30 ES contracts requires $30000 margin. ES intraday moves UPTO 20 points either way. I work on 0.50 to 1.5 point move of the index. Each index point is worth $50 x 30 cars=$1500 per point. Now what would be 12.8% of $30k initial invested capital? 2.56 points on AVERAGE SO FAR. I do have more funds in the account, but that's not accountable as invested capital, that would only be so if extra margin is required. OK, now if you take firms that offer $500 margins, 30 contracts would need $15000 margin, though if the return in points on average is the same as above, the return on investment is higher. There are days when there are no trades for me, but you were talking about daily average I assumed.
uh? what part u don't understand? how do u know what kind of strategy they employed....every trader is different, are u implying they were using the same approach as when they were investing? and if something your statement prove my point u need to put a lot of effort into it and find an edge to make decent returns with high frequency (or active) daytrading, thats not the case with investing were u can throw darts in the FT pages and beat hedge funds returns by a mile. I mean, look at all the noobers coming into this board with some positive investment experience trying to have a go at futs how far they did go... I am not saying u have no chance, by god will u might have an edge and found a strategy that works, but daytraders as a norm fail miserably by huge numbers.
A margin of 500 does not mean you increase trade size. It simply means you can start with less initial capital to begin with.
My point was this: just because a bunch of old-hats failed miserably when trying to go high frequency has no relation to the effectiveness of high frequency strategies that DO work. Of course many day traders fail because commissions are high, and using leverage irresponsibly can be another reason for failure. Of you'd read the thread you'll see that at least my backtesting results show I do have an edge and even out-of-sample results seem to confirm it.
You haven't even started paper trading and now you know of strategies that DO [your emphasis] work? LMAO. Tooo funny. See above response. LMAO. Tooo funny. Someday I will show you some of my backtesting results before I "got it." I like this thread. I like your posts. But you are now stepping out of bounds. nitro
Mea culpa. Without the benefit of daily compounding, it would take one 100 / 12 = 8.5 days to double the number of contracts traded. As a result, one would double his money 252 / 8.5 = ~30 times, and increase one's account size by only ~1,000,000,000 times per annum.
Ok maybe that could've been worded differently. Let me clarify: Some high frequency strategies do work, I'm not claiming my does *yet*. I'll see soon. I am claiming that at least I have some strategy that *seems* to work so I'm not quite the "random newb" that bitstream was implying. *Slinks away after being scolded by the almight nitro*. :eek:
You don't know that - it is all hearsay. If you really knew, you would have copied the strategy and be trading it yourself. You are a random newb until you trade everyday for a LIVING. Even when you do, the markets can turn your strategy into a newb the next day. I am not "scolding" you. All I am saying is that try to stay humble until you are actually trading it live, and then stay even more humble. nitro