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Update: Down about 28% with my micro-account. So, have stopped trading.
Things I did right:
Took most of the trades that met my criteria and even held some long enough
Didn't go overboard trading each and every setup. Was very selective.
Traded prudently for a few sessions and made some good progress.
Things I messed up:
Depended on Rithmic's Risk Parameters to take me out of a trade and that led to a much larger loss than I had anticipated. Should've used stop loss instead
Didn't practise using "Strategies" feature of Multicharts thoroughly on demo before using it on live trades. Led to confusion and therefore bigger losses than usual.
Continued to trade beyond my 10% loss limit (Rithmic Pro was not open at that time and exceeded daily loss limit)
Anyways, looking forward to funding my account in the first week of May 2020. Will demo trade and get really familiar with Multicharts in the meantime. The key to trade management is in using Multicharts' Strategies, especially in fast moving and volatile markets that we are witnessing now.
I am somehow surprised, that people seem to often overlook the parameters of funded accounts.
You basically just get a very small account with insane leverage possibilities, because they want people to fail and reset.
If you indeed count 2%, you can only calculate it from the money available to trailing.
So usually a "100k" has only 5k to trailing - 100 USD!!!
Now ask yourself, who trades a 100k with 4 micros like he should?
Awesome business model for the funding companies, not so much for the traders. Nonetheless might be still better than trading your own money until you are really good.
Btw. anyone here, who managed to withdraw money with leeloo ?
It's no that I overlooked everything you said but that in the past, I have lost money I could not afford to lose and kept digging a deeper and deeper hole, that I saw the funded trader path as a safer way to participate in futures markets.
That being said I passed the mini gauntlet after 2 months and as statistics would predict blew up in a few days. I have been working to get funded again but have decided to step back for a few months. I have a job that has become too demanding for me to focus on both pursuits and the stress has been too much, causing me to make errors and become downright indifferent to either.
The funded account may not be the best solution but may be the only one for many with skill and time but not enough money.
Sorry, my comment was not directed at anyone specific, but since risk management is key in trading I am really surprised their illusion does work so nicely.
I can not even count the amounts of posts on the OUP board I wrote to make people rethink their risk management and not to fall to those illusionary numbers.
Truth is, trading is ultra hard. And even harder, if you trade while working full time.
It really takes a long time to understand the market - and even if you do, you can still make silly mistakes.
I think you do the right thing - key is always to conserve your capital. And taking a break can be used to analyze your mistakes and create a strategy for your success.
The best way to start a trading career is probably:
-First doing some SIM to verify you are good enough for the next step.
-Then do some demo evaluations and once you are ready you go to payed evaluation.
-And once you can get funded and keep your funded account, you take back your money and funding your own account.
... Or you might want to stay with funding companies, so you can safely trade higher leverage, as you would with your own money.
To be successful in the market you need a system that works and has defined entries and an exit strategy.
But what many new traders have to learn is, that the handling of the trade is even more important. And in case you do not use automated systems (i have yet to see one, that is really doing a good job in avoiding most bad entries) it is where your softs-kills come into play. And most of us (especially me) have no ideal skillset for a trader.
So we need to work on ourselves, especially the discipline to stick to rules you have set yourself. The patience to wait for the right moment. Get rid of fear and greed, that influence our trading negatively. And the good thing is, that this might actually help us to be a better version of ourselves, not just in trading, but also in all other aspects of life...
Hope you can come up with a training plan, how to tackle your weaknesses and improve your discipline.
And once ready, being able to keep your funded account.
Hi, I just read this post and I don't agree with your vision. In topstep you can trade with just one contract for as much as you want, there is no need to increase size. In that case you can take a 150K account and trade one contract at the time. Since Nasdaq notional value is around 250K if you trade 1 contract you have a 2:1 leverage which is nothing.
I have trade my own account before trading with TST and lost over 85K over the years. I think that 99,9% of the people would be better off by trying topstep many many times before going with their own real money. Most of the people have no idea of what they are doing.
I went through it and I lost so much money.
I have now a lot of experince trading, thanks to TST and I learn to manage risk. I passsed TST many time, and I lost my funded account a couple of times, but I learnt something.
With real money you have much more leverage than with TST. If you have 150K account with todays margins you can potentially trade 150 contracts, and even 300 with some browsers. On top of this with most of the brokers you can leverage on the money that you just made without waiting for the next day. So if you open an account with 3K you can trade 3 minis, if you gain 1000 USD then you can immediately trade 4K, which does not happen in TST.
I know many people find TST impossible, and they blame the company but the reality is that they don't have any clue about risk management. If you give them a 4 millions account they willl blow it up in 3 months.
take it easy, to get funded and keep the account it will take it around 2 to 3 years. It's not easy and keeping the account is even more difficult.
If you have been trading live for less than 3 years you are a "beginner" (don't take it as an offense) it takes a long time to learn trading.
I think one advantage with the combines is that you would avoid being on the hook for a catastrophic mistake. Of course it shouldn't happen anyway but it may be a big load off one's shoulders to know one is losing the maximum of the combine cost (e.g., $150-300), while still having the pressure of dealing with real money to an extent.
@SBtrader82
Well, we probably did not understand each other correctly, as I wrote:
The best way to start a trading career is probably:
-First doing some SIM to verify you are good enough for the next step.
-Then do some demo evaluations and once you are ready you go to payed evaluation.
-And once you can get funded and keep your funded account, you take back your money and funding your own account.
... Or you might want to stay with funding companies, so you can safely trade higher leverage, as you would with your own money.
But the key is, that evaluations are set up in a way, that make traders lose their accounts.
Their main business model is based on fees.
I think trailing is ok, but they should really offer reasonable trailing. It is cool to call an account "100k", but why only have 2-3k trailing drawdown but offer 15 contracts? That is so silly and just calls for people to fail. The problem in trading is that we are allowed to play by our own rules, but few have the discipline to play it right (risk management).
....btw I am going to try out that 38 bucks offer from LeeLoo, so far all good.
Love their low comissions - only .58 for micros it seems.
What confuses me is that i see no rule that prevents a "lucky shot"...
Also they clearly state, that the funded account is a sim one, where they will or will not copy trades.
Ok with me as long as they are open about it.
Only downside seems to be, that it takes quite some time to be able to withdraw some money (you probably want to build up cushion anyways, though)
You say that, but you haven't really articulated how that would benefit TST. TST "should" do what benefits TST over the long term. That, presumably, will involve providing an attractive value proposition to customers... but not so attractive that it leaves profits on the table to an excessive degree.
Once the product parameters are set, it's up to the customer to maximize their own benefit. That may very well involve trading smaller than max contracts at critical points. It may involve not buying TST's products at all, which will provide feedback (from one trader's perspective) about what TST "should" be doing.