Welcome to NexusFi: the best trading community on the planet, with over 150,000 members Sign Up Now for Free
Genuine reviews from real traders, not fake reviews from stealth vendors
Quality education from leading professional traders
We are a friendly, helpful, and positive community
We do not tolerate rude behavior, trolling, or vendors advertising in posts
We are here to help, just let us know what you need
You'll need to register in order to view the content of the threads and start contributing to our community. It's free for basic access, or support us by becoming an Elite Member -- see if you qualify for a discount below.
-- Big Mike, Site Administrator
(If you already have an account, login at the top of the page)
Just turned "Pro" and could use a little help, or guidance
You know it's interesting because now you look rationally to the trades you take and you think you should do something differently, but maybe you just did it all right. In a sense when you have "little" experience you trade very well because you have a simplified vision of the market that as you read more and you trade more, you lose. I looked at your trades and they look perfect, it's the "simplicity" that make them perfect.... years ago I could trade like this, but then I had some terrible drawdowns and I had to go through understanding the complexity of trading.
However the ultimate goal is to go beyond complexity and achieve a certain level of simplification, that will allow me to folllow trends and to stick to winning trades.
I suggest you to keep this semplicity and maybe just reduce size a little bit. Don't overcomplicate things, just reduce size.
I have passed TST many times, and blew up the funded account several times.... I will tell you something: in TST you should use micros otherwise there is no chance to keep the account.
Even with the biggest of the accounts (150K) you are basically trading a 4500 account and you need to achieve 9000 in profit, so that is a 200% ROI.
At the beginning you don't understand how volatility can change, if you have 15 contracts of buying power and volatility increase you will wipe out the account in seconds.
It took me years to understand this, markets change and volatility is a big part of the equation.
Though once you exceed $5k profit in the Funded account, after passing through the scaling plan limits, you can request adjusted risk parameters so if on the a smaller account the DLL could be pushed out a little to minimise the chance of hitting it on a bad/dumb day.
Also when I had a real money Funded Account with Topstep (a few months only unfortunately), they encouraged the trader to set their own "soft" DLL with Topstep inside the Topstep limit which would take you out automatically before a rule break. I presume that is still available. For example the $50k DLL of $1,000 could be pushed out to $1,500 but then have your own soft DLL set at $1,000, the same limit as before, but now without the fear or consequences of accidentally hitting it.
Well done on the results the other day. Sure it is Sim like you say, but it is good to know your methodology can produce strong results.
You do not win as a trader, you just get to play again the next day. If that game doesn’t appeal to you then you should not trade. Gary Norden
Thanks for the reply. You are indeed correct. Topstep (obviously) has control over the account risk parameters but you can request modified parameters such as a tighter DLL or in times of extreme volatility or if you’re an established trader, a larger DLL. I actually had them set my DLL to $450 in the live account when i was trying to game my way out of the hole i dug myself. Which, looking back on it was probably more of a detriment than benefit but regardless.
With the market’s seemingly slowing down today i should have the entire week in terms of journaling uploaded by tonight.
Hello everyone, finally getting around to putting pen to paper on the past week and a half. And boy, was it a hell of a week and a half.
With some of the biggest overnight moves we've had in months and intraday swings of hundreds of points in NQ it was one of the most engaging and probably fulfilling weeks I've had trading in a long time.
Let me preface this by saying the past couple weeks are my literal sweet spot, kill zone, golden ratio, whatever. This type of volatility mixed with the type of TA I do on a day to day basis is literally the perfect conditions for my trading style. So, with that being said let me try and pick up where I left off.
The evening of the 21st and the morning of the 22nd were kind of tough. I was just resetting after getting a solid 50 point trade when the Evergrande news hit, which sent NQ higher by over 150 points in a matter of minutes. I was just coming back inside from taking the trash out as i heard my stops get hit, so i ran over without fully taking stock of the situation and tried to fade the move. It was getting to the point where Tradovate was having issues like it would on a Fed day or another extreme news event, but at 10:30 P.M. As you all probably know that's a recipe for tears and sure enough it was, kind of. I took the account to -$2192.50 and called it a day for the combine account after try to take a couple last minute stabs at getting a winning trade. That wrapped up my Fed Day I was looking forward to the next day.
