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TST Combine results and strategies for passing


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TST Combine results and strategies for passing

  #21 (permalink)
 
josh's Avatar
 josh 
Georgia, US
Legendary Market Wizard
 
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vercetti View Post
Hi Pedro40, I was wondering about the draw down and how it affect the combine. I was looking at the $100,000 20 days, Loss limit $2,000, and Max Draw down $3,000. If I understand the drawdown correctly, it means that if I'm doing ok for the first 3 days and the 4th day I hit the max drawdown the combine stops right away even if I have 16 more days to reach the profit target?

No.

If you hit your daily loss limit or your max drawdown before 20 days have been traded, you can still trade the account until you have traded 20 days, at which point you are done, you lose the deposit.

If you have traded 20 days and you have not hit your daily loss limit or max drawdown, you can continue trading until whichever one of these comes first: (1) the ending date for the combine, (2) you hit your max drawdown or daily loss limit, or (3) you "submit" your combine for review, whether you have met the refund requirements and want a refund/rollover, or you have met the objectives to be funded.

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  #22 (permalink)
 Cloudy 
desert CA
 
Experience: Intermediate
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It seems the requirements of TST are for weeding out most so only the best traders can pass it. I don't have doubts they are for real. They have a regular list and audio interviews of those that have passed. Their requirements are doable , by only the best well performing traders with a lot of practiced skill and a prior track record of consistency who have eliminated most of their bad trading habits and discipline problems. For the record, the elite journals don't have anyone reporting they passed the combine yet either. Yet one hears from other members who know of or has heard of someone that did.

For myself, I know I couldn't pass the parameters of the combines yet with the most favorable certainty. So I continue to try to improve until someday hopefully I can. The combine rules are available to be seen so can be simulated by anyone anytime.

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  #23 (permalink)
iankotze
thabazimbi limpopo/south africa
 
Posts: 27 since Oct 2012
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So I will pass on my advise for getting through the combine, I have passed it twice and am about to pass it the third time now.

First of all, you must know your market and feel content in with your trading and the platform. I did 10 combines before I got funded the first time in Gold. Back then I was new to futures and came to trading futures because I was bored sitting around all day doing nothing whilst trading options. That was a big mistake because I over traded a lot. Lost a lot of money by simple execution errors and me not knowing the T4 and what not. Tried many different markets before I found one that suited my character and trading style.

So I say before you even start a combine, do some trading with their practice account and get familiar with the T4 and how your product moves on that platform.

Then when it is game time, combine. I have come to see that trading small and trading less is the way to go. When I started out I did 30 to 50 trades a day, now I only do about 4 trades a day.

I have always traded only 1 contract when trading things like gold or crude, 2 when trading es and so on. I am talking about the 50k account here.

My strategy is to take what I can here and there, once or twice a week when I am there and the market is providing opportunity with a nice fat trend day I will hold onto my trades for a long time, this brings all the statistics in line. I don't care about those process goals because they come in line in the end if you have a trend day or two during a 10 day combine where you hold onto a winner for 2 -4 hours or so. So I am basically hitting base hits with small winners and losers, winners are more often shorter time duration than losers but your trend day will sort that out in the end.

I have done this successfully with gold and the ultra bond and will be adding crude in the next two days. Just trade small and don't trade too much. I mean go for daily goal and shut it down. With crude and gold etc, this is 35 ticks on 1 contract. This can be done with 1 or 2 trades. Shut it down. Look at the market and plan for the big move that will set up sometime during the week, there will be a major level or event that will move that market 200 ticks on a day, so rather plan for that trade and make the most of it. As for every day just go for target shut it down and then get your super day where you get 1k or more on the day, that will sort out all process goal criteria as well us bring you back up to target profit wise if you were lagging behind.

Hope that helps,
Ian

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  #24 (permalink)
Pedro40
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
 
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Cloudy View Post
It seems the requirements of TST are for weeding out most so only the best traders can pass it.

I disagree. It looks like the rules are for making traders to alter their style and eventually to fail. Let's say, you are the backer. What is more important to you:

a/ The trader can make the profit target.
b/ The trader can fit to the parameters.

Obviously any common sense backer would choose a)

And mind you, some of the parameters are completely irrelevant BS. Trading duration winner vs. loser? Who cares about that? Even the win% is irrelevant because I can have 5 small losers and 1 huge winner and be nicely profitable.

So let's say you need to make 2K in 20 days and you actually made 3K profit, but you didn't pass the parameters. Why would any normal backer NOT back you because of that? And it seems they are really not having that many traders to be backed, so it makes no sense to make rules so strict. Now if they had a dozen traders hitting the profit target every week, sure, try to filter them out a little, but so far too many good traders hasn't been their problem.

And as a comparison, another similar firm I mentioned earlier has very few rules: make X profit in Y days using Z contracts without a bigger the K draw down. It is really that simple...

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  #25 (permalink)
Pedro40
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
 
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iankotze View Post
So I will pass on my advise for getting through the combine, I have passed it twice and am about to pass it the third time now.

Would you mind to elaborate a little more?:

1. How long did it take between passing the combine and getting the Live account? I assume 4-6 weeks at least.
2. How long have you traded the Live account?
3. Have you established your safety pillow yet?
4. Have you actually got a paycheck from TST yet?

Thanks in advance....

Generally I agree with your advices, except one:


Quoting 
I mean go for daily goal and shut it down.

I kind of did this, but here is the problem with it. Chances are you won't have only winning days. So if you only make the average needed on a normal day, once you had a losing day, your average goes up, and you will be behind in your profit goal. So you have to count for losing days too.

