"learning" to trade might take six months or several years... depending a whole lot on prevailing market conditions at the given times. back in the early 2000s, a lot of prop traders and at-home traders caught on pretty fast solely because market action was fast. Volatility was high, ranges were wide, markets were deep, conditions were prime for success. Tuesday the S&P futures traded a 6.50 point total range, all session. Wednesday they traded an 8-point total range session, that's it. At other times in history, the same symbol has made six, eight, ten intraday price swings much greater than that. So sitting thru one active session back then was equal to sitting thru six, eight or ten entire trading sessions today. In other words, you could observe = learn more in times past inside of one single session than you can sitting thru ten sessions = two full calendar weeks of market observation right now. Damn little in this profession is static. Almost everything is dynamic. That is one aspect that drives most Type-A participants crazy. They want to define everything in strict terms and stats. Well there are no boundaries as such when it comes to trading. Sit thru two weeks of no-range chop, day after day and then work thru two weeks of large-range trending or oscillating sessions each day. Same trader, same skills, same tactics, same account size, same everything when it comes to trader constants. Insert the variables of totally dead markets, average price range markets, wild volatility markets. Results will vary in all three. Right now with vol at multi-year low levels, you can put in 100 hours of market "learning" but most of that time is wasted while watching dead drift and chop. You had no chance to learn anything in real time because nothing happened. Then the next 100 hours of market "learning" might be inside high volatility, wide-range market periods. At that time you will learn 5x to 10x more in the same 100-hour span as you possibly could in the dead-chop 100-hour span. ** Badly as the human mind wants to correlate and structure everything involved into neat little boxes, this profession does not work that way. At all. The constants are few while the variables are endless. Welcome to trading.
that's fractal nature of market .i consider "constant" as an edge and "variable" as market condition.
That's right. That's why the "max lot size" and "daily loss limit" are IRRELEVANT numbers. It's an incorrect way to view the combine metrics. For the 30k combine, 10 days: Max allowable draw/Max allowable losing days $1,500/4 = $350 For the 50k combine, 10 days: $2,000/4=$500, reduced to $200/day as Jr Trader. For the 100k/combine, 10 days: $3,000/4=$750, reduced to $500/day as Jr Trader. And as we both posted, the $1,125 is the "TRUE" daily loss limit on the 150k combine, reduced to $600/day as Jr Trader.
Not sure. They reduced the profit targets, which is a good thing, and at least makes it a closer match to the Jr Trader metrics. However, the only combine that is still similar to Jr Trader is the 30k, the rest are not.
The hardest path to trading success is to teach yourself how to day trade futures. The easiest path is to learn from someone with a good track record. Not your brother-in-law. Chose someone from one of these groups: trader who has been interviewed by Jack Schwager (Minervini); trader who has a verifiable track record (Zanger, Kirk, Williams); and for day trading - a prop firm that has a great mentorship program (SMB, T3). Other names could be added. TST seems to be somewhere between self-taught and mentorship. I really don't know much about their mentors. With the prop firms I mentioned above, I almost feel like I know those guys. They produce books, tons of videos, and the mentors make their living from trading. Maybe someone who knows more about TST can comment. Despite the popular opinion on ET, not everything with a price is a scam. A good service will speed your move along the learning curve, but you will still have to be the hardest working guy out of 100. They've already done tons of research, you just need to internalize it, control your emotions and be disciplined. If you do try to self-teach, you need to research at least 2 years of price data. That can be done 1 day at a time over two years (dumb idea and the one that I stumbled into), or you can buy price data. Save some time, buy it.
1) It's "explicitly" stated that there is no weekly loss limit for the funded 30K trader, as there is with the larger account sizes, but you do have to adhere to the overall loss limit, which is the least of the four account sizes. It's not an "advantage" when starting out. You still have to build up the account. 2) If and when the 30K funded trader can build up a substantial "profit cushion", the absence of an explicit weekly loss limit can be an "interesting" advantage compared to the other accounts that have an explicit weekly loss limit. The 30K trader can lose more money in a week compared to the other account sizes that have an explicit limit. 3) In order to genuinely enjoy that "edge", one has to build up the account substantially, very substantially, especially with respect to the 150K account. 4) It's easy to talk about it in a logical context but to actually realize it is very different. TopStep could fill that "hole" at any time. :eek:
1) Contact TST 2) Ditto 3) ? ... I believe it's a losing "day" because of the commission. Contact TST to find out what happens if you have a "scratch day" and does it count as a trade day or a "tie", not included in your profitable days statistic. :eek:
I don't think the op was implying it was a "scam" or "conspiracy" but rather he was simply pointing out the discrepancy between the rules for combine vs. junior funded traders. You had posted earlier that one reason why traders who pass the combine don't make Sr Trader is probably due to the level of risk they were taking in the combine vs. the more stringent risk parameters of Jr funded status. I think that's quite valid. However, you also posted that TST needs funded traders to "support their business model." If that's the case, then the rules would be the same, in order to maximize the efficiency and transfer of combine winners through the Jr funded phase. From the backer's perspective, I can't fault them from making additional rules, given that real money is now on the line, and especially if the rules will actually HELP the trader to succeed into Sr Trader. For example, the rule that you "can't add to a losing position" is a GOOD thing. Unfortunately, since these rules are NOT enforced in the combine, there will always be a disconnect between the number of traders who pass the combine vs. the number who pass Jr Trader.