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Actually what he showed was he does not have confidence enough in his trading to finish out the combine. I know for a fact the TST scout team frowns upon this. Hoag has stated as much. If anything he has hurt his chances of getting a funded account.
Seriously people, I explained in my Combine Strategy thread, that you have to play the Combine in a special way to pass it. Yes, he did get funded, so you are incorrect. Here is the explanation why he was smart:
Risk and reward: He reached his goal by day 7, you are not getting anything extra if you overshot the profit target, so there was nothing to gain by making 1K more. But if he gets a bigger losing day, he might need another 2-3 days to make it back. So by making the very minimal trades, he saved days, he followed the rules and he kept his exposure minimal. And he passed the Combine in the minimal days needed.
So Hoag is wrong. It is like in the NFL after week 13 your team made it to the playoffs. There are 4 more games left, but if your play off standings are not in danger, you might relax your best payers and let them rest, because except bragging rights, there is no point in winning 3-4 extra games, but it is necessary to have healthy players in the playoffs, when every games needs to be won.
And again, there was the playoff, the Live prep, and apparently he did pass that too, so TST did see that he can trade under different circumstances and it wasn't just a fluke...
Now I understand Hoag. A trader could have just 1 huge day and play it safe for the rest, 7-8 days, but this guy had decent numbers for 7 days, and didn't risk for the last 3, so I say this was smart trading, not gaming the system...
Fair enough - My point still stands though- if you try game the system you may have to go through the live prep unnecessarily and they may throw extra conditions in there to be sure your for real and you just didnt get lucky. Not sure why you would want to take this chance. If your a good trader why not prove it?
My understanding is that everyone has to do the Live prep, no matter what your Combine looked like. Maybe if you kicked the ball out of the stadium, but TST only loses 2-3 weeks profit making by making you do the Live prep, so that is a small price for them....
I agree completely and place it in the 'gaming the system' category, which has nothing to do with actual trading capability.
Combine's are useful for teaching skills necessary to be a good trader, if you set them up to be so. If your goal is to just pass the Combine, then that is not the same as having a goal of being a good trader.
Do you intend to be a trader? If so, how does the above apply in the world of trading? Whether you need someone else to fund you or not, once you are trading real cash, the above is not useful.
So why this guy got funded? I listened in the pit to his interview yesterday. He's from Malasia but he's not novice, he traded Malasian stock and I think he mentioned trading Indonesian stock indices as well. And he's traded at least 5 years. Now we can ask if he traded for 5 years how come he needs TST and 30k account, so perhaps he wasn't very profitable and does not have a capital even a small one. Which is fine. On the other side, perhaps TST understands the point Mike and Silver made, but if they will cut too severe they will be left with no traders: this program is not really intended to get on board experienced profitable traders, they try to get lucky with novices, while teaching them how to trade, and offering combines. Which is absolutely fine by my book. And after all this guy passed the test and only got 1500 usd max draw down risk. Not too big risk to speculate about long enough.
Mike, I know what you are saying, but this is only true for yourself in the honest look in the mirror. In the real life it is not like this - everybody doctor results, everybody. Funds can get dormant after a strike during first months of the year not to risk their 20% by the end of it, banks regularly put good trades on book and bad trades save for next year hiding in SPV and the bonuses based on good trades pretending bad ones do not exist, brokerages oh boy what not they do.. It's not right but it's an accepted norm in a perverted world of finance. So what this guy did is not gaming the system but just not taking unnecessary risk once conditions are achieved.
Neither is winners vs. losers duration stats... Nevertheless they measure you by it in the Combine... Actually, 2/3 of the Combine stats are unimportant in real trading....
Gaming the system would be if I discovered a glitch in the software and exploited it. Using sound special strategy to pass the combine while still following the rules is just common sense. After all the trader eventually has to keep making money, so no gaming the system would help him with that when trading Live. But he does have to pass the Combine first....