Goal and point of this post: To find someone willing to give advice, direction or assist me in going to the next level for mutual benefit. I've seen very few people if any that can actually trade live in front of people and call what they are looking for in advance on a trade. This includes people selling indicators, services, as well as other traders who a lot of people say are good. Currently I am trading with APEX have funded accounts and have performed well enough for them to give me an actual live funded account (with a little bit more drawdown and few different rules than the standard Performance Accounts). However, even with that LIVESIM and LIVE account the drawdown, rules, withdrawal and etc make it difficult to produce the income I need to fully leave my job. My job is pretty flexible, but I'd rather focus full time on trading and grow trading as a business. As with anything if you're able to scale up faster and be more efficient, that is generally the ultimate goal and makes no sense not to. Already have infrastructure in place including someone who is not only willing and has assisted me in trading, but also willing to handle other duties so I can focus more on the trading. In addition while they are not quite on my level of execution and understanding, they are still strong technically and able to provide me with timely information that allows me to have a greater focus on execution. I am willing and wanting to trade live on screen share as well as voice, to further prove what I am saying. Not against meeting in person either if that becomes necessary. Which is how it should be with anyone that takes trading seriously, as I do. Thanks for reading and appreciate if anyone can point me in the right direction or has any advice for me.
Need more info Like your job pays 100k a year but you are only generating 10k a year in trading profits ? What do your trade ? Stocks? Futures? Options ?
Trade futures. Make 80k a year, which is decent for my area but not exactly living the high life as I am not single. Trade with a prop firm I currently have issues with live trailing drawdown, withdrawals(the timeline of withdrawals and the rules, data (is not nearly as stable as live account, including the one they gave me). Not to mention commissions being lower would help quite a bit, particularly since am extremely active. Overall currently the service they provide I feel is good. However, those issues I listed are certainly impactful. I will say if I was able to withdrawal all the money I currently have sitting in the accounts, would probably not be making this post. Regardless though of that, a secondary point is that the ultimate general goal of any business is to scale it to be more efficient and earn more money for your time, makes no sense not to if you can. Not to put down the importance of your questions they are valid. Just want to say I am real believer in communication with voice as well as trading in front of people. So my preference is to find someone that truly understands the issues I am facing, is able to identify trading talent and understands the overall vision. This seemed a little long winded, but wanted to give you the best answer I could. Thanks for asking the questions
I've considered going this route, but I'd prefer not to. From what currently is available to me it will be more profitable to trade and make relationships in the trading field. I believe that. Marketing is not my strength. If you're saying my trading alone will bring in people, I'd still rather use that skill for the above mentioned route. It's possible your suggestion turns out to be better, certainly open to that. Currently trying this route though.
www.topstep.com They just changed their rules and seem to be perfect for a guy like you: 1) 2 days eval and you can get funded 2) Payouts after 5 profitable days (so weekly payouts if you can swing it) 3) Same day payouts once requested 4) Up to 3 funded LiveSim accounts ($150k accounts * 3 = $450k account size 5) EOD drawdown, not that predatory unrealized drawdown bullshit 6) Actual support (unlike Apex where they take no responsibility for anything) 7) They will move you into a live account if you can prove consistent profitability and even scale you up outside of the default account parameters (ie. they may give you a few million to trade if you're very good and able to show long-term consistency). Of course, you're billed as an independent contractor so you have to pay state, federal, and self-employment tax. You won't get the tax benefits of futures (Section 1256) and have to pay more, but it's a start. If you end up in a Live account you will be classified as a professional trader and will have to pay professional data rates, but will probably have drastically lowered commissions. I would assume they lease/own a seat on the exchange. How this impacts taxes I'm not sure, since I've only ever traded my own account and have never traded for anyone else or ever been classified as a professional. If you want to stick with Apex, what's holding you back from opening 20 accounts and copy trading all 20? Seems like you could be getting some bank doing that. Don't do the sub thing: it's tacky. Plus you have to deal with all the idiots that think you can swing 500 lots at a clip, getting perfect fills, and make $5,000 on a trade, risking 100x to make 1x, and are a genius for doing so (because all they see is the $ made rather than $ risked). Most of these people have no concept of margin, drawdown, return on risk, or anything useful and you have to play babysitter. Not worth the hassle if you can swing 50 lots and make more in 1 day than all that marketing bullshit makes in a month.
Just re-read your post. $80k/year is around $333/day. Obviously how much you make per day varies. Are you taking ticks out of ES or something? You should be clearing more than that. On a 1-2 lot on NQ, ES, CL, or any other product that moves it isn't unreasonable to think you could make $1k. $2-3k more likely if you're good. Hell, Apex gives you 10 contracts on a $50k account so once you build the profit cushion it is quite reasonable to have 5 figure days. $1k a day on a 1-2 lot would be $240k-$250k a year, which is roughly treble your salary. Questions: 1) What's holding you back and why are you not making more? 2) How many accounts do you have active? 3) How many months into it are you? 4) They have a $2k/payout withdrawal policy. Are you still in the early stages? They say that once you hit the 4 month market you can withdraw everything. Something doesn't add up here.
Hey tony, another user on this thread already essentially suggested this. Apologize if my post was too lengthy or unclear, but that was my best effort to explain this is not a route I want to go. That's the purpose of communicating live and also open to meeting in person. If I try to sell someone something, they can easily come back here and report that. In the event your comment was not in good faith, than personally I don't see how your conclusion makes full logical sense. If you know of other people or groups that communicate live, without any type of delay that allows for hindsight trading, please let me know. I am not finding this really anywhere. Happy to eat crow and would be interested in checking them out. Yes, I do stand by the things I listed as being a hinderance for a business: * There's a hard lock time limit on how much funds you can withdrawal. * Even during and after that lock out time, there's still additional rules and guideless. *They reserve the right to deny a pay out at their discretion. *Commissions are eating up an additional 1-2 ticks of profit per trade(depending on plan) *Data instability causes delayed entry and exit sometimes and it rarely ends up in my favor All these things directly effect a consistent paycheck, while also effecting the profit factor and ROR. This all gets exponentially worst the more actively you trade. As we all know trading is not easy, so all those things are and can be a fairly big deal.