Gonna have to take a break from that and find the error tomorrow with a fresh mind and perspective. Just too tired and scrambled right now.
Edit: The 27 days I mentioned is not correct, since a Sunday open goes through the Monday close, thereby counting as one trading session. I thought TST would count that as two days.
Whew! Screw CL! That's like trying to catch a chicken! Nice easy pace on 6E though. Gonna look at ES in a few. Thanks, J.
Ok, so you want 10 or more days, I got it. I am not sure why they are limiting it to 10 days, since the period is still a month. As I guessed earlier, they might want the traders to take just the best opportunities, thus if a day doesn't look like a good one, the trader should not trade at all. A little bit strange approach, because it looks like they are looking at daily averages, but they judge at the end of the month, when a monthly average would apply... Well, that's there rules, we just have to optimize the approach to have the most advantage. For example starting in December isn't a good idea, because of the holiday season. Volatility should dry up going into the end of the year....
Damn, I didn't even realize that feature, lol! It was greyed out, so I just thought it's not available on the sim. Of course, you have to change the "None" to "Custom" on the DOM, then you can set the ATM targets. Ninja said you can't place and OCO order on the sim (the paid version is required), that's why on the control panel there is only one box under OCO. You'd have to place two orders, then cancel one of them manually. It seems the ATM is included in the sim and sets the profit and stop automatically after you enter a trade. I tried a few sim trades on CL before the equity market opened, stop at 12 ticks, profit at 24 ticks. Lost on the first with one lot, made it on the second with two lots. Trading crude reminds me of trading Sandisk, very whippy at times and sudden surges in either direction. The ATM is definitely a cool feature with easy implementation.
Yes, your guess sounds right, they're looking for traders who can choose the optimal 10 days within the month, and the optimal 20 days within two months for the 20-day combine. Patak posted that the issue of changing the number of days traded had been discussed among the scouts, however I'm not sure if they will implement a change or not, as there hasn't been any follow up post. Another way to optimize the approach is to request a custom combine. What I've noticed from one of the funded trader reports was a lowered profit on the 50k combine in exchange for a higher % of winning days.
Playing around with the T4 SIM. I like the trading and the execution is awesome compared to what I was doing for order entry on my equities. Still figuring it out though and making mistakes. For instance, I went to sell out and double clicked...this sold me out, but then put me immediately short. While this is spectacular for flipping a position quickly, it cost me some change that time as it was unexpected. That seemed to through me off for the rest of the day as I could never seem to get back on the right side of the market. Mental thing I guess. I also see the larger impact of commissions here. I seem to have better results with the 6E than CL at this point. Feel like my trading is crazy while I'm getting used to it, but smoothing out as I go. Yesterday was only the first full day to ever fool with it. I do like how they trade in the evenings too. So how do you guys feel about limit orders on futures? Do you consider them a must? I notice my fills are coming in about 2 ticks below my sells and higher on my buys. With my equities this is not as big a difference monetarily, but when trading contracts it is very expensive. I usually don't use limit orders because they never seem to get filled in time and I watch the market move without me, or against me when I wanted out. Could this be an issue because of lower volume trading in the 6E? Or is slippage like this an issue in all futures markets? Thanks guys, J.
Playin around with timeframes for entry/exits. A little different feel than what I had been doing, but I guess when I started in stocks I had the same difficulty before settling on a set up. Was looking at 15/5 on CL and getting whipsawed. Expanded out to 1hr/30mn and gonna try that.
From a backer's POV, that doesn't really make sense. The number of winning days doesn't really contribute to the bottomline, the eventual profit. One can have 70% small winning days and a few huge losing days, and vica versa. TST should really focus on the eventual results and not on the small rules that make a trader fail easier.* Rules like that make me question the legitimacy of their whole approach...It doesn't look like they are really looking for good traders.... *An example: Trader has 3 days of making 6-6-6 ES pts per car, and for the rest he loses 1-1 pt for 7 days. He is still up the required 10 pts at the end of the time frame, but he failed the Combine... Nevertheless he should be backed with a record like that....