In my case I only needed $100 per day. But once I had a let's say $300 losing day, the average needed jumped to $150 or so. So I would say the daily goal should be at least double the average daily needed, just in case of losing days...
But certain days are better than others and if the market is easy to read, my advice would be to push it. Actually, because of the rather small DLL, strategically it makes sense to start the day with 1-2 contracts and once you have a little extra profit pillow, go for more. After all, it does help if you have 1-2 big winning days...



Quoting 
As for every day just go for target shut it down and then get your super day where you get 1k or more on the day,

If you shut down after reaching the daily goal, how will you reach the super day? How do you know if a position is good for a super day or it will turn back on you, thus you should take the average win?

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  #26 (permalink)
 Cloudy 
desert CA
 
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I understand what you mean about backers looking more into profits than strict parameters. However many first time backers can be burned later when they take on a trader who may not have a consistent money management track record.

TST as the introducing intermediary imo are more interested in b) because they want to make sure the traders they pick to introduce to their client backers demonstrate they have more than profitable trades which can be due to a lucky streak rather than skill. They also want some measure of insurance that the trader has proven money management trading skills which pass their daily strict parameters. So that it doesn't cause problems in the future where they may be liable if the trader while making profitable trades for the backer, also has severe drawdowns because lack of skill minimizing drawdowns or due to a risky individual trading method. i.e. the strict TST parameters also weed out risky individual methods without an adequate risk management component.

If I was a wise backer, I would want a day trader while profitable, also demonstrates a daily disciplined proven limit in his drawdown. That the fact that TST emphasis money management also helps make me feel they are more serious and legit as an introducing prop firm.

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  #27 (permalink)
Pedro40
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
 
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Cloudy View Post
If I was a wise backer, I would want a day trader while profitable, also demonstrates a daily disciplined proven limit in his drawdown.

I don't have a problem with the DD rule. I really don't like the Duration rule, because:

1. It is irrelevant.
2. As I showed in this thread, it is easy to manipulate. Just throw in quick losers, and it brings down your average losers' duration.
3. Another poster pointed this out in other thread: You can have a very long trade where you sit on profits for 95% of the length of the trade, but eventually it turns back on you and you can end up with a small loser, with a very long duration. That will screw up your stats for sure.

Another rules are also can be senseless, because of the particular trading style. As I said above, a small winning percentage can be perfectly fine, as long as the trader's winners are big compared to the losers. And that's what the backer would want, stay in some of the winners long so they can grow...

Another rule is the average winner vs. loser. What if my average winner is slightly smaller than the average loser, but my winning percentage is 80%? That means I am making money 3 times out of 5....

So all in all, I can see that with the extra rules they might try to get more disciplined traders, but if you look at each rule alone, you can see the fault in their thinking....

They could keep the rules but make most of them not obligatory to follow. They could say: we only care about the profit target and the DLL to pass the Combine, but in case we have more candidates who passed the Combine, we will prefer the ones who got closer to pass all parameters.

And as a last question: What is the point of having so many parameters and rules, but once you pass the Combine you are still not automatically backed? One would think after you followed so many rules, your trading style should be good enough to be backed...

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  #28 (permalink)
 Cloudy 
desert CA
 
Experience: Intermediate
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Broker: various, TDA
Trading: NQ,ES
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Yes, it was mentioned one isn't automatically backed after passing on the TST thread. I would assume they want to interview the passing candidate first. Check out everything's ok similar to a job interview since it's real money to be handled.

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  #29 (permalink)
 booker777 
Augusta, GA
 
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I want to thank Pedro and everyone who gave constructive input on this thread topic but to those that slammed him, WTF. He is just sharing his insights to help people pass the combine. I don't understand why people have to attack or insult, and to the one that says he wouldn't want him anywhere near his trading port? really? Cause it sounds like Pedro was profitable. Maybe you can find a losing trader for your account and see how that works for you.

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  #30 (permalink)
bakrob99
Toronto
 
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booker777 View Post
I want to thank Pedro and everyone who gave constructive input on this thread topic but to those that slammed him, WTF. He is just sharing his insights to help people pass the combine. I don't understand why people have to attack or insult, and to the one that says he wouldn't want him anywhere near his trading port? really? Cause it sounds like Pedro was profitable. Maybe you can find a losing trader for your account and see how that works for you.

Who is slamming who now? I think that Pedro could benefit from looking inward rather than blaming external factors for his performance. Trading is a personal journey of discovery - and most of the discovery is about oneself. As pointed out by a number of posters, rather than concentrate on the (external) factors that a combiner must meet in order to receive their funding, it would be more beneficial for the outcome of his trading record if he were to concentrate on taking good opportunities and managing risk. The factors will take care of themselves. And as I pointed out if he really has a concern about the "average time in winners vs average time in losers" he can ask to have that condition removed should he do another combine.

Let me pose a question. Why does the TST Scouting Requirements have these conditions? My simple answer is this: they have determined that the successful candidates meet them and provide them to the recruit to get an understanding of what it takes in order to succeed. A simple glance at these stats show that a combiner must NOT be a scalper - that they must trade conservatively as pointed out by Iankotze in his post on trading gold, find some intraday moves and hold for a profit which is at least 1.5x the risk on the trade. The average risk - reward for successful recruits is a minimum of 1.5 : 1.

Pedro - my advice - which you're certainly free to ignore - would be to stop blaming TST and concentrate on developing your trading skills. Good luck with your trading.

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Last Updated on June 9, 2013


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