Next Monday is cool then. Having some services hooked up today is why I decided to postpone another day or so. I hope to pull several checks, lol. The % of winning days is more to gauge consistency than the bottom line. A very low winning percentage but high profit "can" signify a lucky trader. Once can have this and still be a decent trader, but they usually are overtrading and racking up commission costs. Lots of quick losses can indicate poor entry decisions and lack of conviction in their strategy. I have been trading around in ES, 6E and CL just to get a feel. Looking into other markets too, but going where the volume is for the moment in order to try different things. Also, since TST restricts one to intraday trading, these are the better markets to focus on if you can trade them without getting chopped up. To me, the restriction of having to trade intraday is the biggest restriction poised to take traders out. The big money is in the daily and weekly moves. Thanks, J
1) I believe a trader may be restricted to only trading the futures contract(s) he traded during his "last" combine, when transitioning to live/funded trading, until he builds up the "profit cushion". It seems quite reasonable to me. 2) When you set up your own firm to provide financial backing to other traders, you can have whatever guidelines you want.
False and false. You can start a new combine on any day of the week and you do NOT have to trade the same instruments live as the combine. But you cannot trade an instrument live which you did NOT trade on the combine. For example, if you make one trade in corn on the combine, you are NOT required to trade corn when you go live.
OK, I was maybe wrong about the Monday start. The second thing wasn't what I stated. If you trade corn on day #1, you have to keep trading it through the Combine. That's what I meant. But what if my strategy gives only 3 opportunities during that period? Why am I forced to trade every day? Edit: I have tried to find the applicable rule, but looks like I remembered wrong or didn't get it correctly, because I can't seem to find it. I guess if you trade corn on the first day and it iss a winning day, you can switch to another product, because your averages are going to be OK for corn with 1 winning day.
NO, once again, not true. You can trade any product you want as little or as much as you want during the combine. If you trade corn on day one and never trade it again, that is fine. Just make sure you meet the performance metric with just that one day of trading. Once you go live, you do NOT have to trade corn if you don't want to. The ideal strategy is really to focus on one product so as to eliminate the possibility of taking only one trade in a product that is not profitable and then HAVING to trade it again before the end of the combine.
Just a note: Marty Schwartz, one of the greatest audited traders of all time, stated that he made his profits about 1 out of every 5 days. The other 4 out of 5 days were more or less break even days for him. He would most likely fail the combine with those results according to the rules because he would not be profitable at least half of the days that he traded. Someone please correct me if this is wrong information.
Wrong about what? Marty Schwartz? Or being profitable half of the days? If it's the latter, you can change that to 10% of the days if you want. Just apply for a custom combine. I've seen guys pass with less then 50% up days. This has been discussed endlessly. Let's just do this. Any of the metrics posted on their website are changeable under the custom combine. Hopefully that clears that issue up once and for all.
I don't buy this argument. Look at the Marty Schwartz example, whom another poster mentioned. Do you think he kept getting lucky on every 5th day? Sure, if there is one big winner day and 9 slightly losing days, that is most likely the sign of the lucky trader. But a guy winning 6-6-6 pts per day 3 times and losing 1-1 pt for 7 days still reaches the Combines required profit, but fails the winning % ratio. That he is able to gain 6 pts multiple times just shows that his strategy doesn't come up everyday, it isn't a sign of him being lucky. But anyway, if TST wants to eliminate possibly good traders, that is their loss.
All profit being equal, I would rather have my money behind a trader that produced consistent profits over multiple days rather than a trader that lost money on multiple days only to hit a homerun that made up the difference every once in a while. If that homerun doesn't come, he's screwed and my money is gone. Whereas if the consistent trader has a bad day every now and again, the world isnt lost, it was just a bad day between many good days. The consistent trader doesn't have the building stress off HAVING to swing for the fences as his losing days stack up against him. For every losing day you go down, it is that much further you have to profit in order to come out ahead. It snowballs on you. Even if you do hit that homerun you "knew" was out there, you forfeit most of your profits just to cover your losses. If you lose 3K per day for 5 days and then hit a homerun of 25K on the fifth, you didnt make 25K...you only made 10K...minus probably 1-2K in commission charges...and then taxes...you may come out with 5-6K left over and thats if you dont have to split it with anyone. Most people only count their wins and fail to mention the money they have to subtract to account for all the losses they incurred before landing that win. I knew a gambler that if you asked him how much he won a year he would tell you he won over 100K a year. If you asked him how much he lost, he did not know. My guess is he broke even at best. He just did not count the losses, only the homeruns. To hear him tell it, you would have thought he was winning everytime he went in. The reality was he was always one night away from disaster. Thanks, J