Welcome to NexusFi: the best trading community on the planet, with over 150,000 members Sign Up Now for Free
Genuine reviews from real traders, not fake reviews from stealth vendors
Quality education from leading professional traders
We are a friendly, helpful, and positive community
We do not tolerate rude behavior, trolling, or vendors advertising in posts
We are here to help, just let us know what you need
You'll need to register in order to view the content of the threads and start contributing to our community. It's free for basic access, or support us by becoming an Elite Member -- see if you qualify for a discount below.
-- Big Mike, Site Administrator
(If you already have an account, login at the top of the page)
According to German laws, I have to run a business for it and thus the income is taxed at up to 42%. For trading with my own money, i.e. privately, only 27.5% final withholding tax applies. Of course, there is also the possibility of going through a limited company form, but in the end it remains almost the same.
Here is a simplified example with 20k trading profit per month.
20,000 trading profit per month, -20% for the provider, I still receive $16,000. I have to pay 42% income tax on this, leaving $9,280 for me in the case of trading with one of the providers.
In the case of trading on my own with $20.000 trading profit per month, I only have to pay the 27.5% at the end of the year, leaving $14.500 per month for me.
So trading with these providers costs me $5.220 per month with this example profit of 20k.
I am not willing to pay that in the long run.
Me too, but unfortunately I was a little late, so I've already wasted a few euros.
MR79
"My only task as a trader is to protect my capital (risk management), the market will take care of the profits."
Definitely,
you have to know what you're doing, otherwise you'll pay a lot of fees for unnecessary resets.
Probably the sum of the resets will still be less than decimating your own capital, but it is still unnecessary.
I myself only switched to these providers when I finished 5 SIM weeks in a row with a positive result. I think that was the right thing for me to do.
MR79
"My only task as a trader is to protect my capital (risk management), the market will take care of the profits."
I've now watched all three of your videos, although as I understand it the one you first linked to was not your own screen?
I could see the Volume Delta indicator, but as there was no commentary/sound, I didn't quite understand it I'm afraid. But I'm eager to learn if you want to explain.
On the subject - do you know if the indicators in the new Order Flow Suite on NT8 are good?
So, are you trading your own live account now moving forward or what's up? I think you mentioned Apteros as an alternative, but did you change your mind on that?
Yes, but better late than never. And maybe someone else can learn from our mistakes.
NOTE: I'm still undecided on if I consider these firms a viable alternative for actually funding an account for reasons I've repeated so many times now. But I definitely see the value as a training tool and learning to manage risk, having a process, etc.
And I also agree with phantomtrader's comment on how it's a casino crap shoot without an edge/method. I believe that's the case with most who uses these programs. The comments I read from some of the users on OneUp (which have a social platform where users can interact) were incredible. I mean - there were guys who clearly who seemed to have challenges just turning on a computer. The rest seemed to be gambling. I think these make up the bulk of the profits for those who sell these programs. That's why I would feel more safe with E2T knowing I actually trade a live account with them.
Hi - I'm a Ma'am! Anyway, to answer your questions:
The guy was SHORT when the market was zooming with substantial volume LONG. I tried to show him that with order flow you could see the increase in volume on the long side and that there was very little chance of it reversing and going his way. He should have accepted a loss and gotten the hell out of that trade. A good scalper would have seen the opportunity to reverse just from the order flow.
But as I mentioned before, this guy is hopeless. He's still doing the same thing and expecting a different result (Prof. Einstein). I think he lost $3-4,000 on that trade just sitting there like an idiot watching it go bad.
I've looked at the NT7 and 8 order flow indicators. Does nothing for me as a scalper. Some people use the cumulative delta. I didn't find it to be helpful because the numbers are relative, not absolute, regardless when you start the indicator.
If you're going to use order flow, you need real time data. The Volume Delta indicator is a real time volume differential. It's the absolute difference between the real volume or bid/ask depending on which you select to run the indicator.
Unlike Jigsaw, all the monkey business of potential trades appearing/disappearing isn't there as a distraction. Since Volume Delta is real time, it doesn't skip ticks - it reports on any type of bar you use. If you watch Jigsaw on the NQ in replay, you'll see what I mean.
As far as chart size is concerned, it really depends on how you're assessing your entry point. I run my algorithm on a 64 period RJay Renko Hybrid chart. But it can be adapted to other sizes as well. It all depends on how your strategy is constructed. It's the order flow that's the final determinant.
