Hi Guys,

I am here to share my journey through TopStepTrader's 50K Combine.

Main instrument is ES however I might look towards ZN, one day.
Because I trade mainly off the DOM, tape reading, ZN sounds more appropriate.

However I honed my teeth on the ES and developed kind of a skill, feel for it.

It's all about Price Action, Tape Reading and a tiny bit of Order Flow.

I have a ladder displayed + time and sales + 30min Chart.
Keeping an eye on the average true range of the 30min chart.

Trying to finish the combine in 1 month.
Which is a daily target of 300$.

Shooting for 5 x 6ticks on the ES
With symmetric RR or more favorable.

Trying to trade around open,
During 2 or 3 hours.

Setups are … multiples …
My favorite are reversals (IDK why …)
But I simply buy Support or Breakouts
Or I simply sell Resistance or Breakdowns.

Sometimes mean reversion,
Sometimes trend continuation.

I look at T&S to see confirmation,
Imbalance near levels and during the trade.

Depends on context ?
Should be context dependent.
But I have no systematic way of defining it.

Today is 2nd Day

Spoiler Alert /\
Never been a profitable trader !
Never withdrawn more than funded !

Why ?

Fear and greed are tough to beat.
Self sabotaging my trades.
Small gains … Big loss.

Sold the top. Took 1 tick profit.
Sold the bottom. Blew up my account.

I really wanted to quit trading,
Focus more on real life business.
But here I am with another combine.

I like AXIA Futures,
Never paid for any course.
Not recommending anything to anyone.

Anything else …

The market is the real deal.

Tradovate is from my experience kind of a toy software compared to Sierra Chart, NinjaTrader, Xtrader and the Co
But something I really like about it ... is the ability to put bells (Alerts) on the ladder by clicking on price.

That's the only DOM I've seen with this strange feature. However it helps a lot.
It enables me to keep track of the market swing highs and lows.

However since it's a toy thing...
It's really buggy.

Cheers.

Oh No, I lost 999$ today.
Didn't trade much but still ...

Tried to short around RTH open but market went up.
+ I didn't respect my stops and I did average down.

Equity is @ 50,300
+300 in 3 days.

Friday been another disaster.
Basically ... tried to buy Breakout / sell breakdown near RTH open.
But the price was reverting back into the range, multiple times.

Finally caught one working long trade.

Standing @ +284$ and 18 days to go.

+ ~20tick
+1tick
+7tick
+20tick
+16tick

Alright ... +935$ for the day.
Not a bad day.

EDIT

+2ticks
+3ticks

PnL +990