You are teasing me @jl1575. A good friend of mine is trying to get me to try the ES. I may yet make that transition. I can see that the NQ and YM may not be able to absorb larger trades as well. The spread has been large this week on the comparable micros, but using limit orders in and out has worked great. Calculated a different way-- Starting with $2k, at 2% per day, the $1 Million mark happens on trading day 316. That would be spring of 2021. Let me reach the following milestones before I let my potential winnings cloud my judgment: $5k $10k $25k $50k $75k $100k $150k $200k THEN we can talk about $1M... Maybe
Just yesterday I wrote that 260 people had been infected with coronavirus in the US. Today it is 346. ONE DAY. Brace yourselves everyone. If all else fails, TRADING from home should be a great way to keep the income going. Second, the compounding effect is in full force here... and it's pretty scary. In a twisted way, I want my account to compound like this. It started small and ....
No teasing you, some people may have even much more ambitious plan only NOT posting a journal here. I think it is achievable, as you are pretty conservative and act prudently, besides, you have traded for 13 years and that is a big factor that contributes to your success.
Several years ago, I recalled a guy made over a million in a single day on days with volatility like these two weeks. When you are well prepared and have the capital, you can play big games. Say, doing 200 lots on ES, half mil or one mil a day is possible in these two weeks. I bet there are retail traders making millions or ten of millions these two week, only not posting.
Unfortunately, its not a sustainable rate. Traders go on vacation, take days off, get sick/ill, other obligations and the most important...market conditions change. The latter is the most important reason why its tough...stuff always happening so that the conditions you're trading within today are not the same conditions you're trading within months from now or years from now. There's also the psychological impact (most ignore it) is when increasing the position size and then losses occur even if its not a drawdown. I've seen many traders and trade journals here at ET unravel very fast because the trader increased position size when they weren't mentally (psychologically) prepare for such. They increased that size because they got caught by that theoretical compounding theme...the math looks so pretty on paper. wrbtrader
I ended with a net gain of 279,962.21. I trade alot of other instruments, this is my equity portfolio.
You've brought up THE critical point... It's psychological! It transcends "risk management". As a futures trader, when I have an open position yielding $50 PER TICK, for me or against me, I get anxious... premature exits, and cutting loss too quickly. I'm not referring to volatility or velocity, merely the psychological effects of the PER TICK VALUE of an open trade. If I "wanted", my account size could support an even larger position. As I've stated to the OP before... he is not doing himself any favors by not at least incrementally increasing size, within the account value parameters he has defined. What better opportunity to deal with the critical psychology then with micro contracts. Adding 1 contract in volatile periods would be very useful... Meanwhile, the OP refers to trading more than a single MICRO as "a feat".
You beat me to exactly what I was going to say! I have been saying all along that the whole purpose of this experiment was to let the account size dictate the number of contracts traded and this is how he was going to grow 2% every day. He has so far traded positively every day of this crazy volatility, but since it was only with 1 contract, he his failing at what he set out to do. With his account at almost 4k, he should be trading 4 or 6 contracts, but I'm not exactly sure of this rule. The volatility does require increasing stops and targets, and therefore lowering contract size I think (ie. instead of trading 4 contracts with a stop of 5 points, you trade 2 contracts with a stop of 10 points), but there was no reason to drop all the way to one, other than psychological. If he was trading more contracts, his PnL clearly would have been double, or more. In a way, this shows that the psychological element is already affecting him, and this is exactly the kind of trouble most people run into. In this high volatility environment, I understand why he is scared, but since he still finished with a profit trading 1 contract, he would have finished with twice as much, or 4 times as much, if he was trading 2 or 4. I of course don't blame him one bit, but I'm not sure how he will get out of this psychological barrier that he has now hit. All along I didn't like how he was already "self" adjusting his number of contracts traded, as if he has the power to forecast which trades would work and which wouldn't. It would of course be a wonderful skill to know that on a losing trade you only trade one, but on a winning trade you trade 6, but this isn't how it works. Given the last chart he posted though, showing how 3 of the trades went heavily against him before recovering, I understand why trading multiple contracts would have been psychologically damaging, but this unfortunately shows that scaling up like this is very difficult, and his trades are hiding some ugly factors in that some of them go against him heavily, and when trading very large size, it will be difficult to hold. Its easier to hold these trades with one contract, but if he is taking on too much risk for even trades that end up being winners, then the goal of scaling up is dead in the water.
Indeed it is psychological. Well said. Unfortunately, I must take issue with your comments about adding size during periods of volatility. This is the most volatile environment we have had in quite a long time. Look at this! I will certainly be increasing my trading size in short order, but as long as one micro gets me to my 2% goal, then I believe I am doing things the right way. Just ask all the people who blew up in the last two weeks. I am still above the 2% growth line. Do you want me to grow faster than this? I have blown up enough accounts.... Trust me on this one. Correct me if I am wrong, but the our #1 goal as traders is to #1 PRESERVE CAPITAL. And if you can do #1, then #2 is increase the balance. I just made it to the top 5% of traders with my ROI as demonstrated by my account growth, but you want me to jump into the top 1% of all traders and really "go for it" during times of high volatility. Tough task master!!!