Hi all, I have been trading since 2014 and have turned profitable, pretty much positive every week since this year but on a small account, average monthly growth is about 5-10%, risk per trade is 1%. My performance isn't perfect but I follow my system, I miss some trades, mess up on trade management, but I always focus on risk management first. What is next for me? Goal is to turn full time but that will take quite a while so I would like to ask what the next step for me is? Keep topping up my account with my main income source for every positive month? I do not have 100k, or 50k to spare, I am quite poor as my main income source is low but I am able to save a couple hundreds or a thousand each month. I do not have a wife or kids. My statistics are not very good but more than enough to make $ and it seems I will always look for ways to improve my "edge", how do you guys trade the same system in and out all day?
Trading is stressful. Never go full time if your intention is for it to be your main source of income. Too many things can go wrong.
What about increasing the time-frame? If the system works and risk is manageable on 15-min charts, what will it do on 4-hourlies? Then you could go off and do something else.
5 months consistency is a good starting point - why would you now consider altering anything at this point since you started on this journey 4 years ago? IMO, consistency is your primary goal. Consistency is your mantra. With consistency you will build your account equity, you will gain confidence, you will be able to gradually increase your position sizing. Don’t even think about going full time until your account equity makes your current “job” quite literally ridiculous. Don’t extrapolate forward based on 5 months of consistency - that’s dangerous thinking. Congratulations and I wish you the best fortune in your endeavors!
If you genuinely can do 5-10%/mo, you may want to consider listing your strategy on a site like collective2. You said you can only add a few hundred per month to your account, so even a handful of subscribers on collective2 I think would be helpful to you. I've never used the site, so I have no idea how long it takes to build a subscriber base. I've considered them, but decided not to because they won't import my account history for my broker (IB). But if you've been doing 5-10%/mo since 2014 and they can import your historical data from your broker, I'd think you could get subscribers rather quickly. Unless by quitting your job you can increase your trading profits more than the loss of income, then you should not consider quitting your job. Again, this is not total trading profits, it's the increase in trading profits that are directly attributable to quitting your job. I suspect this will not be the case until you have more funds in your account. Even then, trading has risk of capital loss where your job does not. Another site to consider that I just started using a couple weeks ago is fundseeder. You don't make money from people subscribing to your strategy like collective2, but it doesn't cost anything and I think it's good to have a place to track your statistical metrics.
Well done, it is nice to hear people talk about how they got there instead of the usual. As bone says, consistency. I also started in 2014. I believe that for this some intensity of effort/focus is required is all and it will come right. I got there sooner but I was doing it full time, all the hours of the day. I've helped a few personal friends and once they got a little taste of consistency it gave them the confirmation they needed to put in more time. Their equity built, none are working a job now. One must balance life but you don't get good at a guitar for example without some obsession. People are different but my 2c.
Unfortunately, you don't know anything yet. Having been profitable, you've "traded around a long-side bias"....with the Fed "printing and pumping" like a drunken sailor + keeping interest artificially low, has been correct.... and likely still is. You wont' know whether "you hit the market" or "the market hit you"... until you've traded through a bear market and then again through the subsequent recovery. IOW... Suggest not quitting your day job just yet.
I think that would be dependent on his correlation to the S&P500 and whether the strategy is net long directional bias. For example, if he's net short and still managed to perform well in this bull market, then I see no reason to believe he won't continue. Unfortunately I've looked at a few trading strategies that have performed well in recent years, but upon closer inspection performed similar to a leveraged S&P500 long. These will almost certainly blow up during the next extended bear market. metatrader54, you said your statistics weren't good. I assume that means you've calculated some. Do you happen to know your S&P500 correlation and do you have break downs as to your trades like what % were long directional and then furthermore a winner/loser break down of what percents were net long and how they correlated to the S&P500 during the time periods those specific trades were open? What I mean is like: Total trades 0.6 S&P500 correlation, 80% long Winning trades: 0.9 S&P500 correlation, 70% long Losing trades: 0.4 S&P500 correlation, 90% long Could do this on a per trade basis, but also on a winning/losing dollar amount basis. You don't need to share this kind of data, but if you were wondering how much your success was related to the S&P500 being in an upward trend, this would give you some insight.