In this business you can achieve 1% per week (or not, who knows), but you can achieve this only if don't expect to win any fucking dime in the week and you get what the market gives you to trade (no more, no less) I mean, newbie traders who came up with the idea of make (X MONEY, X %) per week (or month, year) usually at some point can't follow the curve that they created and then the collapse begins when they make stupid decisions on the pressure they have to make their previous "goals". Usually traders who came up with this idea think that setting up a goal is some sort of show of determination (something that can be good on sports, for instance) but here doesn't work. I know because i've been there many years ago. OF course the market on his huge wisdom gave me a huge (but painful) lesson
Chauncey makes a great point: By putting (unrealistic) expectations in front of yourself you put yourself under unnecessary pressure. Not even the very very top 0.1% of professional traders worldwide achieve 1% a WEEK (!) (not even going to get into 1% a day) consistently year after year after year. And they don't have to. Nobody has to return 50% year in order to make a lot of money, and that statement in itself implies proper capitalization: Enough trading capital so you don't have to try to achieve 1% a week. The idea should be to protect your capital as much as possible, manage your risk and rather let go of 1/3 of your potential profits in order to cut your risk exposure and e.g. buy puts/calls every time when holding a leveraged overnight position such as futures. The point here is not to maximize your profits but minimize the risk in order to stay in the game forever so you can compound, compound and compound. Consistency is key. All these "20% a month" stories of course happen just like theres 1 person a year going to Vegas with $10 and going home with $10m. Yes, it happens every once in a blue moon for every 1 million players blowing up in Vegas, but I wouldn't advise it for as a career choice.
A successful week. Light trading this week as my schedule has been very very busy and not allowing me to study the markets as much as I should. The good news though is that I believe my strategy has "substance". We'll see how it pans out in the long run though. I want to add a few more strategies to my portfolio of trading. I'll also be adding middle term trading strategies encompassing weeks or months as well. I'll trade them and keep track in a different pool of money. (I haven't decided what I want that capital to be yet.) So, this week gains of 19.60 on 5026.73 equals a gain of .4% The positions that were traded though only accounted for about $1,800 though, so the gain on those positions was actually 1.08%. P.S., I noticed that I accidentally named the file from last week "082407-082807". It actually should be "092407-092807".