And there's a difference between skill and luck. Just by chance, 'enough people' will pass a Combine, so please don't use that as an argument for anything. I'm not saying the Combine is impossible and I certainly understand why they would set the bar high, but if they were serious about recruiting talent, they should at least give people 15 days to do what they now have to do in 10.
+1 That 20 day combine costs $190 I think. anyway whatever the cost...do you know how fast you can lose $190 in 20 days when you are trading you own 5k account with no rules or reliable trading plan? haha trust me, if you can't scratch a combine...you will lose more then $190 bucks in 20 days. Obviously is this a general statement...some people are longer term traders who swing trade the indices, CL or Gold, those people will have draw downs, and positions that might go against them which they would be forced to realize a loss because the of the closing timelimit ...but for intra day tick hunters, this is a perfect drill to build confidence without starting in the hole. I wish they had this type of thing for equities when I started trading. I started by trading 25 shares positions with real money...I paid more in platform fees then what I made in a month even if I was profitable but I can say that I never blew out an account and I learned to win without having any "real money" at risk. ( cant lose much with 25 shares So yes TST is not a scam, its a mirror
Seriously? Dude, I paid out the ass for a college education. Yeah, those "real" firms kind of like that college thing. Nothing in life is free. Everything has a cost. TST will actually let the avg high school educated ET'er with no quantitative skills to speak and no proven ability to really do anything in life, they will actually give those guys a shot. Because God knows Goldman won't. Believe it or not volente, life is pretty efficient. Sure, some kids are born are third base. Some get lucky. But in the end, one generally earns the fruits of their labors and their return in life often is correlated to the risks they are willing to take. It's almost a fair world after all.
Actually, it's 30 days and 60 days to do a 10 and 20 day combine respectively. Any there is no luck because they have to duplicate their act. Again, I've voiced my criticisms of TST on here loudly. But just because something is hard, does not make it a scam. And btw, let me very clear about something, I don't think the combine is hard at all. My personal belief is there just is not any edge in trading flat price futures intraday. I know that will rattle and anger a lot of guys here who have staked their life on it, but as someone who has been in the business for 15 years, most futures contracts are highly efficient. Most p&l is generated from noise and under certain distributions resembles a profitable pattern. I ran a Chicago prop firm for 6 years. I've stated this many times on here before. Out of all the talkers on this thread, I actually have seen the "real numbers". If a market does not have an edge, then over time you are going to have capital erosion. Slowly but surely. Sure, you can take huge risks, sit on losers, avg down, do all sorts of crap to fool yourself into thinking you know something, but the math is pretty clear. And THAT is the reason the failure rate is so high at TST as well as ET and the general population. The fact is, TST can change their rules to anything you like and it won't change the fact there is no edge. They can offer free commissions, free platform and allow you to have a million dollar drawdown, it won't matter in the end. If your long term expectancy is negative, then the only uncertainty is time. How long before you run out. Everything else is just noise.