I might have some time this afternoon - I'll make another video with explanation. Just a word of caution about Volume Delta - it takes a long time of just watching it to make it useful. Like everything, Rome wasn't built in a day. So be prepared to work. But again, it's the most useful order flow tool that I've found.
Good evening, Ma'am! Sorry about that. Well, to simplify even further, I'd say the biggest mistake was to let the trade go from a profit to a loss.
Thank you for that lucid explanation. I think I understand, but I definitely need more studies and homework to understand this kind of tool and analysis. Those charts/bars look beautiful, too, so I might want to look further into those. I'll be happy to watch any videos you make on the subject.
I hit the wall today with LeeLoo. Here's why: The trailing drawdown is from the highest equity point. What happened was that there were a few breakout trades where I would extend my profit target. However, my exits were in areas where the market was getting weak i.e. reversing. So the difference between the highest equity points built up after a few of those trades. Today I had one or two losers which brought me to the ragged edge which finally hit. I saw it coming but it wouldn't make a difference if I stopped or waited until tomorrow.
So that's a huge disadvantage because as that trailing drawdown shrinks, even if you're profitable, it doesn't matter because the probability of hitting the wall increases. I was up at $160,250 but the trailing drawdown was at around $3,000, (approximately), all profitable days. One or two trades can easily take you out of the game, which it did.
Anyway, done with them as it's like a programmed fail. Will not reset. It was only $135 to sign up with the discount so no big loss.
In the meantime, I made $1245 in my own account today.
How are you doing with Earn2Trade? I think they have some screwy rules as well.
It looks like I would not have hit the wall with Earn2Trade because the trailing drawdown would have stopped at $3,300. I was over $160,000 so I was comfortably ahead of that.
Just talked to them now. May give them a shot.
I have done evaluations with TopStep and Earn2Trade.
I was not aware that once E2T is live, they have a **trailing** DD, I thought it was EoD all the way, which is how TopStep is. I didnt make it to live.
I was attempting to trade their mini gauntlet at the same time as my TopStep and was in step 2 with TST (which I have since passed). For those unaware of this, its not possible to trade 2 rithmic-fed accounts at the same time on the same PC using the NinjaTrader platform. SO, I was using the E2T supplied web-based Finamark to trade the E2T at the same time, and Finamark is no bueno. Continual disconnects and lags, and on a failed breakout I was too large and paying attention to NT8 and my TopStep step 2 - and when finamark disconnected, I didnt realize it, and by the time I did, the position had exceeded max daily loss, so I failed the eval. I went on to pass eventually TST.
Long story short, I would have surely investigated that issue (trailing DD) before even starting with E2T - as I said, TST uses all EoD drawdown limits, which I understand and can account for.
One aside re LeeLoo and Apex - Apex seems like LeeLoo because Apex literally copied LeeLoos business soup to nuts, I am not sure but I think one of the Apex owners may have at one time worked with or for LeeLoo management. I say they copied in my opinion because I have seen Apex elements on their website and interface and they are word for word copy pastes in many cases of LeeLoo, who have been around as a prop program far longer.
Im not sure if I would ever bother with a LeeLoo/Apex/et al (like UProfit Trader and others) who essentially keep traders on a sim account forever - like someone else mentioned, I would never bother building up the balance of my account, because it is never really actual money held by a regulated/trusted custodian anywhere (like a brokerage firm), its simply the house money of the prop firm. First off, who knows how solvent they will be, secondly since all withdrawals actually smack their bottom line, just as in a casino, how long before any scaled up large withdrawals cause them to dump me
or even worse (as many forex/metatrader brokers do) manipulate my trades to ensure I lose? After all, if all trades remain in their own "sandbox/sim", I can never really be secure with that, can I? I guess a reply would be that they can (and might) just mirror out profitable traders order flow to master live market accounts of their own, but this is how the metatrader forex brokers attempt to do it too, and that only works for them because 99.99% of forex brokers lose so they never have to pay out ANYTHING, so any flow/wins they do have to pay out before they realize a trader has a positive long term expectancy are small and manageable. With on-exchange futures trading, I feel like the winning trader % is FAR higher.
With TST and E2T style props, where they put you to a brokerage funding partner with actual statements in your name once you pass, I feel like the trader and prop goals are always aligned. With the Apex/LeeLoo sim-forever types, the goals are oppositional at least until they REALIZE you are a winner - if you (or any other trader or even aggregate traders) win too much before then, you could literally bankrupt them.
I can't believe anyone actually does this. If anyone reading this is, please read this post below. If you do this, you aren't trading the market. Please understand why, and the pitfalls of doing so. It just blows my mind.