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Hi Brian, thank you for the thread, and I wish you rest and peace with your dads healthly recovery. If you should think the TST combine is tough you should have seen my wife on showing her my Fridays statements for the week during the year. LOL, will sometimes.
If you get a rollover on this 10-day combine, instead of getting another 10-day you can ask Topstep to turn it into a continuous combine. That's what I'm doing with my latest rollover.
The minimum for a continuous is 2 months, so you'd have enough credit for 2 months of the 50k combine ...
I recently rolled over a 150k custom combine worth 450 USD. I'll have it converted to either 30k continuous for 3 months or maybe a 50k cont. for 2.5 month. Still haven't decided yet
Edit:
Due to administrative limitations it wasn't possible to convert it anyway. I will get a refund instead.
Remember, a refund is always a possibility as well....
I blew up the combine on the last day. Hit the DLL....wasn't really thinking I suppose but going into the day, I had decided that if the first trade was a loser, I'd quit and roll over the combine. But honestly, that is trading the combine and not the account....so I went for it and forgot how much I was down for the day....and the risk manager took me out, which is what its supposed to do, its a protection after all but in the sense that I was trading the account vs trading the combine, I blew it big time....
Thanks for all that voted for my journal. If anything is to be learned from this, its this, pay attention to the loss limit! And trade the early part of the combine as though its the last week. Its tough to trade well the last week if your back's against the wall.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci
Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
Well its that time of year, time to review, to plan, to think and to make changes as needed. I normally spend the last 60 days of the year thinking about the past, planning for the future and then making tactical changes as dictated my thinking and planning.
I have a few new financial goals this coming year. Not the least of which is to make sure I exploit my opportunities the best of my capability. However, besides that, I plan on starting a foundation or non profit to begin working on some of my long term goals. This will require further consistency in my trading.
Another thing I've worked on is eliminating distractions and unnecessary inputs. One of those is the daily posting here at futures.io (formerly BMT). Over time I've talked about reducing my posting frequency and have always come back to it. I think its more to do with the community than for anything else. But honestly, the community feels smaller for some reason. I don't feel in touch with it like I did and since I write my personal journal in Evernote, my private blog and this thread, it gets a bit redundant. So after talking about it for a long time, I've decided to reduce another distraction and simply post a weekly summary here in the thread. If you want to read my daily stuff, you'll need to find me at my blog which can be found in my profile here at futures.io (formerly BMT).
I will be adding long term forex trading to my trading plan as well this next year. It will not be a quick thing. I have looked at it quite a lot this year and have gone back and forth on trading forex. In the end I can see it being a portion of a longer term portfolio. Using a basket of currencies as part of a diversification strategy can only be a good thing. I've done well in the past as a longer term trader/investor with much less understanding of what I was doing so I think I can add forex slowly and build it up into a nice piece of the puzzle.
The rest of the year promises to be decent, I think the volatility will continue at least for another week or so until the market figures out what the OPEC meeting really means for the future of energy and how Russia will respond. I really think Putin is the wild card on the international stage. He could disrupt lots of peoples plans for the future with a few quick moves if he is so inclined.
I have a lot going on personally the next few weeks so it looks to be pretty busy. My dad is going in for CAT scans and then surgery to have his cancer removed. That should last until around the 17th or so. Then more family in for the Christmas holiday. For sure I won't be trading between Christmas and New Years.
Take care, see you next weekend.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci
Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
Like everyone else here I totally look forward to your journaling and journey to becoming an even more successful PROFESSIONAL Trader. Sorry to hear about your combine and what you are going through.
I look at your Combine and I see a lot of take aways that are positive:
1. Obviously you were trading with a ton of external stress.
2. Although you didn't pass the first time a 29.98% annualized rough rate of return is not bad. (I'll put my calculations below and that is not even accounting for the fact that you would have had increased capital in a year, just straight stick growth.)
3. Oh I forgot to also put down that you were doing your Combine during some of the traditionally toughest days to trade in the year. Had it been a month ago things probably would have been much different.
4. You have now completed it once and it was positive; so you know you can do it again.
You are a great trader now, and will be even better in the future.
Oh almost forgot my rough. Calculations. 10 day combine = 2 weeks trading so in two weeks you went from 150K to 151,730.
52/2 =26 two week periods in a year
26*1,730 = $44,980 conservative projected returns even with your current combine
($44,980 /150,000)* 100 = 29.99% would be your projected annual returns.
Hi Bill, nice to hear from you......all that might be true but I suspect the amount of risk I take might make most investor types turn white headed overnight.....therefore those returns are less attractive than one might otherwise think.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci
Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
Oh so you have seen real picture on line have you.... LOL
Risks are fine as long as you don't let them get away from you.
I've watched your journal, and don't really see a crazy trader that is out to lose all his money.
No me on the other hand, well I have been in trader rehab for some time now.
Just getting back into real money trading again with baby steps.
Dad came through the cancer surgery just fine. Took longer to recover than we expected, a being at the hospital full ten days is one of the most exhausting things a person can do except be the one required to be there.....next up, my mom's pacemaker replacement in early Jan. Hopefully thats it for a long time!
Been working on further simplifying my trading, holding for larger gains, taking better trades with better entries. Those things are working out better than I had hoped. Still dealing with holding trades through the "kill zone" but by getting better entries, the kill zone is less of an issue now....
Going to be finishing up my annual review and my future planning over the next couple of weeks. I'm taking it slow this year as there are a few things I really need to get solidfied and then simplify.
The longer I live the more convinced I am that life should be simple, goals clear and direct and effort expended in as few areas as possible to the most effective long term. So this year I am working on getting rid of the good to focus on the best and this is a PAINFUL process. I have a lot of good things I want to do but figuring out which one is the best is difficult. In the end, I have to go with the ones that give me joy, everything else is just duty and obligation. Therefore I plan on giving those things as little head space as possible, automating at much as possible and create as much margin as I can to do and participate in the things that bring joy to myself and my family.
Thankfully, we have a pretty good idea of what those things are, now its a process of eliminating the good....easier said than done.
Might be my last post until the new year....not really trading much after this week.
Cheers.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci
Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris