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Thank you, Tymbeline. Here's my email to TST on Dec. 1 2016:
Ashley, thank you for your reply.
I am sure I can pass the combine again with original rules. But why to put an artificial barrier in the form of FTP? If I always pass a combine and fail the FTP, so why keep the FTP.
Why won't you allow me to pass the combine 2 times in a row instead of taking FTP, because FTP forces me to break the rules of my strategy, and you can't plan when the market will force you to go in a drawdown mode. Unless of course you're more interested to keep someone indefinitely in a combine. Talk to your management, I think TST is making a huge mistake imposing artificial FTP rules that don't have to do much with real trading.
Thank you.
Igor Nikitin
I checked TST website today Jan 8, 2017 at 7:25 EST and the 10 day rule is prominently there:
Maintain an Account Balance greater than $0 after a minimum of 10 trading days
I wonder if they are serious and will allow me to take a new FTP for free. My guess is that they will want me to take the combine and FTP again for a nominal price. I hope it's not just a clever way to entice those who passed the combine and failed the FTP to take yet another combine and make some extra $$.
That would be my guess, too. They sometimes let people do a Combine for $1, I think?
My reading of that is that they want to get people funded rather than just making Combine fees. And the rule-changes are certainly designed to get more people funded, just as last year's were (and successfully).
And good luck with it, if they do ... (the FTP and Combine rules are the same now, anyway).
Just so I understand, you have "as many days" as necessary or 20 days to hit the profit target in the combine? And then basically you have to do the same thing as part of the prep, yes? Do they make you sign any non-competes once you pass?
Just received the email below... nice to hear TST dont have rules "graved on stone" and from time to time they adapt themselves.. interesting.
New Year, New Opportunities
Effective Thursday, January 12, 2017, the following rules are no longer required in Funded Trader Preparation™ and Funded Accounts™:
1. Only trade the Trading Combine/Funded Trader Preparation products you were profitable in
2. Maintain an Account Balance greater than $0 after a minimum of 10 trading days
Over the years, these rules have allowed many traders to fine-tune their strategies while building their accounts and, although we are providing more autonomy in accounts, we encourage traders to continue to set their own individual guidelines.
However, as we grow, we want to open our parameters to grant us the ability to evaluate as many strategies as possible to further our mission of empowering anyone, anywhere. In order to allow this and still evaluate based on true performance, Funded Trader Preparation will now have the same profit targets as the Trading Combine.
There's nothing about 20 days. You must trade at least 10 days in the Combine, no maximum. Also at least 10 days in the FTP, no maximum. If you did both in the minimum time possible, that would be 20 days between them, but that's just the shortest time possible to reach funding. You can just keep going until you do. (There used to be a 6-month limit on FTP, which has been gone for some time.)
I don't think the 10-day minimum still applies to FTP. At least, oppose to how it is done in the combine, it is not listed within the dashboard as a rule:
Thanks. Perhaps they need to clarify the question, then.
I was basing my reply on what Michael Patak said in the audio replay of his talk on Friday, linked to above, where he clearly does say that there is still a 10-day minimum for FTP. I believe that the change was that there is no longer a requirement to be positive after 10 days.
This is also what is on the email they just sent out:
I think someone at TST just needs to fix the info on the dashboard. If you email them about that, we would have a definitive reply. (I suggest it be you to ask, because you have the FTP ruleset on your dashboard, and also are directly affected.) If you do, let us know.
Thanks. The rule changes certainly make the whole scheme less unreasonable. I will definitely consider doing a tryout in the near future-- even though honestly I still feel it is a trivial amount of risk to win and the rules are still right on the edge of the best of what most traders can do. There used to be a page where you could look at all the stats for traders who passed the combine. Is that still available?
One thing I missed when I took the screenshot of the rule change above was an offer for new Combines. So here is the bottom of the previous screen shot.
I am not plugging this, and definitely think everyone ought to decide whether the Combine is a good idea for them, not based on cost alone, or any offers, but I think I should add the rest of the email, if it makes any difference to someone:
Note the conditions carefully; it does expire and it does not change the monthly subscription amount going forward. There should be a point in the signup sequence where it asks for a promotional code. Go to Home - TopstepTrader and it should be clear what to do.
(Any questions, don't ask me, I don't know anything that is not right here. Email TST support for any more info.)