Fellow trader asked for help....

December 6th, 2019, 04:23 PM

I was approached by a trader who was in need of some counseling and advice. The first thing I did was point him to the book "Trade Mindfully" which guides traders who need psych counseling. He's taken the book seriously, much more than myself. I felt the book was too clinical in terms of the application of psychology to trading. It's so complex....and I thought trading was supposed to be simple....LOL.
Long story, short: He has been providing his daily results trading the ES, NQ, and CL Emini's. I just discovered that he's been trading SIM thru one of these services like Earn2Trade, TopStep, OneUp, etc. He pays a monthly fee and given a $50,000 SIM account with strict performance metrics....to "graduate" to a funded account he needs to increase the account by $3000. He gets dropped from the service when he is down $2500 or more.
He's been at this for over 3 months and already has blown out the account once. He re-subscribed for a meager $100 fee.
I keep telling him that he should not focus on trying to "read the market"....i.e. predict intraday movements, but rather focus on bet-sizing and stop/target placement. He insists that he will eventually be able to "read the market". He also has a bad habit of moving or ignoring his stop loss placement. The pattern of his trading is: One day down $500 to $1000, the next day up $200-$500. Obviously his account balance cannot go anywhere north unless he is showing a win percentage above 60%. He has not divulged that important statistic albeit the service tracks all of the performance metrics in detail.
Given the above, should I stop collaborating with this guy ? He seems well-intentioned but unwilling to take my advice.

December 6th, 2019, 07:06 PM

You can lead a horse to water but you can�t make it drink. All those �prop trading� firms are a scam anyway, they make most of their money on the traders that fail the evaluation period , and by design. It�s risk free income to the them to keep traders chasing their tail instead of actually letting somebody trade it.

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December 6th, 2019, 10:47 PM

numberjuani

All those �prop trading� firms are a scam anyway, they make most of their money on the traders that fail the evaluation period , and by design. It�s risk free income to the them to keep traders chasing their tail instead of actually letting somebody trade it.

I don't think they are true prop firms (which require a deposit) and I think at least one of them is legit: https://www.oneuptrader.com
Since my friend is trading the Beginner level; for $150/mo he gets:
1) a license to a real-time data feed
2) Ninja Trader account
3) performance reports
I remarked to him that with 6 contracts, many good traders could reach the $3000 target in one week. No comment was returned. He's been unable to hit that high water mark in over 3 MONTHS !
Heck, to reach the $3000 in one week....that's $600 average per day...easily doable trading something like CL or NQ....No ?
Of course one must worry about hitting the $1250 max loss per day rule....so strict stops must be in place.

Fellow trader asked for help....

Discussion in Emini and Emicro Index

Fellow trader asked for help....