I'll take a stab at this. Somewhere in this 100 page thread I've already stated this but I'll state it again for those who don't wish to read the whole thread. I'm not a daytrader. Surf is not a daytrader. I haven't daytraded in 10 years. I have never really daytraded futures other then a brief stint back in 2008 which I've already stated. So let me paint a picture here for Surf and myself. Let's say I have an account at IB and don't wish to trade futures there. For one, I'm not even sure I will like trading futures. Two, I may not even be profitable. But let's say I want to do a few combines and see if it's something I might be interested in doing without pulling capital out of an IB account and funding a separate account with an FCM. So for $200 you give TST a shot. Not to get funding. Remember, at this point I'm not even sure I want to trade futures or even daytrade in general. So why risk my own capital to do that? Say I do the combine and drop 5k. OK, that didn't go well. I try one more. Drop another 5k. OK, fair enough, not for me. So instead of pulling cash out of my IB account and going through all the paperwork and bullshit that goes along with that and then dropping 10k in losses, I could have just as easily realized it's not for me for the total cost of $400 instead of 10k. Let me give you another example. Say I DO have an FCM account. Say I trade the e-mini and I'm profitable. But everyone on ET is telling me to trade Crude Oil or Gold or Nat Gas because they move a lot. But I've NEVER traded those products. So why not do the combine, and try trading all these volatile products I would never want to trade with real cash such as Gold, Silver, Copper, Nat Gas, Crude, or even the grains. Say I do 3 combines and sure enough, the volatility killed me and dropped 15k over 3 combines. Sucks right? Well, I'll just stick with the e-mini then. Saved myself 15k in losses and learned a little more about myself in the process. These two examples best describe what I think the combine is best used for. The third example which I touched on before is the guy who has NEVER EVER traded before. He reads ET daily and thinks making millions is easy. But he is not sure he wants to make a career out of this. He just graduated college and is still entertaining job offers. So he gives the combine a whirl for a few months only to discover that trading is NOT easy and quite frankly, he doesn't even enjoy it. For the small cost of a few hundred bucks he learned more about what he doesn't want to do with his life then he did dropping 100k on a 4 year state college education. Not a bad deal. I think the combine helps answer questions. All sorts of questions. Should I trade? Should I "daytrade"? Should I daytrade futures vs stocks? Should I get involved in more volatile products? TST is providing a service that will help answer these questions. That's all it is. I spent tens of thousands of dollars in college trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life and all college did for me was show me what I "didn't" want to do. It cost me a fortune but there was some value in that. Now I know the next question. Why pay for it? I can just sim for free on Ninja or whatever. Sure, you can and I have. I consider myself to be a very disciplined individual and I can tell you I never got anything out of simming because there was nothing at stake. And I'm not even talking about the $200 or whatever TST charges. I'm talking about the accountability. Whenever I took a hit on the sim I would simply re-set the p&l on the account with the excuse that I was changing strategies and the old p&l didn't matter. We all do this. This combine doesn't let you quit. It forces you to own up to your trading and your mistakes. You can quit if you want, but you paid for it. And your combine results are yours to keep. Most of us need rules and structure in our life, especially at the beginning whether it's joining a gym or keeping your marriage together. Without structure, we drift. We get creative. We cheat. Now having said all this, TST is just one option. There are millions of ways to trade. For the past 15 years I've been an option trader, not a futures trader. Some guys like to trade stocks. Some guys like to run automated strategies. Some guys like to sell premium. Some guys like to spread. Some guys like market neutral, some directional. Some guys hold for 3 months, some for 3 minutes. There is no wrong way to trade. TST is just one option. There are millions of options out there. Pick the one you like and ascertain it's value. This is what you have to do with anything in life. Should I go to law school? Should I go to med school? Should I take a salaried prop job? Should I quit my salary job and trade full time from home? These are all decisions. There is no one right answer. I hope I answered your question. I gave you an intelligent reply. If you have follow up questions, please give me the same courtesy.
It's just you. There are many who would refuse this so called "free" funding due to the split and if you had any real edge you would know what i am talking about. I hate to derail this thread any further but your ramblings over the past few days are becoming quite nauseating. You are trading CL, freaking CL and whine about extra capital. If you were half decent at this, for as long as you have been here sharing your unsolicited wisdom you'd have acquired all the capital you'd ever need without having to split PnL with anyone.
80% to the trader is a poor split? From no-risk extra capital that may have unlimited upside in the future? ok then
I guess rollover isn't synonymous with volume transferring over to front month. Below is the current after hours volume on both contracts.
"Whining" would be all those endless threads and blogs out there where big-money traders with $millions parked in MFG and PFG now have nothing but empty accounts and regrets. For all you and I know, mighty IB or any other dealer could be next. That would be whining about needing capital. You have mistaken my interest in free money on the side for that. Now if someone offers me $150,000 to start and negotiable upside from there... with no risk of loss to a clearing firm crash on my part, I'm interested. If not, I'll keep doing what I'm doing in the freakin' CL and that'll be just fine
volume will shift to the Dec by 8:20am tomorrow when currency futures open meanwhile, today was rife with spikes and drops and v-turns out of the blue solely from rollover fundamentals. A session I avoid every month without question.
Sometimes I have to stop, rub my eyes and question myself as to whether I actually read something like that or not. Welcome to ET... home of the world's collective seven and eight-figure annual traders with nothing better to do than troll an anonymous message board on topics that clearly mean nothing to them in the first place.
Don't you need to keep $30K of your profits in the account to get the 80/20? And isn't that $30K your max "drawdown"? That means only you can lose money in that deal for the privilege of a 20% haircut. Yeah, that sounds like no-risk extra capital alright...for the firm!
you start with zero. you make +$30,000. you withdraw 80% and pocket $24,000 you start with zero. you make +$10,000 peak, then proceed to lose it all and also draw down to max loss and stall. in either scenario, what do you actually lose?