In the Star Wars world we may not be bounded by physics, but in the real world we are. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambalappuzha_Sri_Krishna_Temple Here is a formula for your spreadsheet. If you make 1 point per day, trade one K per $5000, how long will it take you to make $1,000,000.
If you like the frenetic style of trading, trying looking up Don Millers blog - there is also a fairly extensive discussion about him in here. He posts some videos of himself trading. For myself, I can go days without a trade, than like today make 3 trades (2, 0, 1 all long). I don't know what your background is or how you are trading, but if you want to make the kind of money you are thinking about, think of it in terms of a college education. Four years, $100k, than you can make a living at it. Good luck.
Wed 3/23/2011 lost 350, but fogot to get screen shot before logging out. Took previous three trading days off. Today, 3/29/2011 traded very small for small gains, very good risk control but such tight control limited some opportunities for larger trades. It was more important for me to not loose rather than profit. I'm in an account rebuilding phase and likely will continue to do so until equity rises above 5K. http://screencast.com/t/6I8J2qgPw7r Although my spreadsheet still has targets, I'm pretty much ignoring them until I can resume my normal style of trading.
Been there and I think this is the wrong thing to do... You must apply your strategy whatever your PnL is ...which means you have to trust it first Remember, focus on the process not the outcome.
Well, I understand your statement, but at a 25% drawdown my first priority must be to stay alive. I admitted that I took some missteps and am paying the price for it. I didn't pay enough attention to step one don't lose too much $. My strategy is highly leveraged and depends alot of getting a solid foot hold in profitability and then continuing on to a double digit return. If I'm not profitable to dig a deeper hole would increase the risk of ruin, so caution will be around to trade another day. Thanks for the feedback.
The day with the $700 loss was 3/22/2001 the far left columns are the planned equity growth, daily goal and # of contracts traded and running % return on equity. The next columns are all in RED are actual running % return, variance from goal, actual daily % return, actual daily win/loss, net equity, # of trades and runup/drawdown.
What can I say, failed to execute and had a loss. Doubtful that having a journal is affecting my trading but If I don't turns things around, this journal will go the way of the dinosaur. http://screencast.com/t/xjwaYP8PK4
Joman is absolutely right. I started this strange journey many years ago playing poker. Now I was an amateur player for years, probably breaking even minus expenses. Than I decided to get serious and bought some books and played hundreds of solitaire hands. Than I took $5000 and started playing. A couple weeks later I was down to $800 (I may have even added some in.) I decided that was it, either go or no go. Now at the $80 table I was playing, $800 is not much - less than minimum margin if you will. But I kept to my theory, and finally got a little lucky, and the rest is history. The point being that if you are right, you are right with $3000 or $5000. If you are wrong, you might as well get it over with quickly. FWIW, you need to accept the fact that you are not ready to make money at this yet. Take your funds and invest in some education, e.g. http://lbrgroup.com/ or http://donmillereducation.com/journal/ (I have no affiliation with either). Place trades on a good real time simulator for a few months and see where you're at. LOL
Daily profits goals is a recipe for disaster in my experience, as I started out with them myself. Some days you`ll make a lot, some day`s you`ll make less, some day`s you`ll breakeven, some day`s you`ll lose slightly, some day`s you`ll lose a lot. That`s the reality of trading. With profit goals, you are doomed to skew this statistic towards having a lot of losing days instead, since you will always be pressing for profits that are not there. If anything, you should use a weekly profit goal. Much less pressure. And make it realistic. Good luck