okay, first of all, thanks and much respect to you for uploading the screenshot. second, your screenshot doesn't show anything whatsoever that the trailing DD moved up based on unrealized PnL. this is what happened: 1) on your 1st day of trading, you had a -$422.20 loss. it clearly shows your trailing DD never moved up if you look at the trailing DD dashed line on the 2nd day. if the trailing DD was based on unrealized PnL, if your real-time balance during the 1st day of trading had even briefly gone into the positive, then you would see that the trailing DD would have moved up on the second day of that chart. but it didn't. you see how it's completely flat? did your real-time balance during the 1st day of trading ever go into the positive? even for a brief time? b/c if it did, this chart actually proves that TST's trailing DD is based on realized PnL. and if your real-time balance during the 1st day of trading never went into the positive, then this still doesn't show that TST's trailing DD is based on unrealized PnL. 2) on your 2nd day of trading, you had a -$1042.200 loss. you failed out of the combine b/c you violated the daily loss limit. this is contrary to what you originally said about having failed the combine due to the trailing DD being based off of unrealized PnL. everything you've shown indicates that TST is still utilizing a trailing DD based on realized PnL. you really should be more careful with your words next time before making wild accusations btw.
Wow. I never looked at it the way you did.....Thank you, Canoe, for the elucidation. I retract what I said about the intraday PnL.
Touche! I think ALL these prop shops need to include either "Intraday" or "End-of-Day" when describing their own trailing DDs.
Interesting conversations in your thread Liberty. What say you? By the way, Welcome to ET and Thanks for being a Sponsor. ES
I'm curious to understand why it's so important? So they put a trailing stop loss on your unrealized pnl, why is it so bad? I think the point of these things is to prove consistency (both pnls should be close - up or down). The only way this can hurt you is if you caught a big spike with large size and let it completely retrace, right?
For me..it's about full disclosure so that I may tailor my system accordingly. But the Micros have opened up a new possibility for me to trade my own money correctly. But I still follow these prop-trading threads as I was once very interested. ES
because the margin for error with these combines are so small to begin with, you need whatever buffer you can get. although they advertise it as providing you with a 50k, 100k, or 150k account balance, the actual account balance you get is your drawdown amount. for example, with the 50k product, what you're actually getting is a mere $2000 account. and it's trailing on top of that. so already, there isn't much room for error when you're trading $100k+ size notional value instruments (es, cl, etc.) with only $2000. it doesn't even have to be a big spike. with 2 nq or cl contracts, even a slight retrace could end up being -$300 from the peak. If you take profit on this and your next trade stops out at small -$200, you're already $500 closer to your trailing DD which is 25% of your DD. Whereas if the trailing DD was based on realized PnL like TST, you'd only be $200 closer which is 10% of your DD. With such tiny account balances, the margins are so thin already. Over many trades, these small edges definitely add up. admittedly, trailing DD based on unrealized PnL matters less to scalpers going for a few ticks with tight stops. so these considerations are more relevant to certain trading styles over others.
In regard to the account balance, not sure how it is with others but with Helios when you’re funded you still see the full account balance. Please post any other comments regarding our service on our thread so as to not further hijack their thread.