SAVIUS a new prop firm looking for traders and...your comments

[Lúidín]

I was looking for prop firms on the internet and came across this thread, and I really had to make this post, my first one since 2008 when I became a member I'm just giving my 2 cents here on how this business model actually works, as I went through the process at TopStep ( which is absolutely the same kind of business as Savius, no matter what anyone says).
So here is what I realized after being funded by TST.. I spent about 5 months worth of continuous combine fees (over $800,00) for about 8 months total. I failed it twice and managed to pass it twice. The first time I passed it, I had to do the FTP (funded trader prep), in which they add 2 other rules to be followed: You have 10 days to trade (you can chose those) and reach a profit of $750,00. Your winning percentage must be at least 45%. I failed that and went back to the combine. After another couple of months (paying the fees obviously) I passed it again and finally got funded. So, I had to follow those stupid rules again on the funded account, being positive after the 10th day and have at least 45% winning days.
Sounds pretty easy right? The problem with trading those first 10 days is that in such a short period of time, the outcome of your trading tends to be pretty random. If you take any successful trader's track record over the years and divide it by blocks of 10 days, you will see that many of those blocks will have a negative P&L, but the trader will still be profitable in the long term. You can even do a simulation of that on a computer. Drawdowns happen all the time and they don't have any specific time to start or end. But a successful trader will always be able to recover over time.
In the FTP and in the first 10 days trading live you don't have such a luxury of a drawdown. Even a little one will be hard to overcome, given that its gonna affect your psychology as well. It just adds more pressure on the trader. It makes trading much more difficult. You just cannot set a time limit for something that works with probabilities. There is only so much a trader can control.
They have the odds on their side you see, they are the Casino and we are the gamblers. They know all the probabilities of a trader being successful after those 10 days and they take advantage of that. The less people passing the test, the better.
I had a little chat with the CEO, Mr Patak, and he said basically I needed more screen time (did I laugh?) and I should sign up for another combine. Then I asked for a free first month of a new one, since I had already passed it twice, and he said the company takes all the risk and the free month of a continuous combine wouldn't apply in my case. The point is, is he really interested in funding traders? I don't think so.
And does the company takes all the risk? I am 100% sure they DON'T! And here is why: I spent over $800,00 on fees to pass the combine. I lost the company only $700,00 in those 10 days. So, $800 - $700 = $100,00 profit for them. Who actually lost money overall?? I think I was the one. Do the business lose any money with traders at all? Absolutely not. I've heard of traders taking a year or even many years to pass the combine. Let's say 12 months on average (being conservative). So, 12 times $ 130,00 (the 30K combine ) is $1560,00 in fees. The max drawdown if you get funded on the 30K combine is $1500,00. Coincidence?
So, just by this little example we see that there is no risk taken on their side. And this is being conservative. Normally a newbie trader takes more than 12 months to get funded, if he/she gets funded at all. There is plenty of money coming in to mitigate all the "risk" they say they take.
Another stupid rule is the 45% winning thing. In 10 days period you simply cannot have 45% winning days! You either have 40% or 50%. But again, 45 looks good and much lower than 50, right?
Savius is exactly the same thing. Same business model. Even more difficult as it seems to be 10 CONTINUOUS days. I don't think you get to chose the days to trade.
So, people, if you think you are lucky, then go for it. You might as well buy a lottery ticket. How much will you have to spend before you win? Just open an account and make deposits every month. Practice and develop your trading for a year or so on sim and when you feel comfortable, switch to the real account. If you lose it, start all over again. At least you won't help sponsor those scammers. And its gonna be even easier and less stressful, as you wont have to meet those stupid annoying rules that make the traders life much more difficult.
Unfortunately people don't realise how they are being tricked, thinking it's all about the skills and all that, when in fact this is no different from online gambling.
You obviously have to develop your skills, but it wont matter much when you have to follow rules that are designed to work against you.
Always do your own research and trade well!

Nice to see someone with a bit of common sense, even if it had to come the hard way.

Nobody in this life does anything for nothing, especially if there is money involved.

There are several things wrong with the approach stated by the Op here, and I will comment in detail later, as I do not have time now.

