I don't mean to be harsh but I think the bottom line is you have very little chance of making enough to live on starting with a mere $5k account, period. Think about who you are doing battle with ... Goldman, Citi, MS ... all ridiculously well capitalized and able to eat your 1 lots as a tasty little snack. Your system may very well work to some degree and you seem like a pretty smart guy, so keep at it if you love it. But just keep your expectations realistic.
there are on avg 3 trend days a month, mostly one way, big moves,on avg there are 21 trading days a month, of that remaining 18 ,about half of them are chop, a morning move,then 4 hrs of chop and an end of day move,the chop in the middle should not be traded,thats where your system would work best because of the smaller percentage chance of it moving big against you,......the es ,you would be buying offers or selling bids and scratching,..... the dow you might get 5-15 pt moves....everyone starts somewhere....papertrading is free and you will stay around to learn....trading with 5k would be difficult for a seasoned trader...i suggest you paper trade,refine your skillls, use that 5k acct for those 3 trend days a month,or 1 big move per month,the acct is open and you will be there to take advantage of it, the scalping will eventually chew up the acct thru commissions...learning to trade goes something like ...put up 5k....lose it in a week....study ....another 5k ..lose it ....you could avoid the 1st 3 or 4 of the 5k losses by papertrading
James, my son,, my son,, listen to thee...lol. As Shakespeare said< "outliers, they are but a must"... just kidding he didnt say that, but that is how important they are. The scalping world is taking over by HFT, bots, algo, so if you dont have those, make it easier and much more profitabale for yourself trading larger time frames. For example, on a scalp, (which i did for years), bad fills are an issue., Your trigger long will be .02-.03cents late and your exit will be .02-.03 cents short. instead of going for the .10 ticks etc. , you will walk out with .07 approx,, bad fills is synonmous with scalping, thats why the scalpers used to trade 100's times per day to make up for it. Dont think i am saying this from some theory view point or some "weekend 401k trading warrior", i have been in your shoes, and would love to have my money and time back from those early days. I have 5 systems going on now at all times, and not one of them is under 15mins, and guess which one is the most unrealiable,,,, yep the 15 min. Whether you will make enough to live on a 60minute, ??. Your gains will not be a daily thing, and BTW, stop looking at your P+L so much, focus on your methodoligies and mechanics more, your p+l will take care of it self. ONe way to look at a 60min time frame is: you are in a hunting comepetition, you need to bring in 100lbs a meat by the end of the month. You can grab your pistol and shoot 50, 2lb squirrels, and if you hit 50 of them, you probably made 70-80 shots. OR, you can lay in wait, take a rifle, watch and shoot two hogs at 50lbs a piece. maybe shooting 3-+4 times all month. YEs, its not a daily thing, maybe your first shot was the first week, and second shot was end of the third week, etc... there is patience involved. But which one would you want to be.... i hope you are choosing the right one. ?? JUst try some 30min charts with your system now. See how they would of worked the last 6 months, (really need much longer). You need outliers, you just really do. its a simple math equation, real world math. my systems get those outliers, and spend the other trades trying not to give them back before the next outlier comes. Period, simple. Its not how often you are right that is the most important thing, but how much you make when you are right./ Have patience you arent going nowehere, nobody is chasing you, learn to make the large gains, with 1 ct, is perfect, and this can be a very, very rewarding biusiness for you. Man,,lolol,, there is so much damn free good advice here,, this Karma thing better come back to me and help me,,,haha,,, just kidding. I have been 20yrs old before James, and i have already traded my first year, first 5yrs, first 10yrs in this business. Take my advice with some depth my friend... the guys at GS and JPM do well because they sit them with senior traders, this is our version of that at ET.. think in dollars you make dollars, think in pennies(scalp), you make pennies---Tudor Jones. EF
There was a post here at one time making then point that one should be conservative while young and take more chances at older age. I agree. So, use you $ and very conservatively use the next 5 years to get the best education you can.
I was going to reply to that one, but held off. That line stood out for me, too, and I wondered about the statistic, whether it came from trading a sim account, from back testing, or from "watching" and "paper trading". If it didn't come from actual live trading of a sim account, then the 90% is definitely a dream. Backtesting results reflect a perfect world; reality will be very different. Watching and paper trading will result in "survivor bias"; in other words you're filtering out results that don't fit into your perfect world. Live sim trading may come closer to reality, but with your real money on the line, live trading results will also be quite different. I know this because I've seen people trade like pure professionals in their sim accounts, then lose money consistently when going live. Here's an idea, James: For one week, trade 5 contracts in a sim account and either call the trades live here, or post the sim trading blotter each day. EDIT: I'll add that I sim traded CL for 6 months. Then I called my live sim trades on the CL thread. Then I finally started trading live. My sim results were miles above my live results. It took me another 4 months just to BEGIN to learn how to truly let winners run.
I used to be you. Not until I lost that $5,000 did I understand how foolish I really was. Devoted the past 7-8 years intensely studying, backtesting, forward-testing. It isn't what you are thinking, your 6 months mean nothing. Here is your best bet. Get the last 7 years of the ES, NQ in 30 minute and 1 hour bars. Spend the next 3-5 years working on a longer term automated solution. Or else just write the check out to GS and JPM right now because trust me you are going to lose it.
100% Aggressive ALL IN ALL THE TIME. The faster you lose this, the better. Money is the only way to find out what your emotional resistance to greed and fear are. Use this money wisely. Because the next time you put in another 5,000. You should be in the top 20% of traders. Good Luck Dood.