My 2 cents. Pros: If you have skills to trade no money(like me) , its a way to get back into the game. so thanks for providing me that option. The entry fee is pretty low.Even if you give 3-4 combines will not cost you a lot. the data feed alone /month may cost around 100$(not 100% sure on cost), and paying a 200$ cost for the data feed is not too bad for me, since there is a chance to get funded. I have been a fairly profitable trader, never really lost money in the long run, return about 20-25% on margin average per month, which admittedly isnt too great.Have about a 65-70% hit rate on net over a 4 year period. Well i did all of this analysis after failing their combine. The 30k combine is the best risk- reward combine , you risk 1500$, make 1500$ , you pass. It's fairly easy to get 6/10 days profitable and other metrics . But 500$ risk limit per day, which is admittedly fairly easy to hit in any volatile futures market. 50k combine is decent too. risk 2k, make 3.5k . But the thing i havent had experience with was the max drawdown. In a way risk isnt 2k, because theres an additional restriction that you cant come down 2k from your peak. So the room on downside doesnt increase even if you make money. Still quite a fair deal. Since daily limit is 1k USD , which is doable with 1-2 lots in crude, gold etc. Can do a similar analysis on other combines. The sim test is way easier than live environments since there is no slippage etc. if you place an order , it gets executed at exactly the right price. so you know your exact risk every time Also you can get a rollover , if you meet their criteria but not profit target, so there is the chance of that. Also, can give it as many times as you want to. Now there are few catches: Cons: I would say that if you are a decent trader, 70% hit rate, risk management is fine. there is about a 60% chance that you pass the combine . Now the thing is you may have to give another sim test with the same metrics but reduced profit target to get funded. since profit target is reduced the chances of passing it are higher , though not 100. After this you get funded (this test isnt always required apparently). For the live environment , the same metrics apply, till you become a senior trader. (Again this time no profit targets, chances are >60-70, that you make it) All in all if you are a decent trader there is a 1/4 shot of getting funded and keeping your live funded status. if you are too good(I know of only 2-3 traders out of 200-300 that i have seen that fit into this category,not necessarily most profitable but fit the risk profile), there is a 70-80% chance to get funded and stay being live (Initial hiccups only involve clearing 5-10k buffer since you'd have to lose many times in a row to lose to 0 , at which point you go back to sim) Basically the firm doesnt risk any money . Due to Max. Drawdown, for funded traders too, there is little at risk for the firm(can easily do the math for many traders). The risk/ rewards for the 150k/100k combines arent exactly great, but daily risk is more . Now the cost for each combine is different - of course around 10% of the money the firm is going to risk if you pass. But, there is an additional cost that they ask for a custom combine. This doesnt make much of a sense to me, but perhaps they have their reasons. If you pass and get funded the roundtrip cost is 5$/ roundtrip. I have gotten as low as 2$/roundtrip at previous firms. I did a cost evaluation for my own trading system , have a lot of scratch trades. If i made 20k USD net profit , quite a large percentage of that amount was roundtrip costs. They do however stated that this amount is negotiable if you are a senior trader. so its under initial hiccups. The squawk is nothing of the quality of ransquawk which is paid. understandably so though. If you are starting trading for the first time and think you can learn under this program , i am not sure if would recommend it ,nothing beats live money imo, under real conditions with firms that are willing to lose money in training you.(but of course hard to get into), but its cheaper than other shops offering training, simulator tests, eg maverick trading. If you do have experience trading, then i suggest you know exactly how good you are at managing risk else you can find out . imo you'd pass if can manage risk well. My own risk mangement isnt top notch, but system is good, so i survive on that. Overall , at this moment i am quite thankful to have this option. going to start another combine next week, as pseudo prop is the only option for me right now.
well, due to the conversations in this thread alone, I sent an email to TST in request of a public combo demo. If they still offer those promos, I'll run a 10-day $50k program working ES alone, right in here. I'll also record each trading session live and post it to youtube daily, too. So each trade sequence every day can be reviewed. Wouldn't it be an interesting two weeks' daily journal in here for that? My only fear is nobody at all would tune in and comment :eek:
Austin, I give you a lot of props for putting yourself out there. I've said that before on here. But you are a good example of what I'm talking about. You've been trading futures for 10 years and to my knowledge, have some sort of a vending business which is fine, since you disclose all that. But you have done a lot of combines and haven't passed any of them. I don't think it's because you don't know how to trade. I don't think it's because you lack market knowledge. I just think you're fishing in a lake that has no fish. But I wish you luck if you do another combine. I'm sure the bleacher seats will be full of hecklers as usual.
They already suckered you out of $400 before. Don't think they are going to let you play for free again. You've done this long enough to know this is a suckers bet yet the challenge still entices you.
Ever wonder why the target customer is young, lower educated and financially challenged ? You think that is just coincidence? If this model was truly about finding talent then you would see the results. Instead all you see is hype and more options to purchase products that eat up what ever capital the dreamers have left. There are just to many variables and rules that don't make sense if their true intention is to find talent and not just churn and burn combines.