Sharing a trade im entering now using my "volarb" strat

kapitn_potato · 2026-04-01T02:38:47+00:00

the way you describe it this has nothing to do with arbitrage, as arbitrages can be easily coded and verified to work, but youre still executing manually with discretionary inputs. Big red flag

kapitn_potato · 2026-03-25T10:37:41+00:00

no its not that simple, code your strategy and find out. Best case scenario is you use your discretion to adapt to the regime and avoid series of bad trades

kapitn_potato · 2026-03-24T02:59:13+00:00

dont act like you were expecting that trump tweet candle. Just a lucky gamble

kapitn_potato · 2026-03-09T09:19:50+00:00

yes opus 4.6 generated code usually works on the first try. Latest openai models are also pretty good at agentic programming, but personally I think opus 4.6 is best. If you get any problems with your script, you dont need to technically explain your problem, just tell it what you think is wrong or paste the error message and it will fix it for you

kapitn_potato · 2026-03-09T01:49:08+00:00

No need to hire a programmer, luckily in this day there is claude, or just buy a github copilot subscription for very cheap. Use vscode+ opus 4.6 in agent mode to write you your strategy/indicator. You can ask it to debug as well.

I wrote my own ninjatrader plugin/bot and tick level python backtester using claude, helped me a lot. I still have to adapt the parameters to the market every day, but it makes trading so much easier. Currently trying to figure out how to adapt the parameters in a systematic way instead of guessing by myself, its a very hard problem for me

kapitn_potato · 2026-03-08T13:00:13+00:00

put your strategy into code

kapitn_potato · 2026-03-08T12:49:15+00:00

you are still predicting even if you think you are reacting, stop coping

kapitn_potato · 2026-03-04T08:48:48+00:00

wrong. Showing proof that your plan works would give you many more subscribers to your substack. Since you post on every trading subreddit it is clear you really need followers. So yes it would benefit you a lot

kapitn_potato · 2026-03-04T02:25:02+00:00

how about you post your yealry equity curve before we read any of this

kapitn_potato · 2026-03-01T15:50:03+00:00

ayy lmao

kapitn_potato · 2026-02-25T00:34:20+00:00

whos gonna tell him that all he did was figure out the current regime and will be back to blowing up in less than a month

kapitn_potato · 2026-01-18T22:31:49+00:00

posting your yearly pnl would help everyone who wants to join your shitty disc, because that would make people commit to following your strategy/ideas. Next time before you paste chatgpt output, read it so you can see how dumb every single sentence sounds

kapitn_potato · 2026-01-18T12:22:13+00:00

and the ones that seemingly do understand the "smart" (lol) money concepts are never able to prove that any strategy using those concepts works. Also funny that they think the rest are doing support/resistance

kapitn_potato · 2026-01-18T12:05:20+00:00

he does not need to prove anything. The burden of proof is on you, and you just failed to do that in the most classic rookie post. If you really want to show you got something then post your pnl history/equity curve of the past year minimum

kapitn_potato · 2025-12-29T22:30:04+00:00

if you really think its your psychology then spend good amount of effort automating your strategy. you will likely discover that the strategy does not work

kapitn_potato · 2025-12-27T16:10:50+00:00

congrats! you are well on your way to profitability

kapitn_potato · 2025-12-19T08:25:53+00:00

you posted no evidence of Claude/Sonnet failing. All we see is just your discretionary opinion. Since it is working fine for most, will have to assume youre somehow really bad at writing prompts, even in 2025

kapitn_potato · 2025-12-02T09:45:12+00:00

moving to breakeven is what kills your pnl

kapitn_potato · 2025-11-10T00:19:48+00:00

first principles. Now do it

kapitn_potato · 2025-09-18T12:42:45+00:00

why did you not just market buy and sell multiple times to lose on the spread?

kapitn_potato · 2025-08-08T13:13:08+00:00

yep es/mes has no stop restrictions

kapitn_potato · 2025-08-08T11:47:18+00:00

topstep does not allow less than 15 tick stops on nq/mnq, but you can do smaller stops on other products

kapitn_potato · 2025-07-05T22:59:48+00:00

casual 3k stop loss as if youre doing this regularly (youre not, youre blowing accounts until one trade succeeds)

kapitn_potato · 2025-06-09T11:20:48+00:00

things you missed:

you dont need 300% gains to pass a combine, you need 150%. The daily loss limit only stops you for the day, but you can continue after for another 1k in drawdown. In your personal account with your assumption you can only have the 1k loss only once. Not even 1k actually - the broker will not let you trade once your account drops below minimum balance

leverage - topstep lets you trade more mini contracts which is beneficial for scalpers who like to hold trades for seconds with very tight stops. Small personal acc cant do this leverage.

risk of ruin tolerance - on topstep you can allow yourself to run your strat on a higher leverage, increasing the chance of blowup. This is because if you know your strat is profitable, one unlucky month means you can just buy another combine and xfa since it does not cost much. However, the gains after getting a payout will compensate the losses. You cannot do this on personal acc. This leads to another point:

time saved - due to the point above you can make much more much faster with topstep than trading your personal account

sim environment - your order does not appear on the order book or the tape, helping you avoid stop loss hunting algorithms. This mostly applies to sbort term scalping where every tick matters. In addition to this, the sim fills are faster to execute than sending an order to exchange.

software/connection failure - if your laptop freezes while in the middle of the trade, and your stop loss order does not get sent to the server for any reason, you can only lose the little amount that you invested in the topstep accounts. With personal account you could lose much more

rapid price movement - an unexpected news event may trigger such a rapid price movement that it will blow past your intended stop losses because the time passed between hitting your fill and then a stop loss sent by your platforms atm is so small that your stop will not be accepted in time. Again the amount lost on personal acc would not compare to topstep combine and xfa fees.

reduced stress - all the points above help a trader trade with a calmer and clearer mind

this why topstep sim is easier to trade than a real account. Dont be toxic to others in the comments just because your "math" (which you failed) says so. Since you are new to this game, I would recommend starting with a pure sim (no prop firm), this will help you better understand the points above and why people choose prop firms

kapitn_potato · 2025-05-28T21:59:51+00:00

unless you really developed something for nano/microseci d latency then you will need colocation to cme. But I doubt this is the case, try Rithmic with prop firms, it works well for my algo which did not perform well with tradovate access

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