So the guy paid at least $3,900 in combine fees over 2 years and gets rewarded with a 1 lot live account with $1,000 risk capital. On the bright side he made all $1,100 on a 1 lot which would net him 6 figures if he can keep it up and scale to a 10 lot.
Scalability is beside the point. Lescor and -$20k, a TST combine with -$2k shutdown is the exact-same process involved. Some winning days, some losing days, some days the equity curve rolls both ways before settled. The all-too-common message boards' misconception is day-trading must mirror each days' maximum favorable excursions (MFE) of all trades inside all price moves, or else the trader sucks. That is just one of many meaningless, worthless metrics for flailing traders to try and make sense of. All that matters, the ONLY thing that matters is moving an equity curve higher thru time while not going lower than an acceptable amount. TST parameters for the combines mandate one does not fall below -x value while working towards +y value. Once that process is complete, then a metric of -x to +y for trader prep and/or live cash come into play. But the day to day results versus "what the market did" are not synonymous... not even meaningful or relevant. Losing days and drawdowns happen in the real trading world. That was my point
Time goes so fast and finally it has been quiet here, so let's keep my word and try to satisfy my curiosity. I said back in mid-July: It is the middle of October, I have unignored Londonkid, and would like to see how he has been doing during the 3 months after he passed the Combine. I gave him an arbitrary 3 months to pass the LTP and start to trade live and get a check and/or figure out for himself if it is really a good deal. I think he failed the LTP back in August, although I really wished him to reach the Live stage, when he could experience real money trading with profit sharing. So since I am curious (and I assume others are too) without any negativity, just a few questions for Londonkid: 1. How has it been going? Did you make it to the Live stage? 2. If yes, have you got a paycheck and what has been your experience? 3. If no, are you going to give up or how long do you plan on keep trying? 4. Has your opinion changed of TST and how? I would like to stress, I am not against you trying TST and work for them if able to do so. I am against childich and cocky argumentative responses, that are not based in real life. I think your cockiness got much less after failing the LTP, and I hope we can keep an intelligent and educative conversation. If not, then you go back to my ignore and that will be the end of it... So Kid, how has it been? P.S.: And congratulations for keeping this thread alive since June. Without you coming here and responding to a bunch of old posts this thread would have been abandoned...and TST wouldn't get free PR on ET....
Since you asked here is an update. As you know I blew up the FTP overleveraging. I got a free repeat combine and after starting well again I overleveraged and blew it up. Since then I went back to prop trading in London so havn't done anything else. I will likely give TST another shot but not right now. When i do it will likely be on a 1 trade per day max basis, full clip. TST is still a great opp for home based traders imo.
sorry for the lack of follow-up here... been busy with real money trading and real life along with TST progress. FTP failed on a technicality, went below $0 on the 11th day which I wasn't aware of being a stipulation, my mistake 100%. So the next complimentary combine was successfully completed on the 10th day.
then I began the second FTP last week, today was session three of what I believe is ten minimum, met all parameters to qualify so now a matter of playing out the string until notified otherwise and I think we go live soon afterwards. biggest challenge was juggling multiple accounts, real cash and TST process but I've streamlined the process and we're good now
imo the overall TST combine process is an excellent tool for instilling self-discipline in traders on the risk management side. The same thing CANNOT be done in sim mode where frustrated traders can simply waive their magic wand, hit reset and pretend the failures never happened. Instead of losing $1,000s or $10,000s real money to blown-out accounts trying to learn the process, aspiring traders can lose $195 token pocket-change. TST program as a third-party accountable process would definitely save many traders from losing their irreplaceable, real-money, real cash accounts. And no I'm not an affiliate or spokesperson for TST in any fashion. That is merely my own personal belief after having completed the entire process successfully, which to my knowledge I am the first => only "educator - vendor" to have done so at this time. fwiw.
A couple of readers here emailed me to point out the fact that I have not met all parameters in the FTP yet. There needs to be a daily win rate of 50% overall and theoretically I could fail that. Which is/was true. But after today we have 4 wins / 0 loss days with a net balance above $1,700. So that means any one of the remaining six sessions only needs to profit by a tick or two and 50% daily win rate is accomplished. By the same token, there is no way in hell I will drop back below +$1,501 regardless all else. So I guess we can say that barring any extremely unusual circumstances now thru end, all parameters are highly probable to be met