This is a reality check. Are you saying that trading manually, which is what TST advocate, is much harder now?
add to that the new crop of "test fee based "prop" or testing firms on behalf of prop firms! 1000 pay test fee 5 get funded, very ethical seems to be the real model but greed in us makes us ignore this fundamental , I am only loosing 200-400 for test! what do I care if thousands are getting sucked in to this!
I beg to differ ( about such business doing more GOOD then harm) Ok this kind of business activity by these kind of firms increases awareness of trading for sure. So good for brokering and exchanges , however if the fundamental of business model is to make money on thousands of test fees and fund very few then how is it good for the trading community?( and it is the IF that many are afraid to ask) IMHO
Keep in mind TopStep makes lots and lots of money for themselves selling the supposed "chance to be"... Most people never get funded and most funded traders are quickly cut off if things do not go well.
777 spot on observation, that is the exact criticism leveled against all these companies because A) they do not disclose how many they really fund ( they dont have to but may be one day enough consumer's will wake up and demand or regulator's will rain in) B) Given technological advances it would be easy to " process and evaluate" those thousands of applicants by automating the process and thus avoiding the stigma of "Test fee hamster wheel" C) Basic concept of finding talent from Joe blow off the street and ( not degree qualified quant type applicant high end) is interesting and very legit but the implementation via such a business model raising more eyebrows ! but who we to complain, every dog for themselves I suppose
Their own in-house traders couldn't pass the Combine. I followed the blog for a while - mostly losing days - then it disappeared. Here's Michael Patak's reply to a question on Futures.io -I'll let the reader decide about Patak's answer - BS or not? RDK91 How are things going with the coaches combine? Seems like the last trade was a few months ago and everything has been silent since then. Hi @RDK91, thanks for the question. Hoag and Danny really enjoyed sharing their experience in the Coaches' Combine with our community. However, bad timing is really the answer to your question. We ran up against the holiday season and slow markets. They were planning to get back into trading in the New Year, but then Topstep started funding more traders than ever before. We funded 82 in January and 159 in February, so you can see why Hoag and Danny's attention was focused on our Funded Traders rather than their own trading. We're working on an upcoming series - so keep an eye out for some great, new content! If you have any questions about our products or services at TopstepTrader, please send me a Private Message or use the FIO "Ask Me Anything" thread.
These “combine prop firms” serve a purpose the passing criteria is very strict you have to know what your looking for out of it data points, entertainment or funding these will determine how much money is to much to spend on these. The fact that there are so many ppl failing this shows how hard trading is and a more realistic training ground is need so if you take it serious it could I be very useful the major issue is that the ease of swiping a credit card to pay for the fees can lead ppl to paying more than what makes sense and not trading as realistically as they would in a real account I’ve done that several times. There is a educator oil trading group that recently passed a few times he does it live in his chat room it’s a paid service though. I’ve said this before but the best one to me it earn 2 trade I haven’t verified they have paid out to anyone but ass far as the rules they are the closest having a real account ie you have a fixed max draw down. It’s equivalent to having a $2,500 account since that’s your max drawdown. No time of day elimination that forces you to reload. This shows you the you have the skill to trade live minus the reaction from the market but it’s a very good start versus the others
I am a trader at www.topsteptrader.com for 2 years . Stp I would like to know how to connect the metatrader 5 platform with the TraderStation platform? thank