

 

[Visaria]

He has me blocked too. I am starting to think it's a batch of honor. Maybe Baron can add that little statistic to the profile page?

im blocked too...my question asking him to explain the maths behind his assertion that more than 2% risked blows up your acct ruffled his feathers a little too much!

 

[themickey]

im blocked too...my question asking him to explain the maths behind his assertion that more than 2% risked blows up your acct ruffled his feathers a little too much!

Not exactly the reaction one would expect from a state of mind of a successful trader.
I think in more ways than one from the recent behaviour, this guy has outed himself on ET as an abject failure and fraud.

 

[MarkBrown]

Reducing the size / risk of each trade isn't going to make more money, it's going to make less, this advice comes from losers who are trying to lose slower in the hope they stop losing at some stage, your past that, so ignore and move on.

my argument is the if you can't pick entries with ultra low risk then your gambling.

low risk per trade is a discipline that shows you know what the fuck your doing.

also for the op of this thread - man dump fundamentals it's a dead end street completely. that is your main problem, there is no logic a human mind can ascertain which can out think the momentum of market price action.

 

[MoreLeverage]

no one gives a crap about your performance until they first know the risk associated with the gains

To be fair, no one gives a crap about your risk until they see your performance is good enough first. Anything less than 15-20% is going to be a tough sell. Of course when you put up big numbers, you need to be prepared to defend your risk profile as well and hopefully you’ve got something a lot better than “get lucky on options, repeatedly” .

 

[MarkBrown]

To be fair, no one gives a crap about your risk until they see your performance is good enough first. Anything less than 15-20% is going to be a tough sell. Of course when you put up big numbers, you need to be prepared to defend your risk profile as well and hopefully you’ve got something a lot better than “get lucky on options, repeatedly” .

i have been on both sides of the fence as a guy pitching his models to a fund and as a guy who is allocating money to trade some guys dream, so you and i are both correct from different perspectives.

in big money world 10-12% returns with 1-2% drawdown gets you billions to manage.

15-20% returns with more than 10% drawdows might get you millions to play with.

 

[formikatrading]

Maybe part of your solution can be found by reflecting on the statement you made.

It's just so hard to bring myself to think about things other than the market.

 

[d08]

View attachment 195724

You don't understand the difference between risk percentage and position percent of equity. These are two different things.

The article gives an example of how someone can take a position size of over 20% of their account value in Apple, and limit their risk to 2% through a stop loss. This logic is flawed to some extent, because a stop loss won't save you if the stock's price moves past it after-hours or premarket. But it does illustrate that overall position sizing doesn't necessarily determine the overall risk in a trade. I guess technically it does, but only if you're trading something that could legitimately drop to zero overnight.

That's assuming you are trading something that is closed at any point in the day. Even then, you could be trading AAPL in the day session, so excluding trading halts, it wouldn't apply.

Besides SLE, nobody here has a clue. Especially the clowns who mix 5% - 20% asset allocation per trade with risk per trade. Don't listen to them, honestly. It just discourages you.

I was also surprised so few know the difference. Admittedly I did not understand the difference in the first years of trading myself.

 

[expiated]

You don't understand the difference between risk percentage and position percent of equity.

Risk percentage is the amount of available capital at risk—the amount of money a trader can potentially lose on a given trade—relative to the size of the unused portion of the account. I would assume that position percentage of equity is the amount of available capital a trader spends to purchase a given asset relative to the size of his or her account.

 

[shotstakovich]

my argument is the if you can't pick entries with ultra low risk then your gambling.

low risk per trade is a discipline that shows you know what the fuck your doing.

also for the op of this thread - man dump fundamentals it's a dead end street completely. that is your main problem, there is no logic a human mind can ascertain which can out think the momentum of market price action.

I don't think fundamental analysis is dead, it just depends on how you approach it. If you're buying a stock because you've built an elaborate DCF model forecasting free cash flow for the next decade, then yes, I don't think you're going to do well.

I think good fundamental analysis is like analyzing a hand in Texas Hold em. Look for situations where you have more ways to win. Granted, even if you know something material about a company - say, for instance, a distributor tells you that the company you're shorting has been stuffing the channel to meet the quarterly guidance - you still have to be mindful about what the market believes and adjust your risk accordingly. Too many times fundamentalists fall in love with their thesis and don't respect the market.