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Yes it is difficult but not impossible, I passed the combine around 5 times. Last time I passed both steps in exactly 15 days.
Consider that you can also trade micros. For instance if you trade micro /ES and you risk 5 points contracts (which is a decent risk) you are risking 25USD per contract so you can do 3000/25=125 losing trades in a row before losing 3000 usd.
I think you are over rationalizing it, there are hundreds of good trades in a day. If you trade well there are days in which you can make 4000 usd in a day.
From my experience it's not easy but it's doable. However to get to a level of market understanding and risk management that allow you to pass a combine it takes at least 3years of experience.
Today was an interesting day, and my cumulative net profit looks nothing short of a roller coaster. I resisted the urge to deviate from my risk profile which was the day's biggest win alongside the $169.60 in net profit. I re-entered what were several failed trades several times, and left a ton of money on the table (MFE) on others that either turned into scratch trades or were closed for a sliver of a % of the MFE. The biggest discovery when reviewing today's trades was the MAE for the real winners. The winning trades that were 1R or more averaged an MAE of about $28, and the worst MAE was only $75. This is only 30 trades, and far more are needed, but I think I have enough data to move my risk from 3.5% down to 2.67% (from 21 to 16 ticks). The big winners may have sputtered shortly a bit after entry, but certainly took off shortly thereafter.
The "big winners" over 1R are highlighted in yellow.
There are two trades that are cause for concern. Not because they broke any of my risk parameters, but because the MFE values were 2.47R and 4.5R respectfully. Were I to have minimized the ETD for these trades, I would have likely been done and at the $500 profit target much earlier in the trading session. My current ATM strategy's stop strategy only has an auto breakeven to add 3 ticks to BE after a 21 tick (1R) profit trigger. In light of these ridiculous ETD values, I think I need to reconfigure the stop strategy to be an auto trail instead. Continuing to frame it in R-values, I'm thinking the below to lock in profits and hopefully never again see such a high ETD
It's a continuation of the auto breakeven to move the stop up after every 1R of profit is reached.
@ 1R (21 ticks) it's breakeven +3 ticks
@ 2R (42 ticks) it's +24 ticks of profit or 1.14R
@ 3R (63 ticks) it's +45 ticks of profit or 2.14R
Depending on how my progression goes with my current system trading NQ, I may pivot to MNQ solely for the enhanced risk management possibilities. With NQ I'm stuck at 1 contract minimum for $5 a tick. Each contract of MNQ is 10% of that or $0.50 a tick. Ideally I'd like to stick with NQ, but I have that very much at the forefront of my mind looking at the risk benefits. The primary issue with TST is that despite the fractional tick and margin sizes of the micro products, they still only allow you to trade 15 contracts max.
What that unfortunately means is that if you were to profit intradaily and get to a point where you were trading 15 micro lots of MNQ ($7.50/tick) , you could no longer scale up. For me this would be at approximately $500 of profit or $3500 of available daily risk. Since I'm likely going to stop each day at $500, this might be redundant. There is a pretty large gap between $3500 and $6000 which is where I could move from 1 to 2 contracts of NQ. I have emailed TST about this in the past, and they replied that while they were aware of the logic and massive risk differential, their current systems simply could not support differentiating between the micro and mini lots in respect to their 15 max contract parameter in their ruleset. Hopefully one day they change this, but it likely won't be anytime soon. If they did, I would be more than happy to move to MNQ.
yes, I know that a lot of people have this same issue with using micros in TST. I think a solution might be to use a combination of micros and minis. Also I think that the "trick" to pass the combines is to push when you are up for the day. You mentioned that you want to stop at +500 for the day, if you trade micros that is probably a nice amount but I suggest you to keep trading when the day goes well, because that is when you have the smallest possibility of breaking a rule.
This morning has been rough, and I'm nearly $1k in drawdown. I've determined at this point that what's worse than breaking a system's rules, is breaking rules that weren't properly defined at the onset. To simplify this system, I'm now ONLY buying at PVAL and selling at PVAH. Rather than reviewing cumulative deltas, wave One or two of these successful trades is consistently 10R or more, and that value will increase as I've modified risk from 3.5% (21 ticks) down to 2.83% (ticks) for the day's starting risk ($3000). The winners' MAE values are consistently less than 10-17 ticks. I'm giving away 4-10 ticks in every loss that's completely unnecessary.
I'm definitely overtrading this system, and today's drawdown confirms that fear.
To showcase this banal reality, here's a screenshot of the most recent NQ action through the PVAs that I have defined in my dataset.
While this move isn't typical, I'm pretty sure a single 20-25R move will quickly erase any drawdown and get me to my daily profit target. Simplifying this system is going to remove much of the consternation and drawdown I've experienced so far.
My goal during today's trading session is to execute as few trades as possible adhereing to the new entry conditions. I see potential stop outs and re-entries likely for some of the PVAL/PVAH entries depending on market chop, but at least the variability descerning trade direction has been resolved. I "missed' the first entry opportunity @ ~5:30 AM EST this morning, but was of course asleep. That move alone was good for 90 ticks within the bounds of the PVA box and a total of 295 ticks breaking throught he PVAL to establish the current session low. This trade could have potentially been input and left to execute sans monitoring, but that isn't my trading style. It initially explored the bounds of the PVA box, and would have only experienced about 9 ticks or $45 of MAE, a textbook successful trade in this system. One item that I'm struggling to deal with is what to do when price extends through a PVA box and reaches the other side. My current rules would have me take the opposite position, however I think if I'm already in the opposing trade, to remain in the position until price reveals whether it will continue through the box or bounce back into it.
The chart shows ~267 ticks of profit from trading just within the PVA box. Holding the last sell position through the box was worth an extra 208 ticks.
So far, so good. The only mistake I've made is closing the trade early. I took a failed buy position at PVAL and had it stopped out. Price rebounded ~40 ticks below the PVAL once triggered, which would have quickly hit my previous 21 tick SL. The new 17 tick SL saved me almost 20% of loss. The problem is that I left a tremendous amount of profit on the table. I anticipated a strong rejection at the last period's VWAP and the session VWAP, and closed the trade there. Here are the trades so far:
1R is now $85/17 ticks or 2.84% of the starting $3,000 daily risk. The first trade was a -1R loss, however the second was a +2.95R gain. This is the type of profit factor I'm trying to maintain throughout a day of trading this system. Of course if I was still in this trade as of this post (and closed it), it would have been a +6.23R gain. I need to establish how I'm going to hold these trades in a box. Yet to be determined.
