Hey Baggerlord, I have read your earlier posts and you are a reasonable poster, I know. Looking at the way Maverick has been promoting Patak on "Patak Trading" thread, my original hunch was that Maverick is associated with TST. But he then came and said he is in no way associated with TST. And it can be verified looking at his NFA ID. Let us assume he is speaking truth and is in no way associated with TST. Let us move forward. Lets keep the thread on point. No more Maverick please. Please give your honest opinion about TST. Punch holes in my logic and numbers. That will really add value. Rather than attacking and defending Maverick. Cheers.
Quote from your 1st post: "It saddens me to see that Maverick is out there to fool people since following his ACD thread, I used to think Maverick is a very good trader and I had very high regards for him. Today also, I don't have anything personal against Maverick - as I think he is just trying to make a quick buck by fooling people (most sellers of trading services do this and buyer beware is an oft-repeated proverb). But, now I seriously wonder how much money Maverick makes from his trading alone?!! Because if he is making 7 figures from his trading, he will never allow himself to do such a dishonorable thing by being part of such a group which is out there to outright fool people." If your only issue was Patak, you should have stuck to that. That would have been clean and clear.
I say that because he has personally helped my trading and now my investing a great deal. To see a mod make a comment like that just was a suprise and very disrespectful to one of the only people that puts quality content on this site. Regarding Patek, I haven't looked that close as daytrading isn't something my work schedule allows. But I have done one of the pay for "training" fake prop deals in the past. I went into it knowing what I was getting. I lost less money paying for "training" than I had been losing trading my own account. The restrictive rules forced me to be a better trader. I went back to my own account in a few months and that was the turning point for me and from then on I have been profitable both at daytrading and longer term stuff. This deal sounds better to me. It costs less than a couple books. Expecting any more would be unreasonable for an unproven trader and would guarantee losses for the firm.
I'm in agreement here. Mav's name has been good here for a long time amongst the charlatans and hucksters, so the personal attack was unwarranted. As far as Patak, it is a call option, nothing more. What's wrong with that? The fact that they are going to make commission off of you? So what? Here's a news flash-- somebody somewhere will ALWAYS make commission off of you. Is their commission schedule outlandish? Not that I can tell. Is their program hard? Yes it looks damn near impossible. However, smart traders can take advantage of this system because the rules are clearly defined. Pigeon hole your trading to maintain their risk parameters, and receive cash to trade. Seems pretty straight forward to me. In fact, in my emerging manager program we don't define the rules for this very reason, because we don't want traders looking to game the system. So you either have to have pretty stringent rules to manage your risk, or undefined rules to let traders "self select". I prefer to allow traders to be themselves, but I can tell you that far fewer traders receive backing than the number at Patak. In short, not every profitable trader deserves to be backed! So people will call it a scam because either it's not the right fit or because they aren't good enough. The problem is that the naysayers want to become portfolio managers based on a few demo trades! This program is not for everyone and those who can't should move on.
Dude, that is the point. If they are true prop backers who are only interested in discovering and developing GREAT trading talent and sharing a PL split, they should pass the lowest possible commissions to the traders. They claim they are helping traders by making them do combines, by making them follow hard risk management, but they want to charge 63 cents per side extra commissions. Any professional trader would know this crap, immediately. Only newbies and vendors like you (you wrote you also run an emerging managers program - I don't know anythign about your program, but I do know that you are also in the same boat as Patak now) will say commissions don't matter. If this fact that they are keeping like 63 cents per contract doesn't help potential Patak recruits understand that they are not interested in making their traders successful, I can't really help them.
Yes, Mav is quoting it from some place on TST website. Mav, can you send the link where you are quoting this from ? Mav or someone else needs to clarify about the point #10 in the PDF. That is clearly at odds with this statement. And that PDF is available on TST Website currently. Which one do we assume to be correct?