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I think you are mixing apples and oranges here. While Combine certainly has high educational value, it's not a product designed to tech how to trade. It is designed to verify how well you trade. 400 is what I paid to enter the test and TST refunded me at the end back that 400, so my cost is zero, not 400.
I believe if you receive some pitching from TST for educational stuff that was likely their College of Trader's Development. It was priced at 1495 usd, now it is 2995 due to high demand. This is no way mandatory to take before you can enter the Combine, it is just a totally separate product.
I subscribed for CTD AFTER I have been approved for going live, because I liked a lot Bob Iaccino's analysis and views on market and believe I wanted to rehash my own reading of charts and market with the help of professional traders to be able to trade larger moves successfully on constant basis.
I think if you are a MASTER trader as you "shyly" stated in your trading profile, you should not be concerned with neither CTD nor cost of the Combine, you should be able to crack it in no time. However, something tells me trolling is taking place. But I will let @Big Mike decided on it.
for your info, i did read their enticing ads many months ago and eagerly sought clarification and assurance. there were also many live calls placed to me seeking my participation but it was not 400 usd for sure. it was more like three times that amount just to buy their materials.... lol
your candid response would help several other traders around here and perhaps several more who visited bmt infrequently.
you did say that it only costs you 400 usd to participate from the beginning to the point where you are now, receiving funding and all?
you did not pay any more than the 400 usd all inclusively, correct?
if what you said is factual in terms of dollars and cents, then newbies should flock to them. 400 usd to learn how to trade profitably and consistently, is really a small sums to pay.
you wanna ascertain that again so everyone on board here would get the fact straight, especially myself and my perhaps faulty memory?
and all the best to you.
will follow your progress as you report it here, with intense interest and thx again for posting.
AND since their lead traders were not willing to show during my conversation with them as to where (not how--which might be a closely guarded secret) their entry and exit were on their live trading charts;
would you be willing to show us a pix or two of your own trading screen, pls? much thx.
I have put this guy on ignore list, he doesn't seem to ever read any reply he's receiving and just keeps posting nonsense. I am not a spokesperson for TST and do not wish my journal to become a jungle of cultural and language barriers around topstep products.
Pardon my jumping in here, but I am puzzled by something in your question... for the Combine, TST doesn't charge you to "buy their materials" -- they don't sell any materials. They aren't selling a trading method, either.
They offer you a challenge: if you successfully trade in a simulated account (you trade your method, not anything of theirs), and meet their profit and loss control criteria, they will fund you. That's the Combine. You have to put up a deposit of a few hundred dollars so you have a stake in the game. The amount depends on the size of the simulated account. You get it back if you either (a) do well enough to get funded, or (b) meet all the loss control criteria, and have a profit of at least a dollar, but less than the funding target.
If you don't manage one of these outcomes, you lose the deposit; that's your risk.
I did a Combine that cost $200 at the time. I did not meet the profit target but I made a positive amount and didn't violate the loss limit criteria, and so I got the money back (and I took it as a "rollover", another Combine; but I could have taken cash, as @xelaar did). My cost: $0.00.
That's also xelaar's cost -- $0.00 -- because he got his deposit back.
So, no, they're not offering to charge you $400 usd to learn how to trade; they want you to prove that you already know how to trade. If you do, no charge, and they fund you (basically, they are hiring good traders.)
The Combine is a great experience because of the discipline it requires, but that's what it is. It's not some "here's how you can learn to trade for $400 usd" deal.
My journal record for today will follow, but here and now I would like to fine-tune my trading plan according to realities of its implementation.
1. I will use 6 ticks for mini-range break out and 3 ticks for stop hunt (twice contracts), and I will trial setting my stop to trailing for range breaks too. It worked well for stop runs and this is what I use, and I have a sense on average it should work better for breaks as well, as it will force to reduce risk even on smaller moves.
2. If breakout fails or order flow weakens before hitting the liquidation level - opt to flatten manually before the stop is hit, same applies if after fake-out price is stuck in negative territory
3. Having this scale out scheme on T4 with fast moving market is somewhat difficult to manage, so I will go back to my old all-in all-out tactics, and will use 12 ticks target as default for all trades, but will opt to reduce target for lower volatility market and increase for higher volatility market, however, the worst I will consider trading is 6 ticks target, i.e. 1:1 for range break and 2:1 for stop run.
4. Most importantly I will not close the trade with flatten out if it is slightly positive, when I have a desire to do so I will just move stop closer and target closer, so to give it a chance to make some ticks.
5. I will only trade each setup/swing once before price goes away and comes back, so I can avoid several losses per one setup as it happened today.
Is their a special reason you are not using sierra charts? I just ask since you appear to desire to have a trailing stop that works better for the TST, and since sierracharts connects directly to the T4 and has a decent trailing stop/atm options it would appear to be a good solution for you. just wondering.
I don't think tools are too important. Besides, T4 has a server-based trailing stop, something very rare, if Sieera is having a different trailing stop it can only be a client-based trailing, since it connects to the same T4 back end. In the end it does not make much difference.
Hi there, so I am fully committed to trading the 150K combine. This is my first "trial" of my system vs TST rules. I just finished trading this AM session and it's not reflected on the attached image (I was +1,810.00) today.
I would like your feedback on how my report looks, what things I need to clean up and how you think TST would approach my results.
So far I have noticed I either have a quick winning day or a long battle day recovering from losses but always ending up + for the day.
I will let other more experienced Combine takers comment, but I think you know it looks very good, you may only consider to make an effort to improve one of the red metrics you have during the next stage.