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)
Thank you for sharing your combine experience. I looked at your combine report and it seemed to me you have until April 12th to complete this combine. It didn't seem like you hit a daily loss limit or max drawdown. Why do you consider this combine is over for you?
I am currently in a combine too. I have 8 more trading days to go. I can totally relate to what you said about how stress went through the roof in the beginning when it did not start well while being monitored. If I do another combine, i will have to somehow make sure the first few days build acct positively. In this combine, I started with some losses and at some point just 1000 dollars from hitting the max drawdown (I have 150k acct) --- that made all attempts afterwards diffucult because now I am trading on scared money. I am only hanging on and try not to hit daily limit or max drawdown.
If I were only trading CL I would have continued however, I was also trading UB. I lost my edge in UB and could not even come close to regaining it. I lost an additional 3 grand in SIM trying to find it. Plus, part of passing the combine is having passing numbers on all the instruments you are trading. I hit the numbers in CL but realized I had no chance of hitting the numbers UB. So I decided my time would be better spent keeping my momentum going in CL and start another combine.
The best thing you can do to get over the stress is make sure you have a plan and you trade your plan. Most of my stress came from the fact my plan changed daily. I have also picked up from the some senior members of TST that they care more about risk management and the fact you have a plan than they do profit. As I was told one day by one of the funded traders "You can make 5 grand a day but if your risk management sucks they will pass you over." That's a big statement about how TST operates.
I see. That's why I opted for custom combine and removed all those numbers from the combine. I really think those metrics are very hard to pass. However in exchange for profit target only, I need to make $16k instead of $12k stardard profit, but I figured that if I were not able to get to 16k, I probably wouldn't get 12k either, so I took it. You need to decide which one is less "evil"
I signed up for a 10 day minimum 30K combine. Daily loss limit is 500 with a max draw down of 1500. 3 contract max. Right now I am extremely comfortable with trading 1 or 2 contracts. Initial targets are 20 to 40 ticks with stops 10 to 20. Stops really depend on where I enter the trade. My avg Draw Down for a winning trade since March 11th has been 8 ticks. So anything beyond that I start thinking about getting out. The plan is to trade the plan. I am not worried about profits, rather I am focused on execution and keeping my losses under control.
I had three setups today. The first one I didnt take because I felt price was over extended. This turned out to be correct. Price went about 10 ticks in my trade direction and reversed.
The second setup I hesitated on. This would have been my one and done for the day. Missed out on at least a 20 tick move. I honestly talked myself out of the trade. As I watched price go lower I told myself I would take the next trade setup no matter what.
The final setup I took and ended +12 ticks. As a general rule if price does not move 10 ticks or more within 10 minutes of entry I start thinking about moving my target up. This is what I did on this one. I moved the target up to a round number. I found CL likes to touch round numbers and reverse. This is what happened.
Even though I missed my second entry today I am still happy with the outcome. This being a holiday week I plan to be somewhat cautious the closer we get to Thursday. Will see what happens.
I thought about the custom combine but after I looked at the conditions I thought the rules would make me a better trader with them in place.
With the exception of avg winners being larger than avg losers (and profit total) I hit all the criteria to pass the combine for CL in my previous combine. I am looking to improve on winners being larger than losers this time around and hitting the profit target.
This week has tested my resolve to trade the plan. I had a losing trade yesterday and started out with a losing trade this morning. First thing that went through my mind: "maybe its not working anymore, maybe I should tweak it". I shook it off and entered the second trade of the day. However, I had fear that I was going to lose more so ended up taking a BE trade. Of course price went 15 ticks higher after I exited the trade. By the time the third trade came around I had calmed myself down (again) and convinced myself that my plan works and in the end will make me money. I entered without hesitation and let the trade play out to a winning trade.
I ended the day BE but more importantly I know my plan, when executed properly, will work and I have made the resolution to stay committed to my plan no matter the outcome of the combine. Not changing or tweaking or throwing it out the window and just sticking with a single plan has been very hard for me to do. I never realized how much I changed things up in the past. Its no wonder I have never had success which has lasted much longer than 2 weeks. This week has been a eye opener.
Even still though, read what you said above here... Even the positive resolution at the end: "...I know my plan, when executed properly, will work..."
This resolution is still based on very short term things. I hope you will broaden out your scope of what is working and what is not working. I hope you will work on not measuring success by a winning or losing day. I still have to work on this myself.
I can promise you, that your plan, no matter how good it is, when executed properly, will NOT work for extended periods of time. KNOWING THIS sets you free to execute that plan without hesitation, fear, or other things related to the previous trade or 3 trades.
Making the transition to longer term holds is proving difficult. I had two trades today where I had a goal in mind and took the trades only to close them out early then to have them go on and hit my targets. I am still in scalp mode... I am thinking of walking away from my computer and letting the trade play out. If I watch it I want to fiddle with it.. total frustration here..
I think my other aggravation is my ability to let the trades play out in SIM but not in the combine. again pure frustration..
