Rewarded For Bad Behavior

I wasn't able to trade in the latter half of last week because I was near the weekly loss limit. Since the loss limit lowered at the start of this week, I was quite itchy to get back into trading. This is especially considering a recent Topstep rule change where I don't need to ensure 50% of my winning trades are held for over 20 seconds. Combine all these factors together, I was rewarded for trading poorly today.

I started this week with an account balance of $49,265. Keep in mind that my account balance at the start of Step 2 was $50,000. This means that I would need to make $735 plus an additional $3,000 in order to pass the Combine stages.

So here's my Performance Center screenshot.

TSTrader Performance Center

There are so many things wrong with this screenshot that I'm just going to list everything out in point form in no particular order:
  • The craziest thing is that my total profit was $3K and my total loss was just a bit over $2K. If I didn't overtrade and "gamble," I could've achieved a higher net profit.

  • Another sign that I overtraded can be seen with paying over $200 in commissions alone. Trading 138 contracts certainly took a hit on my net P&L.

  • The non-cumulative P&L should also make you wonder what the fuck I was doing. I still haven't optimized this because I can scalp smaller profits, but I do take quite a hit with each larger loss. Each loss also hit harder as these were $100+, and even over $200 for some trades. That's definitely a concern because this is 20% of my daily and weekly loss limits.

  • My cumulative P&L is also a concern because I went negative twice throughout the day. The problem with going negative for the second time around is that I had this mentality to double down. I scaled up my trades to two contracts because of losses that I took rather than having a profit cushion. I certainly got lucky as most of my trades worked out.
Nearing the end of today's trading session, I really tried to trade my P&L. Specifically, I really wanted to get above the $50K starting account balance and I did. However, there were consequences. For one, I held onto losers for way longer than I should've. I also let trades go much further against me hoping that they would turn into a profit.

TSTrader Trades Log

Pretty fucked up to see these wild swings in the course of only 12 minutes. In conclusion, I got crazy lucky and received another lifeline. I certainly don't need this and it's something I have to be a lot more conscious about throughout the rest of the week.

So where am I at right now? Well, my account balance is $50,008.50. In other words, I recovered my losses in a gambler's fashion so now I have to work on hitting another $3K over the course of the week.