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lets use an example. first trade is a winner. you made 3 points in 5 min. now second trade. you're up 2 ticks, but already in the trade for almost 5 min. what do you do? if the trade goes against you, your average duration is greater for the loss. if you exit the trade with 2 ticks profit, then that will reduce your average win to 7 ticks. darn...
but then again it's pretty obvious what the purpose is....
Thanks for asking this question @josh. The other question is, do you only get to take advantage of the 80/20 split if you leave the $30k "cushion" in the equity partner's account?
In other words, what if you complete a $150k combine, then build up $10k in profits, then start taking the 60/65% payout - do you need to just make another $5k (of which you keep $3000) to be moved up to a 70/30 split? And then once you make another $15k in profits (of which you keep a little more than $10k) you get to move to a 80/20 split? Or do you have to leave all your profits in the account and build up a $30k cushion to be moved to an 80/20 split?
Hope that makes sense - not a huge concern but I wondered about this the first time I read through the funded trader page...
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty. - Frank Herbert
In general, the longer amount of time you are in a profitable trade, the more you give the market an opportunity to pay you. It is a way to more objectively measure the adage "let your winners run". Look at the s&p today. I was in a winner for about an hour. If I had been in it for 2 or 3 hours, I'd have made some real money. Instead, I got out far too early and did not get paid that well.
Vice versa for losers.
So in general, traders who spend a lot of time in losing trades and not a lot of time in winning trades will not make money.
There are always exceptions like the fast winner but I expect it will work out as the logic above.
it can go the other way as well, you were up nicely after an hour and then after 2 or 3 hours you lost it all again, because you got a little greedy maybe.
point is, if you're profitable with what you're doing, then you shouldn't care about time.
also it's important what kind of a trader you are. a scalper or a swing trader. makes a big difference too.
If you're profitable, should you not also care about profit factor, maximum drawdown, win rate, or other performance metrics? Profitability is not the most telling metric of a trader's performance. Even if a trader is profitable and has good numbers generally, he can likely still improve by knowing certain metrics and the average hold time is one of them.
Having a stat like average hold time does not mean you should trade for the stat instead of trading well; hopefully that is common sense. It would be silly to stay in a trade longer simply for staying in the trade longer so your hold time stat would improve. But a random sampling of winning traders would probably reveal a significantly longer hold time for winning trades than losing trades for most traders. The stat tells the story--the story should not be told to make the stat.
The statistic has the purpose of making the trader aware of a principle which is beneficial for most traders, nothing more.
Does max daily loss include open (unrealized) losses/drawdown, or only closed losses? Say I enter a 15 lot which goes against me 4.25 handles, leaving me with a $3200 unrealized drawdown--will I receive a margin call or have my position closed in this case?
How is a "trade" defined for the purposes of W/L, hold time, etc.? Is it by a single filled order, by flat to flat, or what? Let's say I enter a 10 lot long. I add 1. I add 1 more. Now I flatten. How many "trades" is that? What if I were to scale out?
There appears to be a very strange way that the overall stats are being calculated. Instead of being calculated as an entire set, they are calculated as a daily average. So right now my average loss is greater than my average win, but this is only possible if I have lost money net, and I'm up $800. So for two days my average loss was -$303 and -$150. You are averaging these two numbers, instead of averaging all trades. This is obviously not really correct -- if I have ten trades the first day all losing -$200 each, and one trade losing -$5 the second day, my average loss is -$182, not -$102. Help me please if I am misunderstanding this.
this is just me. I normally enter the market with a fixed target (more a scalping approach), or I enter without a target because I believe we are in a strong trend. but in both cases as soon as I see evidence of a possible reversal I get out. doesn't matter if I'm plus or minus. and certainly doesn't matter if I'm in the market 10 min, 1 hour or 5 hours. and I believe the market doesn't care either.
like I said before, scalper or swing trader makes a big difference. another example, I'm a scalper going for 3 points with a stop of 6 ticks and I'm consistent profitable. lets say 75% winning trades. should I really care about a holding time?
Silvester17 and Josh both bring up points that I was thinking about as well. I am mostly a scalper and the faster my winner happens the better for me. My average hold time for losers is moderately greater than average hold time for winners.
What I can infer from TopStep that I "should" cut my losers sooner than waiting. Additionally, the TopStep model seems to look for traders that do this and also encourages moving stops to break even plus to avoid long in time, "unnecessary" losses. However, I have found that moving stops to break even when the indicators have not yet deteriorated is a recipe for turning a winning trading into a break even trade most of the time.
Although I am not currently planning on taking a combine I have looked at the requirements. It is possible that my trading style is not suited to their "model" of the type of trader they are looking to fund.