Thanks to all who have answered. I have sent replies to some of you. I do recognize that my behavior will be different with real money. That is the real thing that distinguishes a good from the bad trader, his ability to control himself. I admit that I am still not fixed on my technique. Sometimes I am not "cutting the losses" as I should. I have internal fight between what I believe should happen according to my forecast and the actual situation. Like today I sold NQU3 at 1373 and was in -3000 but stayed on because I believed the market will turn. And it paid off I bought back at 1368 and made 1880 All this on paper I admit this is not real life but still I am doing this for a month now and it works. I will continue to test. But thanks to you all for the insight.
I once used one that made my executions according to my mouse click - I made a lot of paper money. Then when I went to the supermarket they did not appreciated that money for some reason ... so I started to trade real money .. rest of the story is known, isn't it?
Papertrading is sooo BS For example, I would not be stressed one bit if I bought/shorted say 10,000 shares of one of those Chinese internet stock plays like NTES, SINA and SOHU When real $$ is on the line I would be real hesistant to even dump 2000 shares either way I wanna see you cool and relaxed trading the ES with 30 contracts on the line Every point would be $1500 I guarantee the first day you'd be sooo stressed you'd go bald instantly,have several heart attacks and be sweating like a mofo
Not so hasty my friend. Nothing is better than papertrading when you are trying to figure out if your system works in a real market. Nothing is better than backtesting when you are trying to figure out if your system has every worked. Nothing is like trading real $$, once you think you have a good system. Each has its legitimate place. The fool trades real $$ when he still should be papertrading. Cheer, kp
In all honesty, you will blow out quite quickly trading this way You are targeting a couple ticks for profit, and yet you will stay in trades you "believe will come back". The first time you are wrong, you will give up a month's worth of gains in a single trade. You must resolve that "issue" of not cutting losses, it will be a very expensive lesson to learn the hard way. Even if you stick with strict stop-losses, I don't think anyone can survive on 3-4 tick stops while only taking 3-4 tick profits, you are giving up about 25% of your profits and adding 25% to your losses in commission alone.
The guy's only in the testing stage... gimme a break! Similar to NihabaAshi's suggestion, I can only suggest he starts out with real money in small size to see if the reality is in any way similar to the papertrading...
make a $1000 - lose a $1000 - win 50% of the time and you will breakeven - but you are trading 25 contracts for 2 points = $1000. first you have to increase your win-loss to include commissions and what about realtime fills. if you use stops-market orders you may lose .5 on your entry and your exit - or more. if you use limits you may miss your prices and thus your trades. and all of this assumes that you can fill your whole trade and/or fill it at the same price - and although you are talking about a very liquid market you are also talking about a market that can get exceedingly slow and take different prices to complete your trades. i do not think you can be profitable realtime with those parameters without a far greater win-loss then 50% - you dont mention the percentage you are getting. you also mention the long term parameters for direction but you don't mention how fast of a time frame you are using for entry - only that it is intraday - i would think there could be some synchronization problems - like if you are timing with 30 minute bars but have to wait for the end of the bar to make a trade. this is another kind of slippage to deal with. you mention that after you make 1k-2k you leave for the day - you dont mention how much you will lose for the day before you quit. i also think in terms of your strategy based on your post being buys only considering you are trading in the direction of daily-monthly indicators - but yet you are essentially micro-scalping. on a day that the market is down - you will still only take buys so you are trading countertrend for that day but on a day when the market is strongly up and the day that you should be doing your best - you will have already left for the day. in other words you are not taking advantage of the strength of your strategy by stopping. and why would you use a 1:1 risk reward on a trend strategy - and why would you exit your entire position at the same time - shouldnt you at least hold 1 contract for a bigger move. think of your test period which is a strong up market and apparently you are only taking buys - but the market will have reversed well before you are going to see it on your monthly charts and then all your trend strategy will really be countertrend. i think you are using way to much captial to make the money that you mention and also think your plan will not meet your expectations realtime. but if you are going to try it with real money - i agree with everyone who is saying to start with smaller size and see what the logistics realtime fills and market chop do to you.