Thanks for your input Grant :).
Important and valuable advice, there, from PMH.
It costs $165 to take TST’s “$50k Combine” (which [I]includes[/I] the data-feed payment otherwise due to the exchange), and given the low-ish pass-rates (which are no great surprise, when you consider the almost total lack of any entry-barrier to their programme), one would want to feel reasonably confident of passing the thing, before paying: those $165 payments will add up quickly, if one needs multiple attempts.
Because of the “scaling plan” for funded accounts, I’d suggest that the “$50k Combine” would be the one for most people to try: there’s probably very little real advantage passing one of the more expensive ones.
I see people saying this, elsewhere, too.
It isn’t altogether my own perception, I must say.
“Avoiding news/holidays” etc., is something all intraday traders should do?
TST’s risk-management rules regarding daily loss limits, maximum permitted drawdowns, and so on, are all on the “loose” side compared with those of anyone I know who’s trading for a living.
If doing a Combine, myself, I would actually be setting [I][U]stricter[/U][/I] parameters for myself (as I do in my own trading) than the ones TST imposes.
(And for myself, I don’t trade “exotics” anyway, given their spreads and comparatively poor liquidity.)
It’s undeniably true, of course, that it’s a “real challenge” … but [B]far[/B] less so than “trading for a living”, surely, which is - after all - the avowed intention of the participants ? 
I’ve never done one, myself, but I do have two friends who got started this way. TST is funding over 400 traders per year - though how many of them continue from that point actually to make a good living is another matter altogether (and not disclosed, apart from to a very small degree, anecdotally, on some videos).
Again (for anyone else following the thread), I wouldn’t make too many concrete plans regarding TST until seeing their forthcoming rule-changes, after the holidays.
When you look at all these days when you are not permitted to trade at all or only at certain times
as well as all the times when FOMC, US GDP, ADP employment data (which apply to all traded assets,
plus additional ones when trading some specific assets), plus the daily time restrictions based on
the US trading clock, you know that if you are trading a) not from the US and b) manually around
your day job hours, then this is even more of a challenge than one may first imagine.
Just saying it requires a whole new level of organisation even before ‘trading’ begins.
Agreed with all the rest, Dr. Lexy!
Yes, I see exactly what you mean. (Might be a plan - [I]for those who like it[/I] - to stick to oil, which has [U]very[/U] few restrictions compared with anything else - just half an hour on a Wednesday, I think? This is what someone I know did, and as I remember that was the reason. Quite a good instrument to trade, too …).
Yes - agreed.
Yes, oil seems to have very few restrictions (crude inventories, etc.)…
If I had time and money to spend, I would definitely do the Combine thingie!
Good to luck to Binary
oil os the most relaxed asset to trade and probably the one (besides smaller markets i trade in corn and wheat) with the least amount of shaking news spikes. it takes patience but the nice part is that when oil once sets ots direction it is sticking to it with very little volatility which makes it a very relaxed waiting period till you reach the target.
theres one down size to oil thou. as all brokers know what i am talking about in the lines above; the leverage on oil is very much limited. the highest CFD broker leverage on oil i have found is 1:50 (usually CFDs and firex traders are used to 1:100 and higher) a leverage restriction on oil of 1:20 is very common in the market of brokers. this makes it a bit boring and slow to new traders to trade oil. at least in their eyes ot seems slow moving even thou it is not.