Btw @bobwest, i want to thank you for clueing me in to the term "on tilt" when it comes to trading. I honestly had never heard that be used in this space and since then I've dove into the reasons, how to identify it, and how to mitigate it. So thank you. This night was one of those nights where I felt myself going full tilt but pulled off before I was going to crash and burn.
Alright, so onto the Fed day. The day I was supposed to not be trading.
But through another Discord (chat room) I was turned on to ApexFunding and as I wrote up in my review (figured I'd just do it once, so here ). Long story short I suited myself up with one of their accounts, and proceeded to run my face right into the wall with a nice potent cocktail of Fed volatility, laggy data, ignorance of their trailing max drawdown and how to use the platforms (NinjaTrader8.) So essentially the 23rd and 24th were me getting my bearings on the NinjaTrader Platform and letting the Topstep account breath for a second. And it really wasn't until Sunday/Monday I really started to feel comfortable after taking the weekend to try and familiarize myself with NT8 as well as set up some ATM orders so I could actually tr(y)ade my risk parameters. Essentially with the Topstep account at or near the profit target I mainly kept that account for what you'd call "A+" set ups, or just what i'd call perfect. By this point I had multiple accounts running for Apex and the Combine account for Topstep.
09/27, full session:
Sentiment: Bearish
Plan for the session: We opened Sunday night at a very precarious and consequential spot. The Friday close gave no resolution to sellers or buyers and we were sitting essentially right at the tipping point for more buyers to come into the market if we pushed about another 20-30 points in ES, and about 150 in NQ. And sure enough, the Asia session came out swinging. Pushing the indexes right to the edge. But, right as I was going to call it a night the EU traders printed a H&S in ES and a double top in NQ. Let's just say it was a long night.
Risk limits $1200 daily loss limit, $2000 max trailing drawdown or the "halfback" rule for giving back gains.
Globex session:
Edit: apparently i broke the link, but the chart with fills is attached at the bottom.
We literally sold the entire morning into the cash session and then kept selling some more until we found ourselves ranging in a consolidation pattern about 150 points wide. The plan was the market was telling me the plan.
Plan for the day: Starting late afternoon in the indexes they started to slip from what had been support, and into the Globex session, they didn't stop. From the consolidation we had on the 27th to the lows we had on the 28th NQ puked up over $450 points. And essentially through pure adrenaline at this point it seemed I traded till I could and then got some sleep for work. I had already padded the account a decent amount by this time and didn't want to get stuck going 'on tilt' and giving back what I had gathered in both accounts.
Risk limits $1200 daily loss limit, $2000 max trailing drawdown or the "halfback" rule for giving back gains.
Globex:
NQFills0928
Getting to my desk about 9 and firing up the trading apps round 10 almost worked out better for me, as I caught the market right as it was rolling over.
NQFills0928b
NQFills0928c
The rest of the day was a turket shoot, selling at or near resistance, buying at support.
I ended the day with a $10,390 net gain in the APEX accounts, as well as a $13,850 day in the combine account.
Edit: I just realized the report i'm pulling from NT8 is in 24 hour periods. The last trades you see in the NT8 trades report are technically for the 09/29 full session or the Globex session that i'll post after this.
By this point i was full on "not now chief i'm in the f*ckin zone" and i was tuned in. Like i said in the post above. This is literally the perfect conditions for my trading style. At this point, and essentially over the past two weeks i have never felt more comfortable in the markets than i do right now. When it comes to sizing, execution, when to lean in, when to lean out, so on and so on. I feel like i've turned a corner in terms of my "journey" or whatever you want to call it and have finally been able to start existing in the niche i have carved out for myself.
For whatever reason being able to spread out my trades across multiple accounts was extremely helpful. It made me feel a lot more comfortable being able to spread the risk and not be so concentrated on one account.
But, i'm going to have to finish out the week later today as i have stuff to do get done the rest of the morning. See you all later.
This is a good thread. You're to be commended for your honest self evaluation and transparency. You clearly have some talent as a trader. I'd encourage you to keep going because it sounds like you're quite passionate about it. You've also gotten some great feedback and good suggestions.
One thing that stands out to me is that your plan is fairly vague. That gives a trader permission to do all kinds of things during a session and can lead to a lack of focus. It's much easier to get derailed by overtrading, etc. Lack of discipline and unclear objectives and intention seem to go hand and hand. I'm not Einstein but when he said to make things as simple as possible, but not any simpler, he might have had a point.
