Topsteptrader

What do you mean successful?

 

Profitably. For how long?

 

Then you apparently think that all the Youtube videos of their successfully funded traders, now making their livings by trading futures, having started off with trading skills but without adequate capital of their own to trade futures, have somehow been "faked"? I suppose you think all the Apollo moon landings were, too?

That really seems to me to take "conspiracy theory" to a whole, bizarre, new level!

Either that, or it's just a seriously weird belief that would perhaps fit in well here.

 

Speak for yourself. Have you been funded by them? Maybe you know someone who was actually funded?

 

I know only a couple of people, myself, who have been funded by them. But there's another trading forum in which there have been discussions (and journals, and charts, etc. etc.) for years by large numbers of TST-funded traders. (You'll appreciate that it would be pretty disrespectful to Baron to post a link to it here, but you'll easily find it, if you want to.)

There also a couple of huge threads there in which TST's management strikingly openly discuss every detail of their business, answer thousands of questions, etc. etc.

Sorry, you're entitled to your opinion, of course, as anyone is ... but (to anyone who actually knows the facts) to assert that you believe they've "never funded a single person" really is just "beyond ridiculous"! They funded 370 people last year alone (according to an independently audited report, published online). There are people all over the web who have been funded by them.

With apologies, I really have no more to say on this subject. Again, no rudeness or hostility intended, but I really do have better things to do with my time than this! Sorry, but you just have your facts hugely and dramatically wrong, here.

 

The fact that you're not aware of success stories about funded TST traders ain't an evidence that supports your theory. Abscence of Evidence isn't Evidence of Abscence. You didn't even bother to inquire the bright side of TST business (If any) while claiming it's a sucker trap. Sure ... They won't give every wannabe what they desire. But they're willing to fund traders. Not saying they aren't deceiving by their marketing scheme (I'd trade only 2 to 4 lots of their 15lots account)... But as in every business... Got to be suckers. However if you're in sync with their constraints and in need of capital then they might be helpful. Guilty until proven innocent but if you don't bother to prove innocent then don't judge. Well ... Actually we're all free to Speak, Choose & Experiment.

 

You have been funded? Good.

 

I strongly agree with this perspective.

I've read many dozens of "Combine Journals" (in other forums and on blogs) and formed a really strong impression that the majority of people who fail a Combine do so not because "they don't know what they're doing at all" (though there are doubtless some of those, too - they perhaps don't take their Combines quite so "publicly"?) but through inappropriate position-sizing.

One of the annoying things about TST Combines is that of course it's perfectly possible to be a trader with a genuine edge, and to know what you're doing, and still fall foul of the trailing maximum drawdown parameter. There's a reason for this, of course: like anyone sensible, looking for traders to fund and effectively invest in, TST's primary concern isn't about those traders' overall profitability and speed of making money - it's about their risk management capabilities and willingness to stick to rigidly imposed rules. (The same is true, of course, with any kind of institutional trading: there's always a risk manager standing over your shoulder, and rightly so.)

The last time TST's Combine pass-rates were independently audited, they were only 20%. I guess this isn't too surprising, when you think what a low entry-barrier there is, and that absolutely anyone who can pay the admin-charge (which also covers the data provision etc.) can chance their arm at it.

However, in January 2016 (and partly as a response to "customer feedback", about which they've always been particularly responsive, interactive and enthusiastic), they changed, and relaxed, some of the Combine regulations in an attempt to increase the Combine pass-rates. This has apparently been successful, as they have already funded in the first half of 2016 nearly as many traders as they did throughout the whole of 2015.

For myself, if taking a 5-lot/$50k Combine (which would be the one I'd go for, myself: I see no great advantage in the higher-level ones) I would trade primarily one lot, perhaps with the possibility of adding a maximum of one further lot only to positions already in profit (in other words never having more than a single lot as my risk-exposure. I strongly suspect (but of course can't prove) that quite a few "failed Combiners" would have passed, if they'd adopted this approach from the start. (And it seems to me from their huge volume of public interaction with "Combiners" that Mike Patak and John Hoagland probably take this view too.)

I feel sorry for TST, in one way: they've very successfully started off a whole "industry" of funding remote traders who wouldn't otherwise be able to get funded, but in the process of doing so, they've also created a plethora of imitators (some of whom have even copied wholesale the entire wording of their own website!) some of whom are, frankly, scams. Thus the reputation of some parts of the industry they've spawned has become "blackened", and as a result of that, there are some people about (one of whom has just been posting in this very thread) who wrongly imagine that "the whole thing's a scam" and that "I'm sure they've never funded a single person". Obviously totally deluded, to anyone who takes the trouble to gather some information before spouting off in public, but what can you do?

 

I like TST's new motto. They started to remind me of the Uber drivers. Everybody knows someone driving it, but nobody knows anyone, who makes a living while doing it.

Also, due the the extremely high number of scams in this business, you are guilty unless YOU proved it otherwise...

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Tomorrow John Hoagland is herding the sheep to slau.... I mean having an AMA on BigMike if anyone wants to ask questions...

 

Thanks,

Profitably, I have never been profitable trading futures. I lost about $3000 in the beginning. But I was profitable in sim for about 3 months.

As I said before, I am doing well. I am learning from my mistakes, thinking, all that good stuff. All at the cost of $150. I don't have to risk my own capital and get all the nerves bugs out.