Lucias, If you read my prior response to your post, then you know it's simply incorrect to claim you are getting "a 1k account and not a 30k account." The $1k is "their risk" which is irrelevant, since the trader does not have to place any "at risk" capital in the live account, and the trader does not have to pay them for losses. From Investopedia: Definition of 'Opportunity Cost' 1. The cost of an alternative that must be forgone in order to pursue a certain action. Put another way, the benefits you could have received by taking an alternative action. To observe this opportunity objectively, one must consider the CAPITAL outlay, not the "max daily risk" on the account. Lucias, what would be YOUR capital outlay to trade a live futures account using the same parameters: 3 lot size, $500 daily loss limit, 2x max loss draw? I think I made it clear in my prior response, perhaps you may want to review it again. Now that TST is giving a chance for all the critical posts to pass the combine for no cost, the "real risk" for the trader is ZERO.
Neiderhoffer is a great example. Here is a guy with zero risk management skills who blew out twice. Lost all his clients money....not once...but twice doing the same exact thing. Selling puts...collecting premium. Very very original idea. Shocked he got rolled twice doing that. The fact that you are on the same wavelength as Surf speaks volumes about you. Your credibility has now hit zero. Congrats.
When I started day trading some years back, I needed funding, so I joined an unregulated (no Series 7 needed) prop firm. The deal was I put up 5K of my own capital, and they'd give me 100K buying power. I had 100k buying power from day one, but I had a 100 share max position limit and a $50/day loss limit. That was with the firm being protected by a 5K "cushion" of my money. It did not bother me in the least. I was happy to get the chance. Over time my bp, position size, and loss limits were increased. But limits were always in force. Even now that I am a self-staked trader, I adhere to self-imposed limits to control my risk. It is called discipline, what TopStepTrader's requirements do is allow them to evaluate the prospect's ability to maintain discipline. The requirements and restrictions which seem to be the target or source of most of the criticism of this prop firm strike this former prop trader as extremely reasonable. Any newbie reading these requirements would do him or herself a favor by taking those same requirements as part of his or her trading plan.
Hey look who it is. The blow out king himself. Make a little....make a little...lose 10 times as much. Dude you are a fucking joke coming on here commenting on how people should trade...what they should do. You can't trade your way out of a paper bag. You blow out consistently. You think you have some "special" strategy. All top secret....hush hush. Dude....take 10 of Patak's guys who can't get out of a combine. I bet every one of them has better numbers than you.
I had no idea about Surf's ET reputation. LOL. Only thing I know about him is that he knows Victor Niederhoffer. Long ago, I was searching google for information on Victor and I came to ET and there was a thread and Surf was defending Victor. Thats all I know about Surf, so no I am not on same wavelength like Surf. I have no idea what he does or who he is, or why in your eyes he has such a bad reputation! LOL.
Unlike you Surf, I trade on a desk for a firm. I don't have the luxury of being a fantasy trader like yourself and not have to worry about whether or not my trades are right. Also, unlike you I don't talk about performance on here. The one thing I have learned over the years is to keep my mouth shut when it comes to how I do. You wouldn't know if I made or lost $20,000 on a trade sitting next to me each day. Those who talk a big game and blab are 99.9% of the time full of shit.
ScalperJoe -- The 1k is YOUR risk because you earned it. That's your money. Im not trying the combine with their current software because the t4 DOM is junk. I already explained that risking having a bad experience in my trading due to their crappy DOM is not worth it for me. If it was on OEC, I'd probably consider their latest offer. The OEC dom is rock solid.. great job guys. Mr. Patak stated upfront the goal wasn't to make money off the combine failures. If true, why not just refund any trader who actually trades the required number of days? You could make it a 2 month-3 month thing... pay the deposit, if you trade on at least 60% of days, win or lose, you get your money back. Something like that would make it clear the combine wasn't about generating rev from combine failures. I already showed you all the differences between how a real scouting would be run different then this operation. So, if anyone is thinking about really scouting for traders.. Consider this setup 1. The time required would be longer. 1 month is just too random. It'd be at least 2-6 months in length. Minimum of 50 days and 90 trades. 2. Objectives would be reduced and objectives would be formulated in a risk adjusted measure. I suggested that 5x multiple of max peak to value DD and 6x return on daily risk limit would be a challenging but reasonable measure and manage not to have a peak to valley DD greater then 6x daily loss limit (or whatever the conditions would be live). 3. Scout opportunity could be free for traders who showed promise on live acccounts because the objective is to find best traders -- not to sell crap. If a charge was needed, scout opportunity would cost something tangible, like a $750 deposit but you'd get it back if you just showed up. Trade on 60% of days and get a full refund. 4. There would only be one tier because as someone who funds traders then there is no reason for me to risk more then required. Likewise, it is understood I will scale up traders to enough capital to trade for a living if they do well. So, it'd be probably start at about $900 risk cap per trader and scale up quickly to 3k-5k per day if they did well. 5. It would be at my discretion. There would no guarantee that everyone would be funded. However, I would show those that were funded over another and show why and the reasons would need to be logical.. better risk adjusted return, higher net profit, etc. I would also set a firm # of traders who were guaranteed funding at the start of a new scouting round. 6. When going live, you would get at least 4x your daily loss limit and possibly up to 6x limit. 7. You would never be forced back to simulator but would be scaled down in both loss limit and contracts if you did poorly. 8. Hitting the daily loss limit 1x would not be end of world. The platform would automatically shut you down/out if you were within 90% of the loss limit and had no open positions. If you have an open position, you could go 15% over the loss limit without penalty. If you shut down between 15% and 20% over the limit then you'd be be penalized - no trading for 3 days. At 20% over the limit, the software would shut you down. If the software closes you or you exceed the 20% overrage then you'd be shut down for 1 week from live trading with possible further penalties on subsequent violations including fines. Of course, I'd just work backwards so that the software close level was the true loss level. This graduated response will encourage my traders to utilize all of their risk while still being disciplined.
Surf's trading in my opinion is HORRENDOUS. He's not a bad guy. In fact he seems like a great guy to go have a beer with. Just don't talk trading with him. He's similar to VN. A very smart guy, who can't trade for shit. At least Surf doesn't whine like VN did when he got obliterated. Surf does own up to his huge losses. VN whined it was somebody else's fault he got crushed.