I'm just getting back into poker again so thought I'd try out a PGC thread. I'll cover how I fare jumping straight back into the 50nl zoom pool after a 3 year break focussed on developing my futures trading strategy. I'll also discuss how I got funded to trade by a hedge fund linked to the trading company topsteptrader:

http://blog.topsteptrader.com/funded...united-kingdom

Played part time for a long time, mainly 6max small stakes, not a huge winner, but never had a losing month. I've also developed trading strategies based entirely around price action chart analysis for over a decade.

It's a little bit frustrating to have invested so much time into both poker and trading and to still be trying to make it on my own dime, so to speak. I've had severe crohn's disease for 20 years though which has taught me to be patient and not stress about things that are out of my control.

I got into trading to try and make enough money so I could work from home as it's tough holding down a job with crohn's (though I've been in my current job as an auditor for 5 years), and then I got into poker to make enough money for my trading bankroll......... Now it's 10 years later.

Cliffs of those 10 years: Studied poker a lot but not effectively, looked at trading charts for thousands of hours, struggled with illness and trying to focus on a mountain of drugs, stopped trying to build my trading bankroll through poker when the drugs affected my cognitve abilties, got backed as a trader for hedge fund through topsteptrader

I'll briefly cover my poker background as people are probably going to be more interested in the trading stuff. So i'm back into poker for another shot at the zoom ladder because I've changed meds and feel like a fog has lifted. It also feels like it's the age of studying in poker and I'm loving how effective my studying has been the past few months compared to the previous 8 years where I didn't really have a plan.

I've been building a small roll on an untracked site for a few months, making roughly $20-30hr, and will use this to fund 5 buyin shots at 50nl zoom until it sticks, i'll then use 100 buyins for 100nl+. Even though I've not played much zoom the past few years I've still played a few thousand hands a month on euro sites at roughly 10bb/100 on reg tables. I've also kept up with studying and watching vids so not a total zoom noob. I work full time, am engaged, and have other commitments, but wil be looking to put in 100k hands a month when settled at zoom.



On to the trading stuff:

It's taken more than the magic 10,000 hours for me, but now with a few thousand bars of any derivatives chart higher than a 5 minute interval I can find a very high probablility trade.

These were the results from my topsteptrader combine:



These were the results from my topsteptrader funded trader prep:

[IMG]https://s10.************/9wotutyx5/FTP.png[/IMG]]

Topsteptrader really helped me tighten my risk controls but being backed with the hedge fund behind them turned out to be very restrictive on the number of financial instruments I could trade. When combined with paying professional data fees on each product, I decided with my new found love for poker to go it on my own again.

I was dissapointed with my topsteptrader experience as i believe I passed my combine and funded trader prep with one of, if not the best sharpe ratio and profit factor they have had, and a risk:reward around 1:1, and yet we parted ways. Unfortunately they make so much money from failed traders that the funded traders don't seem as important sometimes.

So my favourite instruments in order of prefrence, usually 5 minute - 60 minute bar intervals, are: FDAX, NQ, YM, CL, APPL, MSFT, 6E, 6B, S&P500, HSBC. A lot of the Dow 30 stocks have decent daily movement as well but the spreads aren't great on all of them.

My trading is and has always been pure price action, no indicators or any of that nonsense, I don't mind volume bars though. For my combine I focused on retracements with a 1:1 R:R. Retracements don't produce the same rewards as reversals, but they have a much higher probability of a short term small R:R profit. With my own account I'd focus on reversals and riding out for a much better R:R.

If you are a fellow trader post or pm me some charts with your entries, exits, trendlines, and thoughts and i'll try my best to give advice. If some high stakes zoom baller wants to exchange poker discussions for trading discussions that could be interesting.

I guess that's a lot of words so i'll leave it at that for now.

Always been heavily interested in trading, but have been put off by all the scams that call me wanted to trade on their platforms.

Really interested to see how this goes. GL

Finally figured out how to embed images. Above are the results from my combine and funded trader prep mentioned in my OP

Nathan

Thanks for posting, been following your PGC. Definitely just stick with the main platforms and brokers. Anyone selling trading software and strategies are full of crap. I think the only way to improve at trading is spend time in front of the charts or have a friend that has.

Just get in there and draw some lines to start, get a feel for momentum, make some assumptions, backtest them until they fail, then analyze the chart at the point of failure, make some assumptions, work them into your trading plan, then backrest it until it fails, rinse repeat, rinse repeat

Eventually your assumptions fail less and less and you can backtest further and further, and out of all these failures and assumptions emerges a successful trading plan.

If you like studying poker then backtesting trading strategies should really wet your whistle.

Good luck and enjoy

Nath

Happy to find this pgc... I prop traded mostly grains and crude but also currencies and index futures at the CBOT for 4/5 years and traded as a broker for a few years prior to that. I had some of the old-timer floor traders as mentors when I was coming up but I basically taught myself. I used to bomb opens in the soybeans and make crazy high variance trades like spreading corn against wheat and then establishing option positions against my spreads, so your approach sounds a little more refined . In 2012 my firm got bought out and I just really wasn't enjoying it anymore with the lack of volatility and the more or less centralized economy we have now and decided to hang it up. The initial plan was to go to grad school for clinical psych but I've put those plans on hold for the time being. Trying to live the dream now for a minute playing/teaching drums, and playing a reasonable amount of online poker on bovada and trying to move up stakes. I've always really loved the game and been a decent winner, but I have the time and freedom now to really try to improve so I'm giving it a go. Anyway our backgrounds seem to parallel one another so I'll be following. Glgl

What books do you recomend for a noob that wants to start into trading?

Epic thread

Solid bump

Easy the original Market Wizards