Fills are not different in demo/live ES unless you are "earning" the spread on some poorly designed demo platform. How many trades did you do so far on demo? Enough to consider your method statistically proven?
You and every other newb arbitrarily going long everyday is making money. Dont chalk it up to your infallible trend-sniffing instincts, you will lose your account on false entries, flat days, and letting your obvious inability to recognize shortcomings prevent you from capitulating on bad trades. Dont feel bad, seen it happen tons of times. Not at all a matter of real vs. sim, it's shortsightedness.
Yep, this and 1999 have similar characteristics. I would maintain that a trader cannot be competent until they have lived thru a bull and a bear market, with the accompanying bases for accumulation and distribution. Until a trader knows exactly where they are at all times, there will be blood, as they will not know when to nibble and when to back up the truck, or when to hold em and when to fold em.
Yeah, thats why I asked about the number of trades and their characteristics. If many trades occured and in both directions, it increases chance result is not random.
You won't blow up $5000 if you have a stop loss and trade in the liquid instrument like ES during active market hour (7am - 4pm EST time) Something is not right here - you said you are making $200 - $300 in one contract after one to two hours. For ES with one contract to make $200-$300, it has to moved at least 16- 20 ticks (exclude slippage and commission), which imply S&P has to move in your favor direction at least 4-6 points and you will NOT get stop out during to any reverse during the move. You seldom see S&P make such a big move in one ot two hours time frame during active market hours (7am to 4pm EST time). For example, it take S&P 5 hours to move from 1336 to 1330 yesterday (4 March) ? Or you are scalping ? - Try to make a few ticks for many SINGLE entry and make $200 to $300 after one to two hours ?
lots of questions being fired at the OP - that's why I initially asked him to post a screenshot of his executions etc to give us a better Idea and would have answered a lot of the subsequent questions. - He hasn't done that yet though
Thats correct, the avg. is more in between 100 - 200$/car, and I avg. about 4 contracts a day (1 contract = both sides right?). Commission is 2.45/side, so one contract executed is about 5 bucks commision. I setup a huge position at night and let it run also, so that usually brings in about $2-300/night. My daily realized pnl is about 700-1100$. And I RARELY have more than one contract(position) open at a time, because I will onle be able to realistically have 2 positions open when i go live with 5k, and also because i get effed up when I have 3 or 4 positions open -- tried that... how do you guys post PnLs? is it a simple screenshot? in other words, what do you guys consider an authentic pnl? PDF?? I just made 100$ in 2 minutes shorting the ES at 1333.00 (at 1331.00 right now). and it will keep going down for about another hour to 2 hrs to ~1328.00. Well, thats when I plan on getting out, is at ~1328.00
It sounds like you have put together a plan that follows some very basic rules. STICK TO IT if you can. The most money I made as a trader was when first started, I was trading a simple 2 candle pattern that I could see on a daily chart. I was doing really well for weeks and weeks, but decided to try and "hone" the entries to make things that much better. That was when I started to struggle. It took me almost 2 years to get back to a strategy that very much resembles what I first started with.
yah, well it only needs to be complex when you're programming it, in which case you have to program what you are doing subconsciously. I don't go for the whole spread. I just go for about 70% distribution of the trend or about 2sigma. oh and boom bitches 1328.00 about an hr later just made $300 in fake money lol...