TopStepTrader 100k Combine Day 1

Hi Traders,

Hope everyone’s trading is going well this month. What can I say about my trading? Well it’s not going. Anywhere. I’m defiantly not trading like myself of the past, I’m chasing trades, I’m over trading, and emotions are all over my charts the list goes on. I’ve put so much pressure on myself to pass the TopStepTrader Combine that its putting my trading skills into a garbage compacter never to see them again.

On top of that I reworked my mentorship program to include a Live Trade Room two days a week where my students can come in and watch me trade in the combine. Well I’m still getting used to it, I know I lose a lot of focus when in the trade room. Trying to hard to take the “best” trades and then giving a reason why I lose or win. Let me tell you it’s not easy and I’m asking myself if it was a good decision for my personal trading. It is effecting it but it’s a step I always wanted to take to help others.

Previous to the trade room was my 60 day program where I worked 1on1 with students and I traded live with the individual student near the end of the program when they had the chance to take their own trades etc. It worked out great and it produced a lot of great student traders that are still doing well. This is something that I’m going to monitor closely over the next little while because honestly I’m not going to sacrifice my trading for a program that may or may not not be working for my students.

With all that being said I re-started the combine twice this week which is to me, unacceptable. It just goes to show how I’m trading, not good to be frank and honest. I need to take a step back and evaluate. I have this goal of getting funded with TST by the end of the year, which is still possible but not if I just keep restarting the combine because of stupid errors and reasons. It’s not even the money that I’m wasting to restart these combines that bothers me or even the time wasted. It bothers me that I’m being defeated by something that I know I can do. Something that I passed 4 times already. Yea 4 times I have passed the 10 day combine only to lose in the Funder Trader Prep. I will not let that happen again.

Here is the real kicker, Crude Oil is my market, I know it, love it like a brother and trade it well. Not lately. I been making all my profits of ES! The ES?! The same market that cleaned me out in my first couple years trading. The same market that spit in my face so many times I can’t even count. Even more weird is that I’m spotting setups that I’m holding throughout the day. Not scalping or “day trading” it. I mean I’m holding for 5-12 points at a time. It’s been moving well and I just been spotting the trend. I don’t know if it’s my point of view has changed? Maybe that’s why my Crude trading has taken a back seat?

I don’t know. That’s all I can say. I’m defiantly not myself in my trading these days and I need to figure it out, and I will.

Here is my Day 1 on the 100k Combine, as you can see Crude got me. Took a few trades got chopped up and just stopped. I a couple nice setups on the ES that I wanted to hold all day and I did. The first one was great but ALL the profit got wiped out by my poor trading on CL. I took a little break to grab some food and coffee then came back to see it retraced all the way back almost to the point where I shorted it before. So OF COURSE I’m going to short it again and well it worked out beautifully. See what I mean, ES this time your mine!. So once again I start the combine with having reached the total equity goal but I’m still a long way away. I have to make up the loss that I have taken on crude today. I need to calm the f**k down and use that patience I developed over the years and Just do it.

If you made it to the end of this long winded blog write-up I thank you for following my journey (good and bad) and I will continue to be honest and truthful about my trading.

See you soon.

Lino D.

VancityTrader

support@vancitytrader.com

Skype: lino.demarchi1