Nope, the risk manager was top tier from a major name in the biz. Vetting was a year of statements showing a certain consistency and edge Very very few can do this intraday without a non public edge.
I think having the "Additional Rules" for the Junior Trader increases the odds of being sent back to the combine, and thus reduces the financial risk of the backer. However, if one trades the combine by utilizing these rules, and meets the parameters of the combine to either qualify for a rollover or meets the parameters with the P&L objective, then the transition to a live account won't provide any surprises, since the trader would have already been familiar with the additional rules. In other words, to improve the chances that you will succeed in the live account, you may as well trade AS IF you were a Junior Trader within the combine. Then once you are live, the only objective is the profit goal, which has no time limit. For example, the 30k account has a $1,500 profit goal to Senior Trader, the 50k has a 2k goal, and the 100k has a 3k goal. If a person makes it to Senior Trader, then the additional rules go away. Of course, this is a win-win for both the trader and the backer, since the account would be carrying a positive P&L balance, and that is when you can negotiate greater size and start taking withdrawals. So as I've posted before, the real question is this: "Can you trade within the parameters of the Junior Trader with the additional rules such that you can meet the profit goal without ever hitting the daily loss limit and the trailing max drawdown and get to Senior Trader?" If you can't trade with those rules while you're doing the combine, then you probably won't be able to do it when you're live as a Junior Trader.
Well, let's look at this from the perspective of the backer. You are looking at the reports of a trader who passed the combine and is now a live Junior Trader. The trader played crude during the combine and you noticed that some days he went "all in" with his max lots to make up for a draw. As the backer, YOU have the risk of loss, not the trader, who puts up zero capital. Do you want the trader opening a trade with max size on any given day? A ten lot crude trade can go 7 to 8 ticks up or down on 1 minute candles. The guy has a 100k account, so his daily loss is 2k, and his trailing max is 3k. He can't add to a loser, so he either has to eventually take the stop or hope that it goes in his favor. So I think the backer wants you to limit the opening size of any product once you are live, EVEN if you played max size during the combine. The potential of a draw is greatly increased, and I'm sure they can look back at the reports of the combine and see how many traders actually pass doing max lots. In fact, the exact OPPOSITE is true. The funded trader reports usually have much reduced lot sizes during the combine, so my guess is the backer wants to match the performance of those days, not the ones where the trader went "all in" during the combine.
I don't understand why some of you guys are asking hypothetical questions when you have a member on this very board who passed the combine and has been a "live" funded trader for a year now. Why not direct these questions to Crispy directly instead of asking open ended questions that you will never get an answer to.
Because he is afraid to answer them and jeopardize his current relationship which I totally understand.
The questions arise due to the maze of different rules between the status of combine vs. junior vs. senior. In the end, the only thing that really matters is whether or not a person can trade within the rules to generate a check.
Yep--- great story! The one guy that was successfully active at the fund had access to "unusual" but legal info at the time---his success came from his connections and not trading skill in any elite trader or traditional retail sense.
So I guess the moral of the story that we are all doomed unless we have quasi illegal info or incredible luck.... By the way again, if 99% of their recruits failed, their choosing method was wrong for that job. Had they called in 100 random people from the street, they would have got a better result....
... to which I'll add, why is everyone who believes that even here? If trading is impossible and nobody can do it, why do the same people = different aliases continue to waste their time in trader message boards to begin with? Furthermore, why does this website here still exist? Should Baron just shut the doors, delete ET from the servers and do everyone else a favor? If trading is impossible and everyone fails, why is anyone still here inside? ** After reading a number of the recent "is trading..." threads with all the complete & total negativity, I wonder what drives said posters to repeat the same mantra over and over and over and over and over again. OK... trading ain't worth it or it's impossible in some minds. Fine. Now what are you going to do? Keep wasting your time here yammering the same repeated posts? If so, why?