Austin, you know you can do a custom combine right? You can cut the profit goals in half or even more. I know one guy on ET who actually cut one of the profit goals down to $500, I assume it was the 30k combine. But that is a 2/3 reduction from the normal one. You can also get raise the drawdown allowance. But then you are going to have to make some of the other parameters tighter. I guess what I'm saying is, a lot of people are complaining it doesn't fit their style, yet that is what the custom combine is for, to make it fit your style. On a side note, and you don't have to answer this if you don't want to, but are you making a living trading futures? Let me tell you why I'm asking you this. There are a lot of guys on here talking about how tough the combine is and I agree, it's tough. But what I'm curious about is are any of these guys even profitable traders to begin with. I mean, it's kind of silly if one has never even been a profitable trader and then try to the combine and fail and then talk about how hard it is when in reality, trading futures for a living is just that, really damn hard. Rules or no rules, it's very difficult. So I'm curious since you, like most on here, have really struggled with this combine. But are you saying in your real money account you are actually doing well? And if you are doing well, would you be willing to start a journal showing your "real" trades and screen shots and highlight how you are able to trade differently with a real money account vs the combine. I think it would be an interesting experiment. My theory is and really always has been that none of these guys are profitable traders on their own and therefore adding rules and restrictions via the combine is not going to suddenly make them profitable yet they come on here and act like it's the combine's fault when in reality they are not profitable traders to begin with. Because the only material difference I really see between the combine and real live trading is that in live trading you can hold on to your losers forever and that is what bad traders do. They scale in and scale and scale and avg down and avg down. I've seen daytraders hold a short spoo position for 3 months, as a daytrade! It just went against them and they never got out. Obviously you can't do that in the combine. But I'm convinced that most guys who are making money in their real accounts and NOT in the combine are because they have VERY BAD trading habits. And those habits get exposed in the combine. Anyway, just thought I would throw that out there.
So that's it? 3 days, pretty much blown it and you don't show us the rest? We would have been interested to see if you can make it back to the green at least... By the way, when you started, I wanted to point out that the title is misleading because I figured it was going to be more than 10 days, I just didn't guess it was to be 3....
Not to be a hater or anything, but this is pretty much run of the mill AustinP. Commit to x days or x dollars, and when it doesn't go well cancel the scheduled x. And I say that as someone that you know thinks well of you.
more than well, very profitable indeed. Between free ad from ET and TST he can't register newbies fast enough. As old saying goes "There's a newbie born every minute".
So now we are giving out medals for trying? And if he was a newbie, I would understand, but he is actually a trading vendor... I also thought he got a free ride and this thread was supposed to be a PR vehicle for TST... I guess they got what they paid for...
Well, just like I said before, when I clear my schedule with enough free time to complete a viable combine, I will do so. And just like I said before (highlighted in bold above) it will be a 100k combine on my own dime, out of pocket. And so today began the 10-day process as promised to TST and all those who follow in here... including the vocal, failed traders as well. It's a public thread in a public message board, so all input is welcome albeit most is ignored from lack of value or truth CL moved well overnight with decent swings down and up, then reverted to pit-session spike & chop. I went from $1000+ to $800 to $1200+ and settled at $1100+ after costs deducted for the day. If indeed this were real money at work, I'd be retired with no further interest in fighting illiquid chop. Final trade sequence was long 106.65 and there is a better than even odds probability of 107.15 to 107.50s sometime today. But... I'll keep what I caught, apply that towards the $8,500 necessary as one component to win, and see what tomorrow may bring