with all due respect... do you really believe all those posts in that specific thread depict real money?
Of course it is not impossible but it is a lot more difficult to put up numbers like that than it is to create a fantasy on a board by claiming you are a seven figure per year trader. In case you have not noticed most on here have never "stepped foot" on Wall Street and are independent traders. There may be a few who do seven figures a year but most do not take home 100K. Once one leaves grammar school they really should make a point of not believing everything they read and everything they hear. It is entirely possible that Walter Mitty has a brother and a few cousins that inhabity this board. I might even say probable.
PS ... having a goal of becoming profitable after a year or two and building toward bigger numbers is more realistic than thinking about 5 or 10K a day.
Plus, just to average 1% gain per day would require $500k as starting capital....that gets you to $5k per day. And forget about BP here....you'll likely go bust with a 40:1 BP factor. In other words, you can't go Prop and put $12,500 down and expect to make $5k per day. 3 losing days in a row at -$5k and you're "finished" and back in the unemployment line. I'd say with $12.5k down, if you average $+1k per day, you're doing great....that means some days you are $+2k, other days $-1k. Again, with Prop trading, unless you are system-trading or arbing, there is no way not to avoid those kinds of swings in profitability IMHO. The big thing is the psychological issue with handling the drawdowns. The successful traders handle it well....the others either go wild, take more risks and go bust or some get scared and lower their trading volume to where they're only making $0.1k...a McDonalds type of wage. It's a wicked game....looks easy, tremendously hard to master.
Well for starters, maybe that's partly why most on this board are testosterone-infused egotistical money loser traders .
urrrrr ..... no, sorry, the math doesn't work. Maybe for evert 1 mil winner there are 1000 1k losers, or 500 2k losers, or 250 4k losers, or some combination of losers totallying 1MM.
tycoon... like the handle... Don't you know already? If not... nobody is gonna tell u... Just remember in trading anything is possible...go where the money is...visit Forex. a few billion doesn't even dent that market... ES
Most who have started in recent years and trade the Emini's probably unaware of Big S&P 500 futures contract used to trade at $500 a full point and traded in nickels at $25 each, daily ranges seldom were over four points. Depending on volatility, margins were anywhere from $5,000 to $30,000 for first contract and my comm at the time were $12 bucks roundturn. So when one worked up to a three to five lot back then and nailed two points, damn good money in 80's and 90's. Back then, huge psychological problems going from one lot to two lot, no matter what your account size was, NOW with ES Emini trading at 1/10th the size of old, traders still have same psychological problems cause many are way too under-capitalized, trading scared. And account size has NOTHING to do with how many contracts you should trade. And traders of present should be doing better than back then cause of computers and software are abundant now and data much easier to get and cheap. Much more information is present now then before and cause the guy who has two grand and opens an account, reads a book over the weekend and thinks he can compete against those who trade like a monkey, they lose much more now, and I luv it. People today have so much less patience, makes it better for me. So to trade like days of old, min must do 30-50 contracts, I trade more than that now and average down on all my trades, but the fun part is the daily ranges seldom are four points. You do anything long enough, you will get good at it, so long as you don't lose your mind and ability to keep saving up money. But it still comes down to years of experience, screen time up the wazoo, thousands of trades, ability not to fall asleep if there are no trades for a few hours and NOT to take trades cause I am bored (lost the most early on), learning all the small nuances of ES that occur most days at certain hours, learning what to expect on report days, see where on the chart the small traders are going to get hurt the hardest, but unless inexperienced stop jumping around to different markets, indicators, chart patterns, timeframes, ticks etc etc etc, profiting will be a dream. That famous line "Cut your losses short and let your profits run" had to be for long or longer term trading, cause I have been doing this so long, and I could never consistently get several point trades. I am just a scalper.