How do we do that in trading? Do one thing. Learn to do one thing very well and repeat it over and over. This suggestion is usually met quickly with at least an objection or two. One of the biggest is that markets are constantly changing conditions from trending to range bound, and a trader must adapt. This is true. A setup that works in a directional market will fail in a range environment and vice versa. If you've trading divergences or mean reverting setups on a trend day - you know what I'm talking about. What worked yesterday might not work today.
So, why do one thing then? Well, if a trader can't trade one setup proficiently and know how to quickly identify the day's conditions - he or she is going to have an infinitely harder time trying to trade 2 or 3 successfully. The trader invariably picks the wrong setup and gets run over.
Make the 'adapting 'to the day type a binary decision. Do conditions favor your setup? If so, then trade. If not - pass. One set up is all that you need to accomplish your goal of passing the combine for top step.
Additionally, if you're only trading one setup - it's much easier to review your trading and determine when and where your trading is most proficient. This is focus.
Do you need to trade one setup forever? Of course not. But until you've absolutely mastered one trade - you aren't making things any easier by adding a second and third and so on. It's just a great way to regroup, focus, and simplify.
Why do it? It works! When I traded stocks at a prop firm many years ago (not one of these subscription based prop firms. There was a hiring process, you received training and you didn't have any out of pocket expenses.) those of us who were most successful did just this. We had one or two plays every morning. You'd see dozens of new traders come in the door every several weeks and 98% of them were gone in well under a year. Those that stuck around and accomplished their goals had very a focused process and routine. Those that failed jumped from one thing to the next every week.
This is really good advice, and wish I'd heard this 6 months ago haha.
But as time goes on and i get more time under my belt A. I'm realizing the less trades the better. and B. Find your niche and sharpen it to the sharpest edge available.
I'm a fan of that advice and, in my opinion, i've already essentially headed down that path.
When i first started the TS combine i was literally trading every market i could and entering on every set up that when looked at with some imagination was still sketchy. Now i trade mainly NQ and ES and primarily reversal patterns. You can see in my trades i primarily go short and with the volatility lately it really has been a showcase.
A few months ago i would like at a chart and find a trade. Now I'm finding value in letting the trades come to me. Where back then I'd look at a chart and conjure one now i look at a chart and if i don't see something that excites me there's really no trade.
I do still trade price action i.e pullbacks, retests, fading breakouts, etc. But, the one's i'm really leaning into are the reversal patterns.
That's why
Really resonates haha. So yes, I know what you're talking about. But, even on a trend day there can be opportunity if you're careful enough. Going short has been a dangerous game in this market but if anything it has helped make me that much more "in tune" with the day to day price action or put another way, hypervigilant to price action.
Ok, So I'm going to start this next data dump with a generic update. Now that volatility's started to die down and I've gotten to catch up on sleep and everything else life dictates hopefully i'll be able to keep up with my journaling here as it really is something that I enjoy and it is something that has benefited me over the course of the past couple months. Having to, or being able to rationalize your trades is good exercise and it almost reinforces the pathways in your brain i feel like. So i enjoy it.
So, last i left off i was deep into the combines for Topstep, and ApexTraderFunding. And with the latter, NinjaTrader. Well, put simply I am not a huge fan of NT. It is by far one of the most pointlessly overengineered pieces of trading software i have ever used. And is nowhere near being user friendly. On top of that it was an absolute resource hog and buggy on top of it. About a week into my use with it i had to end up deleting All 8 gb's of it and reinstalling. Furthermore I was constantly having issues with it freezing and just overall was not having a good experience. The straw that broke the camel's back was i woke up last Monday or Tuesday to a position that was down by $1700 after either Rithmic or NT (leaning towards Rithmic, more on that later) or someone decided to lose my bracket order overnight. This was not the first time this had happened either. But every other time i caught it before it became a real issue.
The deeper i get into this the more i'm learning about the nuances and the.. character, of the futures industry. I'd never really realized how competitive it was. I had always traded futures either on TW's or on Tradovate. But, with the way things have been going I've started to shop around. From platforms to brokers to, what I now can discern as FCM's and FMC's that are brokers, and brokers that are FMC's and a platform. Oh boy.
Well, wading through that convolution over the past few months was a trip to be put lightly. I'd never realized a futures broker or even platforms would have sales guys. That never occurred to me. But, over the course of the past few months i've literally tried every demo i could get my hands on and have had almost every Chicago area code call me to ask about when i'm setting up my account.
Well, i happened across a demo for Sierra Chart and it took me not even a day to realize i was sold. By that night i had activated my account, went for the advanced package and I've been like a kid in a digital candy store ever since. Now, the learning curves on both Ninja Trader and Sierra Chart are immense. And i swear you could get college credits in computer science and possibly math learning how to operate within their frameworks. But, at least Sierra Charts gives you utility. Where Ninja Trader reminded me of a Tiger II tank from WWII. Big, scary, cool lookin. But drive anywhere far enough to make a difference in the fight either because the transmissions were too complicated and the drivers too inexperience and always broke down. That's what comes to mind at least. Sierra is just the right amount of smart + utility + usability for me.
But then that leads me to Rithmic.
What a nightmare huh? At least with NinjaTrader and x100 with Sierra Chart. And what's worse is that they're so widely used you can't get around using them in the funded trader world. I'm starting to deduce that they've cornered the algo's that essentially create the ecosystem or environment that these programs all use. But, if that's the state of affairs then so be it.
And that brings me to the last part of this update before i start with the daily breakdowns. Topstep.
Last week, i believe it was Wed or Thur i had traded overnight, gotten a few hours sleep and was back at my desk around 8 A.M EST and was trying to position for what i thought was going to be a trade back to settlement before the bell. Well, it didn't materialize and i had taken the combine account near the 3k max drawdown. Instead of going on tilt I stepped away from the desk. Thinking that i had gone flat for open and was essentially going to just be a spectator the rest of the day. But, in my.. whatever, i had neglected to double check that i had taken all the orders off the books and as i was getting coffee at market open an order or order's that i had put on the book in ES the night/morning before got hit, and in turn taken me over my daily max drawdown. Two days before i would have been at the 10 day mark.
Once again, i blew a tire on the last lap.
Without getting into the weeds about it i could have sworn that i had hit the "cancel all positions and orders" button, but apparently i did not. And, there's no other person to blame besides myself.
It's funny in a way too because Topstep has just changed some of their rules for getting funded. Instead of a minimum days traded they've added a consistency rule, and lifted the rule stating you have to hold positions x amount of time. I had gone back and forth with one of their employees, or risk managers, or whomever essentially speaking to how they should have some more support for their funded traders and maybe instead of having a 1 strike and your out rule having a 3 strikes and your out rule instead. Basically instead of hitting the max daily drawdown and you're out of the program giving the trader a weekly timeout, or locking them out of the account for x amount of time, or reducing their size. This individual responded to the tune of, and i'm paraphrasing: "as a futures trader you have to be perfect. Just like an elite athlete, a high power lawyer, or a surgeon. You don't get second chances, so why should we teach that in to our traders?"
And it's funny cause it stuck. And the very next week sure as shit. I wasn't perfect. And it cost me my opportunity. It's something so innocuous too. So mundane that it's almost comical. I had stops in place, in a personal account it would have been a less than $400 loss, but that's all it took.
So with that I'm not going to be purusuing the Topstep route anymore, as I'm already over my risk limit in giving them any more money. I have two accounts with Apex getting across the finish line Monday. And one more with them that i still have in the oven. So, i'll have to tighten it up and just protect what i have like i would my own personal account.
And with that any money that i would have given them is going to go towards the funding of a stand alone futures account. I'm not completely settled on where, but i filled out the paperwork for "Sierra Futures" or Stage 5 on Friday. They have a $250 minimum so i can start diverting money into it sooner rather than later and what seem like fair or competitive commissions. Margins could be better but honestly i don't think that's a bad thing for me just getting back into it. Will make it to where i have to be more selective in my trades. I'm trying to stay uniform in terms of data, routing, and as best i can clearing. The fact that i can have the platform, data, and routing in one place is something that makes a lot of sense to me. Stage 5, or "sierra futures" seems to be on board with the idea as well. I've also been looking at Ironbeam but still confused on who/what data i'd use. Any tips and tricks would be appreciated.
