We have addressed the progression ladder multiple times. Any global limit on the contracts are useless if you want to trade micros, which need 10x the limit.
LOL 80-90% of traders FAIL, this includes traders trained in 'REAL' prop firms, and according to one interview I just saw 50% of bank traders eventually get sent packing as well. Trading is hard, and is not for most people. Traders are stupid and take their gambling bad risk taking style of trading to these 'combine' and 'tryout' prop firms. What should they really expect? What type of traders actually benefit: (1) Broke people who have put in SIM effort to fix their trading holes (2) People who fear trading their own money (3) People who will design a style with proper risk management and a HIGH hit rate (4) SIM traders who have a system with good risk, but not the guts or funds to go live What type of trader DESERVES to be on the hamster wheel: (1) Big risk takers (2) Traders who want to get lucky, or run good just to pass (3) Traders without any known edge (not even on SIM or Micros) (4) Traders with poor math and research skills to figure out they aren't getting 100k The losing traders pay for the low low low percentage of winning traders who actually work hard to become traders without out putting up much money. This COULD be a good way for broke or risk adverse traders to build an account to trade on their own. I don't get why people are so angry about the hamster wheel? Those traders who take 3-8-10 'combines' and 'tryouts' per year are idiots. No, one is making them sign up again and again with zero edge. At least they aren't refilling a live account with high 3 and low 4 figures every month just to churn out. I don't get why ANYONE would expect the success rate to be higher than the often touted 80-90% fail rate? Why does anyone care if traders get churned up, that is the traders fault. Why does anyone care if you don't get to trade live until you earn $1600 or so? You put up $160--$300ish to in return get around 10x your monthly fee in trading power. No one gets hustled or duped when it comes to the E2T and TSTs of the world. The only thing that happens is that unskilled bad risk taking traders without a trading style designed to flourish within the rules will fail. Would you rather they join some equities retail prop who requires $10,000, high commissions, high desk fees, crap training, and just 'margin' to make them feel like they are pros? Now, that is a model designed to just take money!!! The E2T and TSTs slowly siphon off fool dollars! Now, if you aren't a fool, then why do you care? If you are a trader who can adjust to the rules and make them work for you, while taking full responsibility for your training and risk management, then you should thank all the fool traders who will churn-- they are paying for your funding. Too many cry baby whiny men here who are looking for these firms to hold their hand and kiss their boo boos like their mum or a wet nurse. Man up, woman up-- The game is the game. Choose your role.
Two things: The reason these places make money is that stat that so many fail. If you think you are trading in the live market, you are an idiot. I have been funded before, only to see my orders not be counted in the 'live book.' Its all bullshit. There was a phrase used back in Livermore's time: bucket shop. As far as being manly, trading is hardly that. This is why so many quants are involved. You don't have to be manly at all. In fact, we see examples year after year that there is so much fraud and theft in the business that it takes something quite a bit different. Maybe a snake. A manly job, as you put it, would be an iron worker on a skyscraper or something that has actual risk. I spent years climbing up and down ladders and scaffolding risking life and limb, sometimes hundreds of feet in the air. This is simply pushing buttons or programming an algo to trade other people's money until it blows up, which they almost always tend to do.
And then is that whole fraud charges thing. Kind of a red flag. I know he isn't 'with the company' anymore, but there is almost zero chance someone there didn't know this was going on.......
If people paid more attention to just being very good traders, than counting other peoples profits or business models there maybe would be more successful, profitable traders. The losers always whine, the winners usually stay silent.
Of course they make 99% of their money from the failures/tryouts(combines). I didn't for a single second suggest they made money any other way. I'm speaking to the person who takes responsibility, who does the work, and then can pull a profit-- they are the ones who should be thankful for the idiots who are on the hamster wheel. Any risk capital fake or imagined that backs an account, that ends up in a bank wire or check from the trading you do live or sim at such a company, comes off the backs of the losers who can't pass, who can't stay funded, and who pay pay pay pay. Why care? Just get paid and move on. It it isn't for you why care? If you can't pass do something else. If what you do else doesn't work quit trading, it isn't for you-- It isn't for most people. Most people have zero business trying to pull out daily income from the markets. It isn't about the job being manly, it is about taking responsibility and not crying. Hence i said man-up/woman-up. Too many babies mad at companies for making a profit and not turning you into a winning trader. Why would you care if they ever let you trade live, if they continue to pay you, and IF you make a profit. Who cares? The game is to make money. Make money, then go trade your own live account. Unless you are one of those Internet dreamers who thinks one day a legit firm will pick you up based on your record at a combine/tryout firm... Good luck with that. *Doing physical work isn't manly, neither is risking your life-- perhaps the guy who owns the company who makes money off of your labor and life risking is the real daddy.
