Man, you and Lucias are really not good with numbers. LOL. It cost more then 5k to build a decent website. And there is no way on earth they are making 500k from this. F*ck man, if they are, I will set one up! A majority of those combines are free dude. Plus they have to eat all the damn losses from the guys who fail and go live and they just admitted that they basically have not made shit on the p&l side. Look, I actually looked into this model a few years back albeit slightly different. And I could never make the numbers work. I have a model in my head I'll put out there but you won't like it. It's the only way I can justify the risk is to make sure I get paid up front with no refunds. I'll start a thread today and put the details out there for everyone to viciously attack. It will actually be good for Patak because it will make theirs look better! LOL.
I see that Patak is offering a free shot to anyone on here. I think there is only one person he should offer it to. GMST. GMST has been talking a lot. Let's see if he can back up his boasts and actually succeed at trading. Come on GMST.....let's se you trade! And none of this bullshit that the limits are too tight.
I tell you Mav, 500k is the minimum Patak is making every year. Go back and read this thread and the bitter truth thread in detail from start. Read everything I wrote in detail WITH AN OPEN MIND. When you are reading it, don't think of me as your enemy. Think of me as your friend! You will see it for yourself. And yes I agree today you don't believe its possible to make 500k with this model, otherwise you won't be shilling for Patak, rather you would be working towards opening your own combines. And please don't start a new thread today. Otherwise, I will again accuse you of being a Patak shill by showing worse combines. LOL. I am serious Mav. You can make 500k with this model. Just take a break of 15-20 days from ET. Don't worry I am not going to attack Patak any more (I hope) so you won't have to come here to defend him. Design something interesting, something better. Prepare an excel sheet - come up with your numbers. If you seriously want to CORRECTLY EVALUATE whether it makes sense for you to open up combines, you can't do that by talking to people here on ET. You need to set up your spreadsheet and do your homework sitting in your home/office. Don't just present what you think sounds good. Go home, actually work on the idea for 15-20 days. You will surely come up with a way better product than Patak's and you will gain market share from him. I wish you good luck. P.S. I did couple of posts where I showed that if I would open my combine, I would be ready to eat losses from failed combiners 100 times - simply because combiners who fail multiple times won't exist since first time failure rate is 99% or so. As far as free combines are concerned - first combines are never free and there is a steady stream of newbies in the market. Just run the numbers, you will see. Subcontract website design work to India - you will be surprised to see how cheap you will get it done.
LOL. Sorry, I can't take that offer. I am sure to lose. That combine has been designed as way too tough! Seriously, TraderChi, you should open your own combines. Design something better. I post in ES-Journal my live calls - you can see me trade there
No gmst, your numbers are way off as usual. you weren't even accounting for the damn refunds. You just assumed 500 combines time the combine cost. You can't do that. Over the half the guys are getting refunds. You also never allowed for how much it's costing them to eat the losses. Even you admitted that most of the guys that go live lose. Which means TST is eating those losses. That's not a small amount of money dude. I've gone over the numbers correctly and I doubt they are much above breakeven on this. The only argument you can make and the one variable I'm not accounting for is if their live traders are actually making a lot of money which Michael said they weren't. Ultimately that is the deep out of the money call option that could pay off. I just don't think their are getting much p&l yet.
I have trained guys at my last firm while I traded....a long time ago. Is actually a trip helping new guys learn the biz. You have to have patience though because a majority of new traders, especially these days, are stubborn and don't understand what it takes to make it in the biz. I'll still help new guys who ask me for info/insights on trading....but running a company. Nah. Not my thing. Too busy trading.
Mav, of course there are a lot of variables. I know one thing - if an industry is way too attractive, over time multiple players enter the industry and profit margins go down. So, the guys who start their combines first will profit for the longest period of time. So, if you are serious about starting something, you should target to start such a thing latest by Dec/Jan 2012. So, That gives you 3-4 months to sort out the operation, open your firm, open the bank account, have a website in place, start giving ads on craigslist, start marketing on ET and probably hire couple of interns/part timers to help you for the first few months. Once coin starts coming in, I am sure you will send me a PM inviting me to take on a paid trip to Vegas, for motivating you to actually do this. Cheers!
Here, let's do this. Let's create a risk profile for every basket of 10 combine traders. Let's say they pay an avg of $200 each. Let's say one out of 10 actually gets lucky and goes live and loses 4k. And then goes live again and loses 4k and quits. So for the 10 combines they make 10 X $200 or $2000. Let's say 4 of those guys get a refund and take their money and run. So that $2000 is now only $1200. They lose 8k on that one bad trader who got lucky and had to eat his losses and they have 1200 from the combines to offset that for a net loss of 6800 for every 10 traders. We can change these numbers if you like. Let's say only 1 in 20 goes live. And let's say instead of 40% getting a refund, let's say 20% do. So that's 16 X $200 or 3200. And let's say they are only eating 4k in losses. Even then they are losing $800 net for every 20 traders. See the only variable that makes your argument is if that guy who goes live actually makes money instead of loses money. Because that guy represents a Asymmetric payoff in that his earnings are unlimited. There is a positive slope there that can generate potentially huge returns. But you and I both agree that is probably NOT happening. So the numbers I gave are fair. I honestly don't see how they are much above breakeven. And this ignores all the overhead cost as well. I'm writing that off as free for the time being to make this easier.
Mr. Patak I would like to know in which case the trader will send back to combine after going live (Take example of $100k account) 1. starting equity (SE) 100k lost 2k (max. limit) in a day 2. SE 100k have lost 4k equity now 96k 3. Equity 103k lost 4k equity now 99k 4. Equity 110k (10k cushion) lost 4k equity now 106k And also is there any drawdown limitation also ...suppose realized profit is 15k or something and you are not allowed to have drawdown of 5 or 10% of realized profit??? Thanks
Michael... I tell you what I'll do, I'll take you up on the free offer but it has to be for the 2k risk limit per day combine but I'll only take it when Ninjatrader is ready. You can post my results too. 10 day is fine. I do agree with GMST that its setup as a scheme to generate combine fees. Mav or anyone else who is saying you can't set this up to generate money.. sure you can. Just look at a distribution graph to understand this... Losers Big Losers Make a mistake/hit loss limit Small Losers Winners that break a rule/make mistake => $$$ PROFIT FROM ALL ABOVE Winners Big winners Solid Winners => Break even on these "trades" Huge Winners (3 std dev) => Small payout You can adjust the difficulty, add silly rules (like they have), or what you have. Now at end of month, you just tally up your profits and fund enough traders from your combine profits. Too many pass? No problem. You've enough silly rules to find something wrong with most of them.. sit down.. have a pow wow talk about how they need to do better but show promise.. free combine. Why make a lot of rules for trader getting his refund? If combine fees aren't the revenue generation method then why even charge it? Mav, that's why I made a point to show that you don't get refunded even if profitable -- they added more strings so they can keep your money. It is a matter of principle and shows what the true nature of operation is. Why not make it so that the trader has to trade a least 80% of days out of 3 months time? Make it free. How many will trade 80% of days for 3 months? You don't need to charge a combine fee to find serious traders. I think its a great business for the combine owners.. Even in the "legit" form its a good business. and then if you are really sophisticated you can run data mining operatoins on the traders silently in the background... gather unique quant data for automating any profitable traders you find... No need to tell about the owners.. if one happens to be phd quant.