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Shame about the tech glitch/feature you ran into on the first long entry setup.
If you had been filled on that long , it would have made your rollover, and the rest would never have happened.
Thoughts in retrospect:
It's a tough decision with respect to trailing stop management. In this I mean, once your trade is X ticks into a profit, do you continue to leave your stop at it's original point or tighten it up ? This is something I notice early on into your combine, where you would get 10 ticks into profit and still have the original stop, thus 20+ ticks of open risk. Maybe go back over your valid trade setups in your combine, even the ones you missed or had some technical issue with, and see if you had done everything perfectly and with a different trailing stop technique would it have helped you reduce your overall risk.
For example: If the new trade goes 8 or 10 ticks into profit then adjust the stop to the technical swing level where your entry signal formed. When the first contract is filled at first target, adjust your stop to the next technical swing level if one exists... and so forth until you run out of contracts or the trailing stop is hit for a profit.
Also, as we discussed, starting with 3 contracts , given only 10 days to work with, makes it mathematically much harder to reach the profit goal because with only 10 days the total number of trade setup's is limited. If it's me with those TST risk/reward/time constraints, I am going in with max contracts (5) right out of the starting gate with a much tighter risk control strategy as mentioned above. The heat of 5 contracts is going to force you to manage the risk better. Starting with half the contracts (3) and such a wide stop/open risk, then the profit targets will have to be a lot bigger to make the math work given the 10 day constraint. By the day 7'ish point in the combine, you even suggested letting the second contract run for 100 ticks, which indirectly confirms my analysis.
Thanks for sharing your experience, and for allowing me to share my thoughts as well. I think you have a good trading method, so stick with it and keep learning and growing in your skills.
Sounds like you still have a bit to work on, and combines are an expensive way to work! I think they still have a 'practice account' type subscription, where you pay only $100/month to sim trade all you like and develop further at your own pace and trading approach. If you can mentally maintain the same focus (despite there not being a deposit on the table to lose) it's a much more economical path to take. TST is great for development in this way.
When you're fully ready, take that combine to see if you can pass, or even just make a little bit of dough - these two things are a good indicator that you're ready.
Then it's up to you decide whether to work for them, or take your newfound abilities to a self-funded account.
However, I would advise against being in perpetual try-to-beat-the-combine mode - you'll find you'll have spent all of your time and effort to gain what actually amounts to a pitifully small sized trading account (since the live trader cut-off losslimit is the acct size to you) where you'll be trading with very high leverage. And if you manage to make money under these conditions, you then only keep 60%.
Yes these are great points and I will be looking into the trades I took as well as the ones I did not and try to weigh them all out. I think one thing I will be doing for sure will be to add entry criteria into this plan. For example, using a 1 min chart, if I were to see a reversal type candle in a zone or area of interest, I may be able to enter and reduce risk considerably more than if I were to just stick with this 6 range 14/15 tick stop size. Another for sure if I enter with 2 or more will be to have that T2/T3 run a bit .. like at least to a zone of opposite type. Perhaps even just using 15 min zones as entry and target areas.
I will also look into the concept and crunch some numbers on your suggestion of running 5 cars right off the bat, and what kind of targets make sense with something like that.
I may even just look into the possibility of just doing the smallest combine and trade 1-3 cars which only has a $1500 profit target. Again, will be crunching numbers and looking at past trades and do some more testing and will come up with something.
Good ideas and suggestion, however I will pass on their practice acct. Seems silly to me to pay $100/mo to do what I can already do for free with Ninja and SIM accts. (I do have an acct with AMP that has funds in it, which gets me the free data feed). Having that little bit of skin in the game is great, but not quite what I am looking for especially as I am just re tweaking that plan. Perhaps once the plan is set and ready to go, that skin in the game would be good .. but then at that point, if I think the plan is a go .. then it's combine time for me.
Regarding the split and acct size .... yea that is a concern, however, for me and my current financial position, it's either go for it with TST, or hang it all up until I have enough funds to do it on my own. If I can figure out a plan that works well within their parameters, and get funded, then start socking away the splits to be able to trade my own acct .. or even build it up and utilize their OPM and leverage with larger size .... something that I definitely would not be able to do any time soon right now, it seems worth it to me. The deposit amounts are not that big, and really, the way that I am adding it up, I could take $1000 and have 5 stabs at a combine to get funded, or I could drop that $1000 into my AMP acct and still only be able to trade one to two cars, and IF I were to make a few bad entries, and blow out, then what? I am pretty sure if somebody gets funded, and blows out, they go back and do a combine to get funded again .... not sure if that is a "rollover" combine or if they have to pay though for that, but if you have done it once, you should be able to do it again? I dunno, maybe I am cray cray .... and I can tell you one thing for sure .... I will be testing and crunching numbers and will figure out something here within the next few weeks.
They used to say that if you were funded and had to go back to the Combine (blew the account), you would be eligible for two free Combines. I went looking for that today on their web site and couldn't quite find that, but this may be your answer:
I was thinking about this today, and I had the thought that perhaps you might consider starting a new Journal as a follow on to this TST Combine Journal.
It would make a nice tool for you as you modify your trading strategy coming out of the Combine experience. I think you did a really nice job with this journal. The new journal would help you get your strategy organized and help you stay on track with what you come up with.
If you think about it, the Combine's function is to hold your feet to the fire with respect to adherence to a set of trading performance goals. Maybe your Journal could help fulfill that role for you. Lay out your personalized performance goals in the journal, and document your progress in achieving them.
Thanks Trendwaves ... I will chew on this and try to figure out a way to journal that modification.
One thing I noticed while journaling this last month ... is how I really need to get a grip on how to juggle or balance "Life." A marriage, our first newborn kid, two J. O. b.'s ..... trading, backtesting .... and topping that all of with an informative, engaging, and helpful journal has not been easy. Thank goodness the kiddo started sleeping thought the night, but wow, when I started that combine .... that sleep deprivation stuff was no joke
With that, I know there is a way, I just really need to navigate through it all and weave it together so that I have some sort of balance. I will try to figure out some sort of formula or method to document my modifications and discoveries, or results, so that it is not boring, will actually make some sense, and I guess most importantly .... helpful. (suggestions very welcome here )