No, you go back to the account you were trading before. So if you had a 100k account and lost 5k your equity would be 95k when you go live again. Obviously you have to make back losses or you would be incentivized for getting kicked off the live account.
Right. I basically have explained to guys that the account value is roughly equivalent to the over night margin requirements for the maximum position size you can hold. So for example, the overnight margin in gold is 9k I believe, let's call it 10k. A 100k account you can trade a max of 10 lots. Assuming you trade the contract with the highest margin, gold, that would be 10 contracts times 10k or 100k. The way I like to look at is you have one million in notional buying power. Since margins change, the notional value stays the same so it's a more consistent way of looking at what you are trading.
"The way I like to look at is you have one million in notional buying power."....I think this may leave traders under-capitalized. Buy 1 two-year note and think you control $100,000+?" Fine, but that's not reality. The reality is, How much can I make versus risk versus overnight margin versus drawdown..... If you don't have 100k, don't count on trading as a full-time gig. And don't tell me you can turn 50k into 100k in a year......lol If you are over 30, you should strive to make a minimum of 50k a year, with hopes of 75k trading and then more for bonus. And you will not do that with a 10k account, or a notional account of 1 million.
Nope. Once you go live you can trade as little or as much as you like. Even in the combine what they let you do is pick the days you want to trade which I think is VERY beneficial for new traders. So for example. If you do a 20 day combine, you have 60 days to complete it. So you can pick any 20 days in that 60 day period to trade. Maybe you hate trading on Fridays or Mondays. Maybe you hate fed days or oil inventory days. There really are very little excuses a trader can make.
I agree. Which is why I laugh at those who think they can just open a 2k account and make a go at it. This game requires capital and 5k to 10k at IB or AMP is not going to cut it. I've been saying that on this forum since 2002. Not many people listen though.
No doubt. The only problem is that your Kelly criterion is prob higher on the open and position sizing math dictates bigger size when you have a higher probability setup. So if you are "trading the money" and increasing bet size as you make money, you may be shooting yourself in the foot. Really you should trade bigger in the morning and smaller in chop... I'm assuming the trading day starts at midnight EDT for TST purposes or does it start after the first trade? That would make sense for folks in Asia or wherever.
It is NOT the number of traders who are currently Live. My friend went Live but got booted and is no longer trading with them. He did get funded though. I'm not arguing with you as you are absolutely correct in that it is a decent opportunity for people who need it. And like you said we'll see how many of those "Live" traders stay with them after 6 months. Trading is a tough gig.
I maybe wrong but once a trader is no longer live, they no longer have an "L" badge. I see 47 "live" badges right now. http://www.topsteptrader.com/Profiles/2 Honestly, there could be more because there are people who have gotten funded in the last two weeks who I don't see on there. So perhaps this is not being updated in real time. But I get 3 to 4 notifications a week from these guys when they fund a new account. That's about 15 a month. Not hard to get up to 45 considering they have been doing this for several years now.
Patriciap1 is on there, and she was just funded yesterday so I bet those traders already got booted LOL. Here they are, we can check back in 6 months and see if Maverick is correct... 1 albertli 2 alexvish 3 allonblack1 4 benihana1 5 bjorn 6 bofason 7 brookesjd9 8 burke 9 cgrosvenor 10 crt 11 cvlenz 12 domingo 13 fifthwave 14 flipper 15 forextrader 16 gmiller129 17 henry 18 ian 19 irishbk84 20 jamesbond 21 jcox 22 jderd 23 jj0322xx 24 jonbud 25 kjun 26 lancer 27 ljm72575 28 loneranger 29 marketmaker 30 marketqb 31 mavin 32 maykur 33 mlohrstl 34 mvelten 35 patriciap1 36 rex 37 ron 38 ryko1249 39 ryuken 40 santiago 41 scotty 42 setandforget 43 ss213 44 traderdg 45 usatrader 46 vision trader 47 waves6098