Oh don't get me wrong. Quote the contrary. Not blaming you at all. I give you kudos for stepping up and still do. I'm not knocking your trading, never did actually. I'm just pointing out that you are spending far more time focusing on the model then on the basics of futures 101 which is what you should have been doing when you were given the free combine. Look man, you gave it the old college try and I have not said anything bad about your trading. I just think you should change your focus. Let's say the odds of passing this combine are 500 million to 1. OK? Does that change anything? I mean look, I went to high school with guys that were great athletes. And I thought to myself, why are they doing this. They will never make it to the pros. No way. The odds are too small. Well, two guys I went to high school did. Some guys out there are drawn to this industry specifically because of the challenge it represents. It's the same reason why some people move out to Hollywood to give acting a try. I have two friends that did that as well and made into films!!!! My point is the fact that trading is hard is not a new discovery. It's always been hard. Whether or not TST is impossible or not is irrelevant. What is relevant is if this combine gives you any insight into whether or not you think this business is right for you. I mean this can't be about spending a few hundred bucks. I spent that much that last weekend on crap. So what it's really about is whether it reveals anything to an individual about their place in this business. I think TST provides a very large mirror for guys to look into. And upon seeing that reflection, I think most people on here will have enough information as to whether they actually "like" trading. If they do, maybe TST is not the final or ultimate solution for them and they may try funding their own account and maybe they become more motivated to get a trading job with a salary. Who knows. But the point here is to focus on your own trading and not the model. The model is what it is. You can't "fix" the model or change it. You can "fix" or "change" your trading. I'll leave you with the serenity prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference.
Mav, here is ammo's gem for new traders. It was there, just buried after comma 1,462. It has all the elements of success: edge,boring,wait.
The company is only two years old and their first year my guess is they had very few people. Even getting the refund you had to make a 7% return. Very few guys did their combines their first year. Now on to year 2. My guess is they have 100 to 200 paid combines a month and maybe 50 to 100 rollovers. I also believe the combines are cyclical meaning during the slow summers they have less and during the beginning of the year they have more. Most guys are going to take a shot when there is a good market, not a dead market. So let's split the difference and say 150 combines a month. That's 1800. Now they have 30 live traders now but that is not how many total live traders they have had ever. But let's be conservative and say 60. That means they probably have about 3% of the guys that ever go live and get funded. Still, a very low number. But the industry avg is about 5% in futures. And this company attracts a lot of guys that obviously have no right trading. It's a low bar, they take everyone who will pay. If they weeded out some of the guys they could probably get that success rate up to 5% but I doubt higher. That's about the industry avg. I posted a screen shot of Velocity's traders. They had over 800 guys there and those were just the guys willing to opt in. Only 5% of them were profitable. The numbers are pretty consistent across the board.