I have been a user of E2T's Gauntlet Mini for almost 2 months. This is how I see it. I know some people here hate the model and they are entitled to their opinions. I think it is no secret the company makes most of it's money with monthly memberships and resets. Obviously marketing is a big part of their model, but they are not making outlandish claims like that it is "easy" to pass or that "most of our applicants pass", etc. Like they said earlier, their numbers are in line with the entire trading industry in that a big majority of people lose money in the end. I think as long as funded traders are able to make withdrawals of their "live" account profits, then it is all ok. If one day people claimed their money withdrawal requests were failing, that would be a major red flag for me and probably the end of the company. I have paid for 2 months of memberships and have reset once each month. I have set myself a "budget" of one reset a month. I got in on a lifetime discount of their new account so I pay $123/month for the $75k account. So with a reset I have paid $223/month. At the moment I am not going to reset until November. But I still have the Rithmic live data feed working so I am still using it to practice on Sierra's native SIM mode. I have been trading for about 2 years. I made a ton of mistakes and wasted a lot of money on paid groups, crappy courses, etc before finding stuff that I have actually benefited from. All the stuff everyone goes through before they know any better. I would say I have the knowledge to be profitable now, but I make mental mistakes like revenge trading sometimes to my detriment. I used to have a live Tradovate account where I traded last year. I had ups and downs and in the end lost about $1000 of real money before I decided to stop trading live funds. That is where then these funded accounts come into play and where I see the use. In my case my wife and I are saving to buy a property in the future, so even though I have money to fund a real live account, it is money I don;t want to risk at this moment. So for me a good compromise/solution is something like E2T. I know I can be losing $223/month if I have to reset but it is giving me not only a goal to strive for which could provide a real return, but also it is far better to lose $223/month than potentially thousands. Obviously I hope to pass it soon and I'll determine what timeline I'll give myself but in the meantime all this is education and practice in my trading. People could just trade demo for months/years until they are consistently profitable and have saved up thousands to fund a real account. But for me, I have never been able to take demo trading seriously and I need to have some skin in the game. But obviously with some limits and cost management. So I see proc and cons to them. But you cannot just say that these are scams and should not exist, because they do provide an opportunity for a lot of people that either can't or don't want to risk thousands of their own money trading. And if I do get funded at some point in the future and I can make money consistently, then I can save all those profits plus funds from my regular job and eventually fund a real live account on my own with a good proven strategy for me. I would say the point, even if you are funded is not to work with these companies forever. Just use them to refine your strategy and mindset, save money and then keep 100% of your profits on your own.
The above there that you wrote is just so sickening. Do you know all it would take to MAKE 220 bux per month in a future trade, say the NQ? One trade for a lousy 11 points. The thing has been flying all over the place for hundreds of points per day in range. 11 points. One trade. How hard can it be, to do that even once per month? It be absolutely fascinating. Prop firms, and algos, are all Cylons. Of this I am sure.
It was posted that IB clients actually make money. While I can't find that for now, I saw on their website IB's forex trader profitability is almost 50-50, see attachment. Which brings us to an important point. Trading successfully has exactly zero to do with passing some try out firm's "evaluation". Their rules are designed to make people lose, pretty much every time, unless people get it lucky for some time and lose later. To reliably pass the Gauntlet Mini "$150,000 evaluation" on skill, not luck, you need to be a Sharpe 3 trader, it'll take 6 months on average while the firm charges you $2,100 for demo trading, to get an account sized actually $4,500 plus intraday margin for 1 ES because you can't trade more to not hit the trailing. I know because I ran the numbers. A sucker's bet and as evidenced in this thread, there's no shortage of those.