TopStep Trading Combine

Once we were challenged to put W. D. Gann’s methods put to the test. Specifically, a large client wanted to see the percentage of profitable trades with W. D. Gann’s intraday time-price predictions. The challenge was to take part in a trading competition, or “Combine,”  here in Chicago by Topstep Trader (Topstep.com.) Now this competition is called a “combine” after the same term in baseball tryouts. If you pass the tryouts, the company funds the trader. But… the tryout has tougher parameters than actual trading often does. The rules: Trade max 3 contracts, you must trade at least 10 days. If you make $1,500 you win. But if you drawdown (go backwards in equity) more than $500 on any 1 trade or total equity from peak, you are done. That means no matter how much you make, you can’t go backwards more than $500 at any time. Sound tough? It is to the point of being unrealistic. But to win you must make a very high percentage of small-risk trades. Perfect for Gann. We don’t (and wouldn’t) normally trade like this, and the style more or less resembles scalping. But it made for a good demonstration of Gann’s trading methods in action on an intraday level. We took trade entries in the competition strictly from our W. D. Gann price-time predictions and turn times. The “trades” were executed into a simulator from Topstep Trader.

DISCLAIMER:
This competition was taken on a third-party verified simulator and does not reflect actual trades or account results. Please see hypothetical disclaimer at bottom of page.

The results were managed by Topstep cannot be altered by us in any way. Of course our trading hit the profit objective and we passed the rules with flying colors on the first go, so we thought we would post those results here on the site. Since our attorneys strictly forbid posting actual results, this gives you a good idea of the accuracy and consistency of W. D. Gann’s unpublished trading methods. You can’t learn this from some book on Gann available in a gift shop. Normally Gann techniques have much larger targets. In terms of risk, in this competition, Gann’s methods showed an extremely low drawdown. Read the competition rules below. As you view our results below for each futures contract, keep the following in mind. This series of trades uses only two of W. D. Gann’s original trading techniques out of the dozens of the methods in our “W. D. Gann: Magic In The Markets” Training. Now we even made it tougher on ourselves to show the potency of Gann’s methods by exclusively trading small lots. First, we entered each trade with only 1 contract! Second, we took a smaller than usual profit on most trades (especially the ES S&P mini) to show how consistent our entries were over many trades. Third, look at the draw-down and losing days. Most losses were 1 or 2 ticks, which in reality, we consider to be slippage on break-evens. Gann is ultra-precise! The account never really drew down, except for one day where our stop was not respected by the simulator.

CFTC RULE 4.41

HYPOTHETICAL OR SIMULATED PERFORMANCE RESULTS HAVE CERTAIN LIMITATIONS. UNLIKE AN ACTUAL PERFORMANCE RECORD, SIMULATED RESULTS DO NOT REPRESENT ACTUAL TRADING. ALSO, SINCE THE TRADES HAVE NOT BEEN EXECUTED, THE RESULTS MAY HAVE UNDER-OR-OVER COMPENSATED FOR THE IMPACT, IF ANY, OF CERTAIN MARKET FACTORS, SUCH AS LACK OF LIQUIDITY. SIMULATED TRADING PROGRAMS IN GENERAL ARE ALSO SUBJECT TO THE FACT THAT THEY ARE DESIGNED WITH THE BENEFIT OF HINDSIGHT. NO REPRESENTATION IS BEING MADE THAT ANY ACCOUNT WILL OR IS LIKELY TO ACHIEVE PROFIT OR LOSSES SIMILAR TO THOSE SHOWuses