You're showing great discipline it's hard not to say this 1 micro could have 800, 1500 or even 2 grand today. That's exactly what tempted me so I ended up switching way too early and was slipped hard on the Fed announcement today. No conslace from well you ended up being right to be bearish after all ha ha. So yeah learn from me and keep up the great work and build that margin of error.
$151 net yesterday in 14 contracts = $10.80 average per contract traded or 21 ticks per trade. Volatility is still extra ordinarily high, and my trades were all single micros yesterday. Here is my global progress update: That "3% maybe" target line is getting pretty steep pretty fast. At some point I may remove it, but for now it is a good reminder of the first 21 trading days. My true goal is to follow the 2% average growth line.
At some point the 2% line is also going to get pretty steep pretty fast. But for the moment you're tracking it well. Even bounced against it.
I agree with you @monet but he was referencing my previous comment about possibly not being able to keep up with the 3% curve. Indeed the 2% curve will also get steeper, but if I add contracts as the account grows, I really should be able to keep up just fine. This 2% line is what the journal is all about really. Everyone who reads this journal often has great trades, and I am under no delusion that I am a "good" trader - but merely "above average." At its core, all that I have here is a reasonable, stable growth framework that is working for me. And at least a couple people have reached out to me to tell me they want to try something similar. Excellent. In an interesting way, those comments are almost as satisfying as seeing my own account grow. I know if they indeed try to grow slowly and carefully, they may avoid some of the pain I have gone through.
Fun stuff! I think I just crossed the $4,000 mark. I will know for sure when the statement comes out tonight.
Be glad you didn't get involved in the idea of swinging when you started. Last couple of days have been a doozy. Good to see you are playing the role of the tortoise. Slow and steady wins the race, always.
This is why this 2% is a little tricky. The 2% line will get steep because what you're tracking on the Y axis is profit. 2% of $1,000 is clearly much less than 2% of $10,000. This is exactly why I was saying that what is important is to focus on the ticks/points that are made, and the number of contracts is adjusted simply based on account size. Granted, this volatility does necessitate adjustments, but ideally, what we want to see is that you're making the same number of points on average per day today, as you will be a month from now. The only difference will be that if you trade 2 micro contracts now, maybe a month from now you would be trading 8. Doing it this way will I think really show consistency more. The graph would essentially be flat, but your PnL would be parabolic. And honestly, I think this is the more important metric. If you keep tracking profit and increase contracts, then the PnL will go parabolic, but if you track points per contract, then this will really show if the consistency and progress is there. Put another way, imagine in a month you're making an average of $300 per day, instead of the $150 now, but your number of point per contracts drops in half. This would be almost a little worrying because it might show that with a bigger account, you're having more hesitation to put on trades. Of course fluctuations like this will be common, but its a better metric to follow. Many people blow up when they start trading larger accounts because the money is a big deal. Risking $20 on a trade doesn't seem like much, but maybe $200 is a bit more, but $2000 risk is huge. Mathematically it's all the same if the accounts are larger respectively, and we all know that futures can handle such volume. The stock guys of course maybe cannot move 10k of shares as easily as 1k of shares, so that makes their strategy a bit liquidity dependent, but not so much with futures. But since people do blow up, and its usually because the size gets to them, its important to take size out of the equation. The way I picture it is this. You check your account balance and see you have $3k, so that means you can trade 4 contracts. So you set your platform to 4, and then just go about taking trades. In 2 weeks if your account is 5k, you set your platform to 6 and carry on as usual. You don't even think about the money because its all about capturing the ticks and you do everything exactly the same. If only it was so easy, but this is how I picture what you're trying to do.