Btw, the Op is entitled to try whatever business he likes, and what he is offering might actually help some people in understanding more about gambling, as when you look at what others are looking for just to share knowledge that is widely common, his fee might not be that much in relation to what you might learn.

I will give him a chance to prove some of what he says, as he should have no problem doing same if he is genuinely interested in selling something to others.

Lúidín

 

[SAVIUS]

Hey Harama,
Your post is quite similar to many other posts that you can read on this subject on this and other forums.
If you went thru the whole post, I m pretty sure you know already that I generally tend to agree to what you write, as it is uncontestable, but your analysis leaves behind a few crucial facts.
Also I find it unfair calling TST or Savius “scammers” as we are both entrepreneurs risking our own money and I don’t see any fraud or misrepresentation about how the two companies conduct their business. It would be like calling you a losing trader as you spend your time writing on a forum and try to pass the Combine. I don’t know who you are, and where you come from, so I wouldn’t do it.
This forum gives you the freedom to express an opinion, but not to be impolite for no reason.
As per your calculations , again if you read the previous posts, I find them inaccurate. The stats are not the same of a Casino, a lot more people pass the Combine or the Challenge than those who leave their salaries on the green velvet table.. A losing live trader cost will be covered by roughly 9 failed Challenges. Furthermore in your equation you don’t factor in all the company s costs: web marketing, salaries, offices, insurance, etc, etc.
I do have a lot of respect for whoever puts his money on the table to try and create a prop trading business , as it is very difficult and risky.
TST model and Savius model are similar indeed not identical, I don’t feel I am competing with them directly, as we sell different products on our websites and conduct different marketing strategies ( we do not investing in marketing at the moment).
I disagree also on the fact that you reckon that our test is more difficult only as it involves trading 10 days in a row. Our rules are much easier, we don’t have a % of winners rule for example nor FTP selection phase ( but obviously I have a biased opinion).
Again you are right when you say that every good trader can have a drawdown of 10 days. They can also have a drawdown of 10 months and still be profitable over 10 years, but that is not a game for many pockets. You can apply many statistical model to try and guestimate the distribution of your positive and negative trades, but there is no way to have a certain outcome.
We could expand the test period, but that would require making it more expensive , to cover market fees and resources to track the performance, and still that will not change much the “randomness” applied to the selection (again we agree).
Even using more capital wouldn’t not necessarily increase the odds. From what we have observed it only increase the losses. That is why we prefer to reduce leverage .
So to cut a long story short, we are not trying to focus on the % of positive traders, as we can’t control that, we try to focus on the Reward each positive trader can produce compare to the associated risk.
The reality is that large majority of the players of this “ Casino” ( as you call it) lose money, our money, and most of the times committing very basic mistakes. The same guys, who are not professional traders for a reason, also do not like to receive advices on risk or trade management. Reality is (again) that large majority of people approaching us , especially losing traders, think it’s not their fault if they are not trading like a pro: it must be Savius s fault and their stupid rules, or market’s fault or it just depends on lack of money.
Again , trust me on this, large majority of people do not need our money, at all. They need a structure, but when we try to provide it, something inside them gets frustrated, the same part that is holding them back from becoming successful and that make some of them attack so vigorously Savius or TST.
Harama, I would be happy to offer you a free Savius Trading Challenge, so that you can write about my company a proper feedback based on a direct experience. From what you say then you obviously idislike this business model and this will not make you change your mind, and but at least you could write a more relevant post.
I’ m not trying to buy your consent here btw.
Some members of this forum who contacted me in private were offered free Challenges as well, but strangely enough none of them posted a couple of lines to say it.
Probably better as you would have thought it was me or my cousin writing it.
Obviously this is not an invitation to the other users of the forum to call us “scammers” in order to receive a free trial nor to pm me for the same reason.

As a final note just to keep updated those that are intellectual curios about the developments, we are considering making a few changes probably next year.
We have observed that many of our juniors perform very well on a simulated environment but then fail once they go live. Psychology has a HUGE impact.
We are thinking about a solution where we can pay a trader to trade simply on a sim account or maybe just don’t let him know when he is on a real money account or not. We are working with our software developer , I ll keep you posted on this.
We are also considering partnering with another firm in order to be able to offer more leverage quicker. But for the time being these are ideas.

 

[SAVIUS]

Nice to see someone with a bit of common sense, even if it had to come the hard way.

Nobody in this life does anything for nothing, especially if there is money involved.

There are several things wrong with the approach stated by the Op here, and I will comment in detail later, as I do not have time now.

Btw, the Op is entitled to try whatever business he likes, and what he is offering might actually help some people in understanding more about gambling, as when you look at what others are looking for just to share knowledge that is widely common, his fee might not be that much in relation to what you might learn.

I will give him a chance to prove some of what he says, as he should have no problem doing same if he is genuinely interested in selling something to others.

Lúidín

Hey Luidin,
again, if you read the whole post , there is no place when I am saying our test is easy at all. It is damn difficult and the rate of success is 26%. But we are here to finance the best of the bests, not to give money away for charity.
As far as I am concerned, I dont have to prove I can trade, I know I can as that is what i do for living and I am actually setting up a trading entity in MC that would start operating next year. You can check my linkedin profile and you will notice I ve been trading professionally since 2007 ( I was a broker before) and I have endorsements from a lot of respected professionals of the industry.
I dont really need people to "give me a chance", simply if you dont like our approach , then dont visit our website. Send your CV to Goldman or Bight, or trade your own money.

That being said I hold a small private live trading room, where I trade REAL money with the same risk parameters we use for Savius traders. I do it once per week and it s free ( again what a scammer I am uh? sucking money wherever i can). I am doing it just to try and show to a few people how to trade conservatively with small risk.

It is only for a few people all Italians, but I understand you are Italian as well, so you are welcome to join, as long as you approach the room with no mental pre-concepts and respect the others.
So you can see that I put my money where my mouth is and ask yourself if you would do the same.

 

[SAVIUS]

apologies

Sorry mate I wrote too quickly, I see you are from Ireland, apologies. (ouch!!)

I ll probably do something similar next year for English speaking friends, and again your are welcome to join, if you wish.

 

[Lúidín]

Sorry mate I wrote too quickly, I see you are from Ireland, apologies. (ouch!!)

I ll probably do something similar next year for English speaking friends, and again your are welcome to join, if you wish.

Apologies accepted, as we all make mistakes.

Firstly, if you read my post correctly you will see I did not call you anything, as I have no reason to.

Secondly, when I talk about a chance, I mean give you a chance to show people here, as it is here you are trying to sell, what exactly you are talking about in relation to what way you will only allow other people trade your money.

Thirdly, you might be missing out on a lot of good traders by ignoring US stock trading, as it is possible to daytrade US stocks successfully for much less risk than Index Futures, once you know how to do it of course.

This discussion is getting interesting, which is good, as there is far too much talk about the same old stuff, which is very boring.

I am looking forward to some good arguing with you

Lúidín

 

[Lúidín]

If I consider going into business with any person, or entity, then I have 3 questions that I ask, as follows.

1. What exactly are you offering, and I mean in detail, no vague statements.

2. How much of my money will be at risk.

3. What is my potential reward for putting my money at risk.

Can you answer no.1 first to see if we can take the discussion further.

Thank You

Lúidín

 

[alexaherself]

The challenge is $198 but if you go live we will refund it.

That isn't what it says on your website. There, it says that if you pass the challenge, you'll refund it. Not that you have to "go live", to get the refund.

Your website actually gives almost no information at all about the incentive/reward for passing the challenge: only that one becomes eligible to proceed to "phase 2" if one passes it, but with no description at all of what "phase 2" is, what its purpose is, or even whether it's free/paid, etc.

All very mysterious!

 

[SAVIUS]

Hey Alexa you are right unfortunately, that part is still a bit unclear on the website.
We have recently restructured and created a video explainer on the home page but we still get a lot of questions on phase 2.
Here is how it works.
If you pass the Savius Trading Challenge we reimburse you the 198 USD via paypal straight away, and Phase 2 begins.
Phase 2 means that you keep trading on a sim account with the same risk rules but you have no profit obligation nor the obligation to trade everyday. We just want to see how you perform in normal conditions so , not under stress. It s not a test, so worst case scenario if you are negative , well ask you to stay a touch longer on the sim, but if you passed the Challenge you can be sure we ll send you live.
This period is also used to do all the documentation and compliance , account openings , etc.
This is what we call phase 2.
In any circumstance new traders start live the first day of each month and get paid the first day of the following.
As I wrote above we are seriously considering wether prolonging phase 2 to about a month and maybe paying the trader a small fixed fee to trade on the simulator. This way he ll be rewarded for his/her time and we ll have more data to understand how he/she trades. It s in the set of ideas that we are studying for next year...

 

[Lúidín]

Does the high watermark level apply, and if so can you give a typical example of how it was applied to a trader's live account?

Lúidín

 

[SAVIUS]

Hey Luidin, thanks for the question. It gives me a chance to explain how it works and how we got there.
The trailing stop is actually pretty new, we started applying it since last September, before we simply allocated 1250 Risk per trader: that s it.
We then decided to make it 1500 USD so the trader could have had the chance to have 3 negative days in a row losing 500 usd.
Problem was what I explained before: large majority of live traders don't even get into positive territory and those who actually went positive most of the times went back and burnt the whole risk. A live trader implied automatically a cost of 1500.
We then introduced the profit trailing , which is of the same amount of the initial risk, 1500 and then grows slowly as the equity line progress.
It does work on high watermark principle.
So suppose you started trading for us on November first. On November 15th you are up 1000 usd but then you go on a DD period and lose 1500 USD in a row and bring the account back to -500 USD. In that case we will stop you and ask you to take the Challenge again. You lost nothing , we lost 500.
Case number 2: You go up 1500 and then lose it all back. Here the rule will apply exactly as the previous case , but depending on what we see we might decide to put you on the sim for a week and then back live or to simply allocate again some risk and let you trade a bit more live ( this is exactly what we did to one of our live traders last week and it worked).

Case number 3: you go up 3000 and lose back 1500. At this point the applied rule would be to pay you 750 usd and ask you to take the Challenge again( be both made money). Again according to our perception of your skills we may decide to allow you more risk, or we may decide together to risk the profit left.

Our risk rules imply a max capital allocation per trader but we also try to deal with people like human beings. We base those decisions on the way the trader interacts with the risk manager , his trading style, etc.

Before we turn on the discussion of the " too little space" , I want to state once more that there is no rush to make money.
The problem is that live traders get greedy.
They want to make money fast and increase the leverage fast, and they are ready to take a lot of unnecessary risk , especially as it is not their money.
500 USD risk trading 1 lot of QM is equivalent to a full dollar move on crude. If that is not enough for you to trade intraday , then you shouldnt be trading intraday.
It s 100 tics move of with 1 MiniDOW contract.
It s roughly 100 tics of MiniDax corresponding to 100 points move on the big contract.
There a few low leverage instruments that would allow you to trade with a 500 usd risk per day giving a logic to a trading plan.
But again a lot of traders want to trade 2 lots of crude, or 3, and 1 or 2 DAX contracts. This prevents them to use technical stops, they are obliged to use monetary stops , and that normally kills them quite quickly.
So to go back to your inquiry, we had to insert the profit trailing to try and capture a small portion of that profit that a few traders produce, or at least to reduce risk.

I think I m being very honest and open minded to share all this on a forum, probably even too much! I hope some of you guys appreciate it.

 

[alexaherself]

I think I m being very honest and open minded to share all this on a forum

Well, please excuse these two observations ...


(i) Once you've chosen to start off a promotional thread in a forum in order to publicise your business, it would certainly look pretty bad if you weren't open and honest, when people ask you questions;

(ii) If you gave more information on your website, you might not be asked so much in public: your "FAQ" page is very difficult indeed to find - it's not even listed in the main navigation system at the top of the home page - and some of the gross grammatical errors on the site also lose you credibility (yes, I know all three of you are Italian-speakers, but when putting up a professional website in English, you really should have had it checked over by a native English-speaker).


However, you don't come across at all as dishonest, and you're certainly answering people's questions here, and you're doing so well and openly. I'll give you that.

 

[SAVIUS]

Hey Alexa,
yes point taken. Agree on everything you said.

I ll try to work on the website during the xmas break. Thanks

 

[Lúidín]

Hey Luidin, thanks for the question. It gives me a chance to explain how it works and how we got there.
The trailing stop is actually pretty new, we started applying it since last September, before we simply allocated 1250 Risk per trader: that s it.
We then decided to make it 1500 USD so the trader could have had the chance to have 3 negative days in a row losing 500 usd.
Problem was what I explained before: large majority of live traders don't even get into positive territory and those who actually went positive most of the times went back and burnt the whole risk. A live trader implied automatically a cost of 1500.
We then introduced the profit trailing , which is of the same amount of the initial risk, 1500 and then grows slowly as the equity line progress.
It does work on high watermark principle.
So suppose you started trading for us on November first. On November 15th you are up 1000 usd but then you go on a DD period and lose 1500 USD in a row and bring the account back to -500 USD. In that case we will stop you and ask you to take the Challenge again. You lost nothing , we lost 500.
Case number 2: You go up 1500 and then lose it all back. Here the rule will apply exactly as the previous case , but depending on what we see we might decide to put you on the sim for a week and then back live or to simply allocate again some risk and let you trade a bit more live ( this is exactly what we did to one of our live traders last week and it worked).

Case number 3: you go up 3000 and lose back 1500. At this point the applied rule would be to pay you 750 usd and ask you to take the Challenge again( be both made money). Again according to our perception of your skills we may decide to allow you more risk, or we may decide together to risk the profit left.

Our risk rules imply a max capital allocation per trader but we also try to deal with people like human beings. We base those decisions on the way the trader interacts with the risk manager , his trading style, etc.

Before we turn on the discussion of the " too little space" , I want to state once more that there is no rush to make money.
The problem is that live traders get greedy.
They want to make money fast and increase the leverage fast, and they are ready to take a lot of unnecessary risk , especially as it is not their money.
500 USD risk trading 1 lot of QM is equivalent to a full dollar move on crude. If that is not enough for you to trade intraday , then you shouldnt be trading intraday.
It s 100 tics move of with 1 MiniDOW contract.
It s roughly 100 tics of MiniDax corresponding to 100 points move on the big contract.
There a few low leverage instruments that would allow you to trade with a 500 usd risk per day giving a logic to a trading plan.
But again a lot of traders want to trade 2 lots of crude, or 3, and 1 or 2 DAX contracts. This prevents them to use technical stops, they are obliged to use monetary stops , and that normally kills them quite quickly.
So to go back to your inquiry, we had to insert the profit trailing to try and capture a small portion of that profit that a few traders produce, or at least to reduce risk.

I think I m being very honest and open minded to share all this on a forum, probably even too much! I hope some of you guys appreciate it.

When I read your posts, there is a lot of reference to losing, which is fine when done correctly, but I am starting to form an opinion that you might not have a very good strategy, for if you had, why are so many traders failing?

It is your job, as the strategy provider, to provide the trader with all the tools required to achieve a set profit target with a set number of trades, trading a specific market, with a defined draw down on account.

From what I am reading, and seeing so far, I do not see how you are going to improve on your % stats, and if you are willing to accept the stats and continue as is, then things will not change.

Some main things that I see as drawbacks.

1. Your strategy is not optimized for inexperienced traders - in other words, you are allowing some people to trade highly risky markets without taking their mental and trading abilities into consideration.

2. Your technical analysis approach is way overestimated, and while a few members of Savius might be able to make money trading using these techniques, I would guess that the sample trade amount, that yields a positive result, will be far greater than that allowed for the challenge.

3. Your risk model is not good - you are allowing traders overtrade by allowing multiple contracts. If a trader is allowed to open a position with more then one contract, then the odds are against him form the start. A trader should only be allowed to trade multiple contracts with realized profits, and even at that, only on a proportional basis.

4. Your cut of 50% of profits is way too high, and would not entice any profitable traders to join your team.

In relation to high watermark level, I was inquiring more along these lines. Does something like this apply also?


Definition
The highest value that has been earned by an investment fund. This value is often used when determining the bonus earned by the fund manager; a fund manager's bonus will be based on the amount of money he or she earned above the high watermark level. If the amount of money earned is below the high watermark level, he or she will not receive a bonus.

Read more: http://www.investorwords.com/6836/high_watermark.html#ixzz3ty5QjSdS


Lúidín

 

[SAVIUS]

Hey Luidin,
for what refers to watermark yes, that definition applies to us , it s what I was trying to say (excuse my English)

With reference to other comments, they are highly appreciated and there is some good sense in what you write for sure.
This forum is really helping us to have an exchange with traders like yourself and trying to understand in what direction we should be pointing the "fore" in the future.
As I told you we are evaluating a few changes for next year...
At the same time the risk allocated, profit share, etc it s part of the way we have decided to run the business and it is based on the experiences we had as professionals. Also some of your opinions on max risk allocated and multiple lots etc unfortunately are not widely agreed by the traders community.

As for every trading plan there is always a point when it gets personal in terms of risk perception and risk acceptance.

Thanks for your thoughts .

 

[SAVIUS]

Sorry , I forgot to comment on the profit split.
Considering that:
-the average trader is not a pro and has no financial background
-he/she works part time from home with no obligations to perform
-he/she risks nothing and still gets rewarded

I see the 50% profit split as quite fair, also considering that it increases to 70% eventually as I wrote.

Those companies who offer better profit splits normally only provide leverage, meaning they will ask the trader a cash deposit of 10K and that risk will be entirelytrader's risk .

Some others would agree to pay even 90% or 100 % of the profit if they reach 5K in profit without any cash withdrawal ( payment).
They know that 99% of the times the trader would ask to withdraw part of the profit when he reaches 2-3k or that he will be kicked out by the profit trailing before reaching the 5K mark.
So basically they are pretty sure it's not gonna happen or at least very rarely.

 

[NVP]

why is this guy being allowed to advertise a commercial trading forum/website on T2win ?

have I been in a coma for the last few weeks ..(no jokes).......?....did I miss a shift in the rules here ?

can I reopen all my mega training blogs , journals and supersites ?

N

 

[Lúidín]

why is this guy being allowed to advertise a commercial trading forum/website on T2win ?

have I been in a coma for the last few weeks ..(no jokes).......?....did I miss a shift in the rules here ?

can I reopen all my mega training blogs , journals and supersites ?

N

I have posted in your thread, as I am interested in how you scalp eur.usd and what charts you use.

Lúidín

 

[Lúidín]

Sorry , I forgot to comment on the profit split.
Considering that:
-the average trader is not a pro and has no financial background
-he/she works part time from home with no obligations to perform
-he/she risks nothing and still gets rewarded

I see the 50% profit split as quite fair, also considering that it increases to 70% eventually as I wrote.

Those companies who offer better profit splits normally only provide leverage, meaning they will ask the trader a cash deposit of 10K and that risk will be entirelytrader's risk .

Some others would agree to pay even 90% or 100 % of the profit if they reach 5K in profit without any cash withdrawal ( payment).
They know that 99% of the times the trader would ask to withdraw part of the profit when he reaches 2-3k or that he will be kicked out by the profit trailing before reaching the 5K mark.
So basically they are pretty sure it's not gonna happen or at least very rarely.

In my opinion, you will not get any trader join you who is able to make money on his own.

If you think about it, you can daytrade ES with $5k, which is really nothing when it comes to a trading account.

So, say you average $250 per day clear profit over a month, which is approx $1k per week allowing for little expenses, which is not a bad wage for a few hours work each day.

If trading with you, apart from the limitations of having to use your strategy and indicators, as I take it you are saying that is how you operate, you will initially take $500 per week from the profits.

Why would anyone do something so stupid, unless of course they do not know anything about trading for consistent profits, and think that the more money they have access to the more they will make, which in most cases does the exact opposite, which you have stated yourself.

You are not in control. You are not focused on individual trader mentoring, which is what is required if you truly want to make more money by helping others become consistently profitable.

I am sorry, but in my eyes you are not offering anything different than the rest. Your main focus is revenue from selling indicators and a very bad attempt at a professional prop trading setup, which is fine, as you are entitled to try and make money any way you can, outside of your live trading.

In summary, nothing new or exciting that would make profitable traders think of joining your team.

I wish you well in your business venture.

Lúidín

 

[itspossible]

I have posted in your thread, as I am interested in how you scalp eur.usd and what charts you use.

Lúidín

he missed em due to his coma

 

[NVP]

I have posted in your thread, as I am interested in how you scalp eur.usd and what charts you use.

Lúidín

Go,there and ask me......unfair to hijack this thread :smart: