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1. Avoid combines or payed try outs like the plaque. No one should consider this now with the micros. If your risk/reward is about equal and you risk only $40 and average a 1x return on risk then that's ~$40 a day for one month, you'll be ~$800 ahead. In 3 months time, you'll be $2400 ahead with real money experience and ability to scale up. On the combine/tryouts, you'll be starting off behind whether its $350 or $200 or whatever and even if you are profitable you might not pass. Tryouts can also cause you to develop bad habits. If you must do this, set a stop loss of no more then 50% of the amount you are allocated but its really a bad deal now. If you can produce a great record, with good risk control, with real money on the even the micros, you are far more likely to get funding.
2. You know the p&l and whether it is acceptable to you. The relevant factor is your ability to execute and psychology.
3. Option A. Start with the micros. Build up. You have to trade a different instrument but MES has good volume.
4. Option B. Go live with the CL and be strictly disciplined. If you're concerned go with a broker who can set a daily loss limit or just average down on the simulator until you blow out a few times.
5. If you can recognize your best trades, you might try a "staged approach" where you only take your A+ trades in the live at first and continue to trade in the simulator or with mciros/etc. This makes a lot of sense.
6. Continue to work once you go live and refine/fix things/etc.
I am not sure why people keep telling you to trade the MicroES contract when you clearly stated you trade CL. Trading an instrument you know nothing about just to cut your teeth into live, real cash trading is bad advice. So don't do that.
IMO you are ready to go live if you can transfer the discipline you maintained trading CL SIM, over to live trading. The brain is a funny thing. It knows that real cash is now on the line. It will play tricks on you to do something different than you would normally do if you were in SIM. You just need to keep doing the same thing you have been doing over the last 1.3 years. Be a bricklayer.
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- Trade what you see. Invest in what you believe -
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It's really strange that people are advising switching markets. Stick with the market you practiced on. When going live you must try to keep everything the same since your new enemy will be your emotions so you don't want to change anything else about your environment.
Perhaps people are advising MES because you brought up TopStepTrader. I did their combine myself as a way to experience "live" by way of proxy. It definitely helped and I only lost a year of fees instead of thousands of real cash. But you MUST quit it before too many months pass. Even if you are not winning TST, just quit it after a couple months since your goal with them is about developing emotional discipline, not scoring big stacks.
To know if your strategy is profitable over time, apply this formula based on your backtested results: (probability of win * avg win amount) vs (prob of loss * avg loss amount). As long as the first part is greater than the second, your strategy is good to go.
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We trade using Al Brooks Price Action and record our entries/exits in public for accountability.
Thank you so much CarpetHooligan for your response. I will join TST first as this will be beneifical for me to test the emotion side. Although when I sim traded, I did apply emotions. But real cash is another challenger, I have not yet experienced. I am not switching markes.
Regarding your formula. Thank you for the formula. Question please:
1. For my case, is the "probability of a win" and " probability of a loss" my average win % and average loss % in my stats spreadsheet?
Yea, stick with crude but IMO start with minis (QM). They are liquid enough and won't drain your account while building necessary confidence and experience. Good luck!
