Our Performance Coaches' $50K Trading Combine® is in its largest drawdown of the challenge. With today's loss, their balance is at $48,749.04 - just $749.04 above their max loss.
TopstepTrader's Founder and CVO Michael Patak offered advice for someone who was in the midst of a drawdown: "Keep you head up and keep collecting information on what is not working to understand what adjustments need to be made. You are still ok with everything, but you want to be thinking about what you are doing that is not working and make the adjustment. Also, sit on your hands a bit and look for the higher-probability trades."
Well said. What else can we learn from a drawdown?
Want to one-up them in a Trading Combine?
Mick Ieronimo, our funded trader risk manager, also reassured the Coaches. "Just because you are in a drawdown doesn't mean that you are doing anything wrong. It just means that your strategy is not working with the current market environment."
He also suggested that the Coaches get more choosy with their trading. "From a psychological perspective, absolutely keep your head up. But from a behavioral perspective, get more cautious in which trades you take. You may not be able to trade every day."
Both Mick and Michael had one final word of advice: don't expect to make it all back in a day. Little gains, they said, add up.
And so that's good advice for anyone in a drawdown - keep your head up and look for tweaks instead of full-scale revisions to your strategy.
Here are the trades on a 15-minute delay as we reported them on Twitter. Make sure you follow us for all the latest updates in #CoachesCombine (@topsteptrader):
Our Performance Coaches are taking a measured approach to trading today. No sense in pushing it with FOMC. #CoachesCombine
— TopstepTrader (@TopstepTrader) September 20, 2017
Performance Coaches short $CL_F at $50.77; stop at $50.95. Will be out of mkt by FOMC at 1 PM CT. #CoachesCombine
— TopstepTrader (@TopstepTrader) September 20, 2017
Performance Coaches short $ZB_F at 154'00. Stop at 154'04 with target at 153'24. #CoachesCombine
— TopstepTrader (@TopstepTrader) September 20, 2017
Performance Coaches stopped out on $CL_F short, reverse position and now long at $50.96. #CoachesCombine
— TopstepTrader (@TopstepTrader) September 20, 2017
Performance Coaches out $CL_F long at $50.81 for $150 loss. May be done for day with FOMC. #CoachesCombine
— TopstepTrader (@TopstepTrader) September 20, 2017
Performance Coaches exited $ZB_F short for four-tick loss pre-FOMC. #CoachesCombine
— TopstepTrader (@TopstepTrader) September 20, 2017
Total performance for the day, including fees and commissions: -$466.04. Balance is $48,749.04. For more, check out their Trading Combine dashboard below.