Perfection, that's your answer to the question? Really? If so, you are destined to fail at trading. Even in the form of a question, that's a valuable answer. But you are too learnedly and conditioned and can't see it.
Don't be a nincompoop. NOONE can tell you. That is up to your trade system, trade plan, and your tested outcomes. I will say there are AT LEAST two risk methods I use for MY trading (intraday and investment)... 1) based on the structure of the bar(s) and any other input used to signal and trigger the trade in the first place. 2) purely based on a money amount I am willing to lose, for THIS trade. If I recall, you expect and rely on the existence of "perfection", therefore item 2 won't apply to you. Too bad for you.
No, not perfection. This is what I was alluding to from your previous response... "I'm curious, was there a place in time that you realized your position(s) were for whatever reasons, not right?" So I asked you, at what point does a trade go TRULY bad? You and I have different views on that subject. In logic, a trade goes "bad" the moment it goes red. For now I am definitely far and away distanced from your item #2. Right now I am focused on the time to recover on the open positions, not drawdown amount. I went through the whole item #2 thing, and it bit me in the ass 3 times over the past 3 years. I cannot let that happen again.
Continuing the holds... As an aside, here's what it looks like to be a swing trader in a market like this. The following is from Tuesday's statement, the previous 5 trading sessions' open PnL (redacted a bit, of course)... Talk about bi-polar!
I believe in most fields or jobs there are the top one percenter's. Be it in car racing, physicians, teachers or traders... People at the top are often private, seldom stop working cause what they do is not a job for them. Most in their private life are humble, quiet of most important knowledge that gives them their edge, their Holy Grail. The best of the best stick it out. Several years ago there was TV show called Alone, people placed by themselves in various dangerous areas on Earth, last one there gets $500k. Trading very much like this.
what's your account size? looking at these numbers doesn't mean much without context. At 100k, this is just 3% down. Do you ever add at any point to improve average entry? If index bounce most times, it makes sense to add at every 5% drop or something like that. Most times you probably just have 4-5 positions. But since it's futures, you gotta deal with rollover.
I keep my account size private, and that is my choice because of a privacy reason I am probably overblowing, due to identity theft in the past. I know, I know, it is a stretch that someone could reach that deep into numbers and figure out my account, but as I said, it is my choice. And percentage of the account means nothing to me, and should not mean anything to anyone else. My profits and losses are posted when I close my trades, and I feel that is all one needs to know. I'll give you a hint though...When you see those unrealized PnL numbers in that last post? Do understand that I have a lot less than 1 million bux. So a 1K gain would be more than .1%, heh.