What many seem to overlook here is the fact that on this given day, trader in example did not lose money. That in itself beats the performance of most all YM traders in the same given session. Simply making any money at all, few bucks, giant sum or anything in between out-performed most all active YM (and emini) traders alone. Each time a trader enjoys a non-losing day it adds to the base of knowledge = education for better odds of success to follow. Just treading water or making any amount of money thru the learning process beats the heck out of losing money, now doesn't it? I'm indifferent to PureTick either way. Neither client or competitor, now or ever. But I do see a group of guys who are trying hard to do the right things, whatever their motivation(s) might be. There is no harm being done showing others how to trade in real time with account balances making nil profits. If those accounts are suffering large losses AND the operator(s) were indifferent or crass about it, that'd be a completely different story. Learning without losing money while trading is a feat unto itself. One day does not make a career. For those who care, give the example account time to perform beyond one day. Heck, some of us around here have even had losing days now & then. Sure wouldn't want to be judged on those alone, now would we?
The only reason I even said anything is because I like the room and the guys. I just think they are making some unwise business decisions. It is an area where your really need to cover your A$$.
I've been a member of Puretick for three months. If you follow ALL of their official calls with the specified number of cars and are disciplined about it, you can very well emulate their performance. That alone is way, way better than the vast majority of the members of this board. However, if you are an experienced trader you can take those gains to even higher levels, I'm a testament of that. It is bar none the best trading environment, that I know of, in the business right now. Friendly, successful and honest.
I think you can with futures and trading talent that is already demonstrated. But it sure helps to be well funded.
<b>Pabst</b>, I sincerely respect your opinion. You made very valid points, for sure. If memory serves me correct, you acheived trading success thru trial & error which included more total account blowouts than successful events. That process repeated itself over many years before you made large sums of money on trend moves, which could be interpreted as capturing successful outlier events. Do I have the facts essentially correct? BTW... my own learning curve was very similar, too. If you & I were starting out right now where we did from day one, would you rather learn thru a program similar to PT or the same school of really hard knocks we did in actuality? My opinion is they are trying to do the right things and aren't causing harm in the process relative to what is possible for most people left unfettered on their own. As noted above, I respect your opinion and relevant points well made.
Thank you Neet! I will send you a box of AA batteries because everyone can use those. dandxq--Absolutely. Being well funded in any endeavor is always preferred. I was talking with Alex about maybe having a question on our sign up application process about this. If a user puts they have under $5,000 then we should decline them access to the site. I don't want to see someone losing their life savings. I think you should be prepared to lose at least $10,000 when learning. Alas.. Most of the applicants would just enter in an inflated/incorrect number if we asked them their net worth.
First of all Austin, my apologies for being a dick. If I didn't think you were talented I wouldn't take the time to get frustrated with you. Being a floor trader I started out as a scalper. Pure scalping entails mostly scratch trades with one or two tick winners and hopefully no more than a 1 tick loss. Obviously due to commissions and FIFO, true scalping is an unavailable method to retail futures accounts. Scalping taught me HORRIBLE habits. As my size increased it was impossible, even in a pit as liquid as the bonds, to trade each tick. Thus adding to losers under the justification of "trading at a level" was my modus operandi. Since I'd clerked at a retail firm I was familiar with trend following strategies so I was able to successfully merge scalping and trend following for a while. Right market at the right time. Alas conditions changed and my discipline which is 1 on a scale of 10 led me to massive losses. I still didn't get it. I held on to the hope that markets can be gamed daily in the micro. I suspect I use a technique similar to yours in fact. However Austin the writings of Taleb, Dennis, Eckhardt etal have led me to believe that much short term success is in fact the random product of unscalable methods lacking in common sense. Position sizing is key. Most short term strats only allow for adding to losers as opposed to adding to winners. The easiest way for me to illustrate this is by re-posting some observations I've made of Richard Dennis. Very appropriate since he took $2000 and ran it up to $200,000,000 in a decade. He stands alone as the greatest trader in history. I'll post these tales shortly.
Soooooooooooo, you've started a thread asking a question Honestly, Can You Be Successful Without a HUGE Account? and it seems that using your system, the answer is a resounding NO? Most good e-mini systems could do well with 1/2 that amount of performance bond for intra-day trading ($2,500). I know for a fact that if I were using austinp's services (which I most definitely am not), I would feel very confident going into battle with the amount that I listed in parenthesis. Stop waffling because you're coming under fire (which is to be expected), you either have a system which can do very well with a small account (here being defined as say, $2,500), or you don't. If you're going to SALE IT, this is not something you should have to think about, it's something you should know by now, it's something you should have known before you started this thread, and it's something should have known before you started an e-mini daytrading business. JJ P.S. ... and if you really wanted to know how much money someone does or doesnot have, just require the same level of information that it takes to rent an apt. in NYC - bank statements, financial holdings, pay stubs, etc (as well as re-viewing their brokerage statements). P.P.S. ... and as far as the "expect to lose 10G's while learning how to trade" statement made in the previous quote, I only have one thing to say - while paying for a room which puports to have a cogent and money making system for daytrading, "Oh Hell No!"