I gave all this some thought overnight and this is my suggestion for your consideration.

You have two goals to achieve in your remaining three days of this combine. First to maintain or increase your win%. Second to make roughly $3000, or an average of $1000 a day.

You mentioned needing to be more aggressive in these last three days, which I do agree with based on your daily average P/L. Continuing to do what you have been doing is not going to be enough to reach the $3000 mark given the time available to work with.

Given everything up to this point, this is what I would do in this situation. I would start by maxing out the number of contracts you are allowed to trade, I think that is 3 contracts ? Now starting with that max, I will assume 3, I would slightly modify your open position management strategy in the following way. Use your 15 tick target for the first two contracts, so instead of one contract at + 15 ticks profit, take off two contracts. This locks in $300 profit. On the third contract I would trail that with a 10 tick trailing stop. So at the +15 tick mark, you have locked in an additional 5 ticks on the third contract. I would then let that third contract run as far as it wants with it's 10 tick trailing stop in tow. So if the third contract runs 100 ticks, you will lock in at least 90 of those ticks of profit. If the third contract comes back and stops out at 5 ticks, then your total profit on the trade is $350.

I think this strategy will allow you to maintain or improve your high win%, it won't really affect your first target at all, other than getting more help on the $ profit per trade attempt. The actual outcome and probability associated with that outcome will not be affected by having the extra contract at the +15 tick target. The stop strategy on the runner is designed to also help you with the $ P/L at the end of the day/combine.

This slightly more aggressive trade management strategy stays true to the intent of your original trading plan, and at a minimum, should allow you to achieve a rollover of your combine. So my suggestion here is, wait for a valid trade setup to form, then manage it more aggressively with respect to $ profit taken out of the trade attempt.

I been looking at TST and with 3 contracts trading needs 1500 profit on 30,000 account, but 5 contracts you need 3500 profit on 50,000 account.
so 3 cont vs 5 cont you need to double the profit on 5 contract vs 1/2 of that with only 3 contracts.

with 3 days left i wouldnt go aggressive just to make it, thats when we trade greed instead of our trading a plan.
my option is to go easy and pass it so you can roll it over to another combine, as long as you have all the boxes check for the combine rules, it is still good even if you didnt make it to the profit target

So I received a pm earlier today and thought there were some good points and questions that might help somebody else that is looking into doing a TST Combine. I won't be posting their name, just what they wrote (hope you don't mind )



Thanks for the input! I am planning on trading 3 cars with 3 targets. If I can get a runner or two in the next day or two, I might add a 4th or even a 5th car on the last day, making sure I don't blow out and also that I stay green for a rollover, will see how it goes here.

As far as the difference between 30k and 50k combines .... I was not comfortable with only having a 500/day loss limit. With the 15 tick stops I am using with 2 cars, if the first trade was a loser .... what or how would or could I trade the second trade? Smaller stop? One contract? wait for the next day? I didn't like that thought , and that is why I went with the 50k combine. Well that as well as the $$ deposit was not much different than the 30k, and definitely less than the 100 and 150k combines.

If I were to do this again, I would probably do the 100 or 150k with a bigger or larger daily loss limit, and be able to trade multiple cars with the ability to take a couple of hits or bad trades in a day and not be so worried to pull the trigger again that same day.

Thanks again for the input .. good luck with whichever combine you choose to do!

bc

A lot of good points being raised.

My last suggestion was made with consideration to the other points being made here. I recognized the dilemma raised by the counterbalancing Combine goals which is why I took my time in making the suggestion. I was torn between the idea of reducing risk by cutting trade size to 1 contract and trading for the rollover with as little risk per trade as possible. Or, by adding a contract at the first target with the chance of catching a runner or two and getting close to the account balance goal at the end of the combine.

My suggestion was to continue taking the valid trade setups, and continue using the same 15 tick first exit target, and to continue using the same stop loss placement. I felt this would stay within and not disturb the analytical work that had gone into the original design of the strategy before the Combine was attempted. In terms of being "more aggressive", my suggestion was to add 1 contract for the first target, which I believe will not disturb the original trade win/loss probability. I do recognize adding 1 contract does increase the dollar amount at risk per trade attempt by 1/3, which is the "aggressive" part of my suggested modification.

This all raises an interesting problem. What is the optimal trade strategy given the Combine goals ?

The "free trade" part of your strategy is something I am fairly familiar with. It is the technique I use when scaling out of a position, in place of the traditional "move the stop to breakeven". So I know for certain that part works well, it is mathematically sound.

The part I do not understand is how do you know when to get out of the runner ?