And for anyone reading this thread, please disregard the colonel's posts regarding seat leases. I'll add some value here to straighten this out. Anyone can lease a seat. http://www.cmegroup.com/company/membership/membership-pricing-cme-memberships-for-lease.html There is a link to the market prices for seats being offered. It's a tradeable market so the prices do change. To trade the ES, you need an IOM seat. As you can see the lowest offer is currently $350 per month offered by Mr. Weingart. You do NOT need a million dollars. I've leased a seat several times in my life as I use to be a floor member of the CBOT. The process is easy and painless. My clearing firm handled everything.
This back 'n forth squabble is now done. Let's get back to civil discussion and stay on topic. Thanks.
Sorry Magna. In my defense, I did try to put factual and relevant info in between the insults. You know, to balance things out.
And btw folks, if you want to BUY an IOM seat, the current offer is 68k. http://www.cmegroup.com/company/membership/membership-pricing.html Not over a million like the colonel suggested. I just wanted to post this FACT so we can separate the wheat from the chaff.
In all seriousness like I have stated before....TST seems to be the best of what's out there. I came into the biz in a much different atmosphere (1992) so I have a much different view perhaps. I can't vouch for them as far as how many guys they back (You can...and even though you feel it necessary to defend Surf all the time vs my hilarious remarks....your word is solid). But as far as the risk they are offering, it's VERY fair compared to a lot of other firms that claim to back guys. If people can't live with the risk they are offering, they shouldn't be trading. Worst case scenario. A newer guy can start out there, trade smaller, make enough to pay the bills. If he does well enough , ask for more backing. If they don't want to back him with more capital, take the track record and find a firm that will. They ARE out there. You just have to work your ass off to find them. And while Mav is right to an extent that a majority of firms that back guys are looking for quant/programmer type guys, there are some firms that still back outright "old school" traders.
Sounds like a good deal, although according I just got a trial subscription and they've backed two new people in three days or so. I don't get how they can just keep backing everyone that can trade. Why wouldn't they become more selective and boot people that are less good? You would think the competition would get fierce after a while just look at how many people are jumping on this thread. They've got have some superstars coming into the fold from ruslavistan or middle america or something
Honestly, it's harder then it looks. And I've said this on here several times. Getting funded is not necessarily the hard part just as making money in trading is not all that hard. The hard part you will come to learn is keeping it. I would venture a guess that 75% of the guys (or girls) that get backed probably fall off the live account pretty quickly. Has nothing to do with TST as some here think or because they are too strict. The fact of the matter is, very few people make money trading. I've never hid that fact. So getting funded is not some be all end all type of event that seals the rest of your life. You will probably have to work harder once you go live then how hard you had to work to get funded. That's why I laugh when people say trading is easy just control your risk/reward or just be consistent. Precisely for the reason you just stated, everyone is trying to do this. Not the combine, but trade profitably in general. I'm guessing they have less then 10 live traders who are still live after 6 months. It's a tough business.
They have 48 funded traders. http://www.topsteptrader.com/Profiles This was trader that was funded today. She can now toss around 5 contracts. http://www.topsteptrader.com/ViewProfile/patriciap/patricia/0 "trading is hard". Yeah you can say that again... Although I don't know that it is all that much hard work once you are consistent, getting there is more the grind... But if the statistic 10% of traders are profitable, well that is still a good number of people.