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I'm interested to understand why people are concerned whether a funded account from a trading evaluator operates in a sim or live environment.
A sim account means that the evaluator has a financial liability if the trader is profitable and no liability if they are not.
A live account means that the evaluator has a financial liability if the trader is not profitable and no liability if they are.
From the trader's perspective, so long as the trading evaluator is solvent and honours their contractual obligations to meet profit withdrawal requests, what difference? I don't think the lack of the newly-funded trader's 1-2 lots is going to make a difference to the supply and demand in the market and make the trader's hoped-for move any more or less likely
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
You are right, it doesn't make a huge difference, but if you are a bonds/notes scalper and go for 1 or 2 ticks, there is a huge difference, because the SIM account doesn't have the logic of FIFO.
Agree with Tr8er's point about scalping. If the platform required price to go through a level before filling you that could be a disadvantage. I remember some of the older platforms used to fill you on the first touch of a level, optimistic fills rather than the pessimistic fill Tr8er describes. Optimistic sim fills would be like finding the HolyGrail if you actually got paid real money on the profits. Bring back the old platforms! .
Psychologically I think this could be an advantage. You complete your Combine/Gauntlet/test (an intermediate step between sim and live), then you go 'live' where you get to keep any profit but know that you can't lose any of your own money, but also know that if it goes badly you also don't lose any money for the people who you want to be funding you. So another intermediate step to trading live with real risk rather than the traditional zero risk sim, full risk live.
You do not win as a trader, you just get to play again the next day. If that game doesn’t appeal to you then you should not trade. Gary Norden
Incentive, With all these shady info, rules, terms, contracts etc a simple test on if there is skin in the game for the prop firm will weed out the bs. As if you make money in the sim obviously the prop firm loses money, and I dont want to deal with someone who has the opposite interest. Whereas if its a live market and trader wins, the prop firm wins 20% too. Also These companies are not public so solvency is not known, but, if your orders show up live, who cares about solvency as the money is from the exchange not the prop firm.
There are many reason more, the reality is if its not a big deal, why doesn't oneup clarify the funded sim/live info, instead you find them saying the exchange "fees are covered by the funding partners. " really, exchange fees for a sim :/
Now im not saying anyone is not legit, also there could be great reason why they are not open about it. But for me personally, where free time is scarce, I would rather work with someone on the same page/incentives as me as there will be less ulterior motives and worry to think about
MES supposedly goes fully "live" after a trader has reached the "reserve" threshold. I was at $4,800 on my live account when the threshold was $3,500 and the DOM still was not registering. Maybe the live DOM threshold was $5,000. I will try it again when I get back up there. (Struggling a bit right now after trying multiple small shorts on last week's relentless rocket ride to the moon on the indicies.)
LeeLoo says that once live the account is fully funded live with Dorman. One of the guys in our chat room just passed the LeeLoo trial, so we should have some data soon.
Regarding MES, I just found an official communication regarding the issue from MES to a trader who shared it in the OneUp chat room.
"They reside on our server/exchange if placed through R Trader or R-Trader Pro. If through a third-party platform the oco functionality portion could be on your local side but the orders will be on the server/exchange. As far as the cue, we have subaccounts and a master account where all traders trade into their subaccount. To protect from disaster as well as for compliance reasons, all traders have access only to their subaccount because we can't rely on the stability of their connections, internet, and history of their trading with us. This is also mainly done because we have an overriding risk desk, where we can jump in on the master account if they are uncomfortable with their exposure or not cohesive with our underlying market model. As your contract specifies, the risk manager has the discretion to flip execution from sim to live and vice versa at any point of the day or week, etc. You will be paid out based on your performance no matter which environment profit or loss is made on."
Unless you are consistently making good trades on a sim account, then I recommend the following 3 steps first:
1) Take OneUp's 14 day free trial and get really used to the setup. OR take LeeLoo's 10 day trial. For a while, the LeeLoo trial may still offer a truly free step to a live account without paying anything.
