this shit is too funny!!! i laugh out loud when i hear people saying you can't do this or you can't do that........that just means THEY can't do it!!! you can't make 20 points a day.....you should shoot for 1-2 points a day............you can't expect to make money at this game......only 5% make money..........where the fuck do they come up with these stats??? cracks me up!!! i notice that a couple of guys who are selling their services say this repeatedly.......maybe that should tell you something.... oh yeah, then you get some guy chiming in saying you can't make money using indicators.......MACD??? no way!!!.....RSI??? forget it!!!.....stochastics??? just a scam, baby!!! I'M LAUGHING MY ASS OFF!!!! oh and then there's that guy who says he knows Gann's super secret to trading........yeah, some 70 year old guy taught it to him, and the 70 year old guy was taught by Gann's assistant.........LAUGHING MY ASS OFF!!!! i've met some guys who say they know Gann's secret.......funny thing is they all make a ton of money with it and they won't tell you what it is.....unless you pay them a couple thousand bucks, then they're real eager to tell ya.....you gotta wonder...... here's the bottom line........you can't make money with any of these things.......or YOU CAN MAKE MONEY WITH EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM........THE CHOICE IS YOURS!!! i can make money with MACD.....it's a cinch.....MACD goes through a fairly predictable sequence that corresponds to the sequence of price trends.....the same with RSI.....ditto for the stochastics........you can say the same about price moving along a moving average.......you can say the same about elliott waves.......you can say that about almost every indicator or theory that's out there and known to everybody!!! and i can make money with none of these things.....with just a price chart and a tool to draw my own trend lines........hell, even with just a price chart alone and knowing yesterday's high and low.....YES, IT CAN BE THAT SIMPLE!!! simple, that is, if you can understand how trends develop, continue, and end.......... be wary of people who will sell you their "secret" to making money.......... be wary of people who tell you that something can't be done........... you can't win at this game without exploding myths and breaking through limits that your own mind sets........most people are so fucked up in the head they can't see straight in the markets and in life.........SET YOUR MIND STRAIGHT.......that is the REAL EDGE
<i>only 5% make money..........where the fuck do they come up with these stats??? cracks me up!!! </i> Have a look at the internal stats of any firm with a lot of retail clients. 5% at best are making money. Your right, I dont make 20 points a day, and I dont need too in order to make a nice living. I did not say it is not possible, in fact I do know some one who does it. What Im saying is that to start out and expect that is stupid.
Gordon, Do you hear this? You better hope on your sweet ass that we're going to fall in the 5% range. That is like ... what? 3 sigma? Keep your fingers crossed and hopefully we can wade through all the bullshit to get to a decent destination. In a way, the quest of trading and knowledge of trading is a lot like a movie about some character who starts out naive and stupid and goes through many lands until he finally reaches the place he seeks. Maybe we can turn this into a good movie ... maybe call it, "The Quest of a Trader." We can have lands of randomness, lands of chaos, TRIN city, TICK city, the FUTURES (Alas, the young one timidly walked up to the old man with a grey beard. "I am known in these lands as MA. You must follow me for the trend will show us the way young one." This is just great. I'm finding out each day that the destination is far less important and exciting than the journey itself. Screw the money, I love all this quest BS. I feel like I have just walked through the city of GANN, where people will follow you in the depths of the night peddling their systems. The streets of GANN are aligned in a majestic pattern of 22 degree streets crossing over 45 degree roads. Soon I will be at the city of IB, where I will step up to the looking glass and execute my first trade and see within the reflecting pool of light while some old, beautiful female trader comes up and gives me this wonderful speech about how the truth of my trading existence is within. God I love this.
There is no easy way to successful e-mini trading. trend_guy is showing us the easiest way there is. This is a more difficult way than trend_guy's. (I personally have not mastered it. Maybe it is the easier way if you have never heard of math, statistics, computer science, or if integrals or complex numbers make you sick to your stomach.) I am just assuming that the average person who does what trend_guy suggests will make just one or a few points per day (like me), and whoever manages to succeed at secco's approach could be averaging double-digit numbers per day. Or they think they are averaging double-digits and have been successful in "setting their minds straight" i.e. convincing themselves that they ARE averaging 20 points a day when in fact they aren't.
Trend Guy, Send me your e-mail adress and I'll prouve it to you that using an indicator is NO BULL SHIT !!! Kind regards, Jeanmichel
as long as were talkin per contact, id have to agree. according to a guy i know who ran the retail accounts for an IB, 20 pts/contract/day is extremely rare indeed. emphasis on extreme. possible but not very probable. one things for sure though, you are dead on about all the idiotic bullshit that gets thrown around here and elsewhere on the internet. every time i turn around it seems somebody is swearin that theyre makin 2-3 times the daily range per contract or somethin ridiculous.
Entering Robbins contest has some validity. If it's your goal to impress somebody for bigger money, you'll need to trade with much more than the minimum entry. (Success with a relatively unimportant amount of money is not much different than paper trading.) 20 years ago when I was trying to break into the money management business, I did great with what I had but was still greeted with a skeptical eye until I produced big with $500K in an audited contest. After that, everybody wanted to believe in me. No easy task (especially the first time), but once you produce big with significant money, your financial condition will take a giant leap up.... on a number of fronts.
it's funny, when someone says something making sense, like secco, nobody takes notice. anyway I fully agree with him. you are wrong about the stats part, as pointed out by brandonf. of course it's easy to get the stats of losing traders. The numbers change depending on firm and percentage of retail clients (if not a firm). and it's fair to say that it will fall between 70% and 90% losing money in the long run. but that point should not mask the validity of 95% ( ) of that post . you can create all kind of strategies and make money. it can be very complicated and arcane, or very simple. it's the trader's choice. people don't want to accept it, but it's true if you understand trends and understand you are your own enemy. I know several ways I can (or do) use. so it cracks me up when people say it's too difficult or it can't be done. you can trade arbitrage (we don't), with short term trend following (using pivots, we do), inventory trading arbitraging 2 time frames trends (market making we do), against S/R and pivots (we do too). there are other variations or very different ways, but I don't feel confortable talking about them because I don't master or use them. few indicators there, it's true. but not because they don't work, because we don't need too (although, obviously pivots S/R and charts are considered TA). regarding 20 points a day, I won't say it can't be done. I say it must be very difficult to get and to have as a target anyway. my experience is this : you want to get consistency, not high performance (and volatile equity curve). if someone does get 20 on long term average, math tells me something very complicated is at work because the market won't yield this easily, but that's it. And when you are consistent you don't care much about what others do anyway unless they tell you exactly how, so I don't care. it's all theory then. I forgot an important thing too. beside the strategy and the discipline, market selection is crucial. that's often overlooked. trading's simplicity is the trader's choice. Some markets are easier to trade (maybe they'll become difficult in time) than others depending on the strategy. so the market and the strategy must match too. remarkably, we select the easiest strategy for a market if we can't find a easy way we'll just forget about the market. I contrast that with what I read too often : people wanting to trade a market and desperately seeking a way to get an edge, never looking elsewhere. it's typical of what you read : there is no way that or this works. you must trade this market and not this. my way is the only way. if my way does not work, no way works, etc.. many fanatics, narrow minded here. well, that goes back to the stats, most are wrong and lose. tntneo
": you want to get consistency, not high performance " Amen. This is the whole truth and nothing but the truth.