Not sure where you are getting the $800 from, try $150 and if you are capable of being a scratch trader, that $150 get's refunded to you. And if you can't even manage to be a scratch trader then why are you even trading? As to your advice for trading crude oil with 15 tick stops? I'll get short every newbie trader that tries that. LOL. Good luck. Lots of bad advice on this thread.
Yea, that pretty much covers it. Maybe not your preferred thought, but pretty much truth. Truth is not validated by number of posts.
Not getting into nuances of what the scalp trading is,it`s not a good idea not only with TST.But they do force you to do sort of scalp by placing hard stops beforehand,though,they did the right thing by extending the the period lately.Here you can see the result of such efforts: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=271186 Though,it is possible to adapt to such rules,there are much easier ways to make money.Any limitations are hardly good for the effective trading.
I'm sorry, I still have to disagree. How exactly are they "forcing" you to scalp? Let me put this a different way. Me and Marketsurfer did a live combine for all to see last year. Neither one of us passed it but I made one trade a day and I can't remember how wide my stops were, but you could drive a truck through them. My philosophy was then and it's the same now that one should use VERY wide stops and make as few trades as possible. THAT in my opinion is the optimal way to pass the combine and to continue to have success in a live account. That also happens to be my philosophy in general. I NEVER bought into this tight stop BS that gets peddled around on message boards as if having tight stops reduces risk. It doesn't. But TST does nothing to promote scalping. In fact, they have done just the opposite. They have extended the trading period, they have allowed customized combines for over a year now and they promote the idea of not even trading every day.
I said it already.By placing hard stops.Wide stops you are talking about don`t make sense,since they have the daily stop limit in place.Not to say it cannot be done,but one should prepare oneself for this particular rigid environment.This game is for the adults.Any sort of limitations,deadlines and restrictions drive you into the can,where there is almost no space for maneuver.