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@ignacio90 - You are correct, this is no longer a rule in the Funded Account as well. So in your example if you have a negative account balance after 10 trading days and have not hit your Daily/Weekly Loss Limit or Max Drawdown you will remain in the Funded Account and can continue to trade.
@matthew28 - Thank you for the feedback. It's important to note that you have as much time as you need to meet the objective in Funded Trader Preparation now. Also, the scaling plan does scale up pretty quickly according to your account balance.
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.
Will More Freedom Mean More Success in 2017?
We know this has already been being discussed and we appreciate all the feedback. Let us know if you have any questions and keep the discussion and feedback coming.
The situation in FTP and Funded accounts is a little hard to figure out, frankly. I'll summarize it as well as I can, based on what is on the TST website as of this morning. I hope that @TopstepTrader will help us out by responding to this post.
(A) As I read it, in both the FTP and the Funded Account, the weekly loss limit and the daily loss limit are the same, and are the same as the daily loss limit was in your Combine (exception: there is no weekly limit if you passed the 30K Combine.)
(B) The weekly number is simply based on the sum of your daily losses for the week. So if your weekly limit is 1,000, and on two of the days in the week you are down $500 and then $501 the next day, you are over your weekly limit. Or, if you were down $200 a day for each of the first four days, and then $201 on Friday, you are are also done. (You can reach but not exceed the limit.)
(C) The "weekly" limit is apparently an actual per-calendar-week number. That is, if you are close to the weekly limit on Wednesday, you can just wait until the following Monday and the weekly total resets. So if you stop trading before you hit the limit, and wait for the calendar week to elapse, you're OK again. Or so it seems to me, as of now.
(D) Also, the weekly limit goes away once your Trailing Max Drawdown "reaches the starting balance," which is zero in both the FTP and Funded accounts. (The FTP and Funded Account "account balance" only keeps track of your profit/loss.) The Trailing Max Drawdown is simply a fixed amount that is deducted from your highest account balance. So if your MDD is $2,000, and your highest point reached so far was +$500, then you can't go back down below -$1,500. It obviously trails up as you have higher profits, and it stops going up when it reaches the starting point of zero. So when you have made $2,000, in this example, the MDD is now zero ($2,000 highest point minus $2,000 MDD), and the weekly limit goes away, never to return. I think.
I am attaching screen shots from the web site pertaining to each of these points to show where I got them from.:
Can @TopstepTrader please chime in and confirm or correct these interpretations?
Also, can you please explain why these particular rules make sense, particularly when other complicated rules are being eliminated? Obviously, they limit the losses that traders can pile up, but so does the Trailing Max Drawdown, in a more straightforward and clear way.
This is not meant as a negative or critical question. But this rule does introduce more chances to fail, with no clear advantage in terms of long-term profitability for the trader or the firm. (Naysayers, which I am not, can have their own views, but my question is a simple request for clarification.)
It would be nice if there was a user end feature with RTrader that would allow the user to set their own risk parameters (never to exceed the broker or TST). I have asked Jonathan and Eric at Rithmic to implement the end user risk management controls. It would have really helped me along the way with TST.
This can be done with Amp upon request to their trade manager, and probably many other brokers have this feature upon request.... Just FYI
I certainly would very much appreciate such a feature, too. And I believe that specially for the live accounts this would be a great way to mitigate risk in a very controlled and individual way.
And thanks for pointing out the general possibility - this is actually something I have been looking for online for quite a while, dunno why the brokers aren't more open in using that point to their advantage i.e. marketing it.
Well Jonathan Walden and Eric Aversa (owners of Rithmic)said it is on their "to do" list but I think an indicator could be created faster, I just don't know how to yet ... Maybe someone could for NT8
@bobwest - As always, thank you for your diligence! You're interpretation of these rules are correct and you've also highlighted the relevant help center articles, so thank you.
The Weekly Loss Limit causes our traders to be more risk averse when they begin trading in their Funded Account. This means they are risking less in terms of contract size and focusing on more high probability trades to build their equity balance consciously and deliberately. Prior to implementing the scaling plan and Weekly Loss Limit, some traders would come onto the Funded Account and whether due to excitement or some other factors would begin trading right away with larger size and unfortunately quickly hit their loss limits and lose the account.
The WLL is in place to deter that type of behavior and encourage traders to focus on low risk base hit trades that steadily build their equity. We always want traders to "trade for tomorrow" and increase their longevity and odds of long term success in the Funded Account, we believe this rule helps accomplishes that.