2) Once you have done that, then if you don't already have a live brokerage account at Amp or Ninja (or another) then I recommend you put $500 in a new live brokerage account. Now, trade the MES, MNQ, or MYM micro contracts. Trade just ONE contract at a time until you can make $30 per day on average. (That's like $300/day on the Emini's.) Trust me, the current volatility will let you get this in just a few trades! This is for good solid practice, at 1/10 the size so you will not kill your account too soon. Even though the risk is low though, your purpose is PRACTICE to prepare you for the Emini's which are 10x as big.
3) If you want to take your live micro-account and grow it to $2,000 over the course of a couple months, I do recommend this path. Once you get to $2,000 then you can skip OneUp, TST, LeeLoo, Earn2Trade and many others and just build your account naturally. NOW you can trade the Emini's ONE contract at a time. Once you build it to $4,000 you can try TWO contracts at time. You are now trading the equivalent of the OneUp/MES $25,000 account! They only let you trade two contracts to start!
But if you want to blaze ahead and go for glory though, you can do OneUp Wednesday through Friday and succeed easily. Just give yourself 2 months to reach the evaluation goal for whatever sized account you opt to trade. Speaking of which, I recommend at least $100k, if not $150k. These give you a bigger max drawdown to play with in case you have a few bad days. Stay at just 1 or 2 contracts for a LONG time until your confidence is way up.
Leeloo is a great new alternative. Check them out. They have fewer rules, and some traders like that. I kind of like the rules on MES that keep me safe (must be flat on some news releases, no holding into the close, must scale number of contracts). LeeLoo has max loss rules, but that is about it. Wed through Fri should be okay with them too.
We now have 30 members of our chat room. If you have at least a year of trading experience, we'd love to have you. PM me for the link.
Wow Steve, I really appreciate your advice! I paper traded ES for about 8 months and when the MES became available I funded a 3k account and thought I could trade it the same (I used to paper trade after lunch with mostly two contracts). I have found that scalping MES with one contract after fees was not working at all like the ES. (Then I was advised to trade mornings and leave wider stops of 20 or so ticks with wider profit targets). That just dug my hole deeper and faster. Maybe shooting for a more reasonable target will help.
I also noticed you and another trader talking about getting out as soon as you start seeing the trade going against you. I was not doing that either, so back to paper with some new ideas. But I think taking the free trials may be helpful. I'm tempted to defund my account and use that money to pay for One Up or Leeloo month by month to see if I can even make it to a paid account. It gets a little scary seeing so many people after trading for years not being profitable. Once I get more experience behind me, I'll try the chat room. For now I'm afraid I would be of little help to others lol.
The micros indeed have more slippage and significantly more transaction costs (about 50% higher). But they are good vehicles to get some practice under LIVE conditions. But the goal is strictly to get to the regular Emini's asap.
You must find a system that works for you to be profitable. The fact that you are on FIO suggests that you have had SOME success in the past. I really think you should save your money and get on SIM until you feel you have an edge and can add 50% to the account balance of the sim account. There is no point in spending any more money on anything until you can see a path before you. Once you increase the balance on the sim to 50% higher, then you will be ready. (As long as you do it through consistent growth and don't take too much risk.) Try to add 2% to the balance each day.
Alternatively, I think you could try to do this (which would approximate what I am doing), which is scalping... Get back on the micros and use only 1 contract, and try to safely make $20 per day. If you lose $40, then STOP for the day. Shoot for $5 targets. Use $10 emergency stops but try to get out even faster if you sense things starting to fall apart on the trade.
If instead you prefer to really let things run in a trend, then use two time frames and only short if the larger timeframe is down, and only go long if the larger timeframe is up. A simple MA cross system can get you in trouble if you are not careful, but you can experiment with this and Support and Resitance lines.
Finally, start watching lots of videos on YouTube and here on FIO. There are hundreds of great traders willing to share their knowledge without trying to sell you something. Find that edge.