Probably, since that is typical shill behaviour, but as long as I don't see it, I don't care. Now I think I am going to do a sim Combine (the free variety) I just haven't decided which profit target I should choose.... ----------------------------------------- Kind of offtopic, but my friend who was a Live trader for a while, got a few offers from others to trade their money and for mentorship too. So if for nothing else, a good Combine can be good PR for an aspiring trader and if not TST, someone else might back him up...
The latest newly funded trader PT7 is another good piggyback candidate: http://www.topsteptrader.com/funded...35570e9c17cf666257d437d9225a4625afd5bd9d90799 1-2 trades a day, lasting for 2-3 hours, making 2 ES pts per day per car. Biggest winner is twice the biggest loser. Very nice laid back intraday swing trading...
Let me look up my NSA hook up with them.... But seriously, if you followed the original discussion, I already stated that no, I can't prove it. Except indirectly. (one giveaway would be when they didn't care about profitshare that much, because they make most by the piggy back) Nor did I say I was blaming them if they do. I actually advised them to do it. Because they are in this business to make money, and piggybacking is an excellent source of income, if done right. Ask yourself in this situation: You have a very decent amount of available capital to trade/invest and you have access to 30-50 traders' trades/signals. Out of those traders at least 5-7 are very good piggy back candidates. What is the best use of your capital in this situation? This PT7 newly funded trader mostly trades 3 cars at once. He makes about $300 a day, so after profit share (let's say TST gets 30%) TST gets a mind blowing $100 per day. Whoopity dooo! Now they throw just 10 cars (not even big leverage) behind the felow's trades, and they are suddenly making $1000 per day , increasing their take by 10 fold, without much risk. (if you noticed, the risk increased only 3.3 times but the profit 10 times) Mind you, with PT7 style, they could be backing him with 20-50 cars too.... Now you tell me if you are in this position, are you happy with the daily $100 for your business, or are you trying to maximize profits???
Crispy, none of these guys actually trade and Pekelo already outted himself. The math is a little bit harder then simply finding someone that makes a smooth $300 a day. In fact NO ONE trading futures has a smooth equity curve. Futures are very different then stocks. Jack Schwager wrote an excellent book in the 90's about the math behind betting on traders, more particularly CTA's. There is a LOT of data in that book. The conclusion he came to was actually the "opposite" of Pekelo. The only edge he found using over a decades worth of data mind you, is to find traders with VERY LONG track records (10 years plus) and buy them on large drawdowns. In other words when they are LOSING money day after day. His data showed the same thing I've mentioned on here repeatedly, that futures trading is very cyclical. It's anything but smooth. Most traders have a specific market environment where they tend to trade well. All other times they are usually bleeding to death. The problem is the timing of it. He pointed out, using real data, that if you wait for them to do well and get long, you already most likely missed most of the move. In other words, you have to be a contrarian and get long on their lows. The caveat here is you can only do this with guys with long term performance to avoid simply getting long bad traders. The book is outstanding and the data more then speaks for itself. This idea that guys wake up every day and pull money out of the market like an ATM machine is the stuff pizza delivery drivers like Pekelo dream up. Futures markets are constantly in flux and what worked last week or last month is not going to work now. If it did, we would all do it and become billionaires. And yes, trading traders is no different then trading corn or oil or bonds. If TST had some magical system to time traders, they could use that system to trade the market. This is why piggybacking is such a fallacy and why the fund of funds business has such terrible performance. Because selecting managers who will outperform a benchmark index is extremely challenging.
How about out of those 30 -50 traders, when 2 traders (or more) enter within x amount of seconds of each other, win rate increases by x amount.
Probably the opposite. The best trades are going to be the ones with the least traders involved. Think about it. You do NOT want to follow the herd.
Ok got it. -------------------------- Typically I would not modify a reply. But when someone comes back with sarcasm first and foremost regarding a serious issue/libelous claim I think the credibility is kinda shot...thats just me though.
This. Plus, they would go broke piggybacking traders if history is any guide to the eventual outcome of most participants. Bottom line is this. Picks and shovels make more money than trading itself for 99%. Would a retailer of picks and shovels become a mining concern overnight if one out of a 100 customers came in with a gold nugget bragging? And especially if mining the same hole as your clients was illegal? Nope.