Are stops a complete joke ?

the best risk management is to control your mind and not use a robot stop loss.

If trading with no stop and average down/up take too much heat for you, then, put more money in your account. That is probably the best way to control the emotion.

A professional poker players are master in controlling emotion. That is why they always win. A professional poker players know that playing poker requires to start million of dollars.

Trading in the futures market is for traders who have big bucks. Those traders who have big bucks represent 3% of making money trading in the futures market while 97% of traders lose money trading in the futures market.

Like i said earlier, 97% of the people do not understand CFTC disclaimer: FUTURES TRADING IS NOT FOR EVERYBODY AND ONLY RISK CAPITAL SHOULD BE USE.

That Said!

 

always interesting to read ET posts regarding actual trading ... always interesting.

so we are to gather from your post that 100k per contract is the way to trade the ES.

 

They don't always win. Put 10 professionals at a table and you only have one winner.

 

"so we are to gather from your post that 100k per contract is the way to trade the ES"

FWIW, we set the profit target and stop/loss level when we enter a trade. Some of my more experienced clients use trailing stops to squeeze winners, and some of my clients trade size and will scale into positions, but in any event an entry is not taken without the profit and stop levels set. We actually spend alot of time and effort on position management, because the entry signals are largely mechanical and not terribly time-consuming with the model and scanner.

 

sorry, got called away but now I am back.

let us imagine we trade a system something something yours emq and make an ES point a day $50 and we trade for 200 days of the year ... say $10,000 pa

a solid little 10% return on our 100K and in 7-8 years we will be able to fund and trade 2 contracts.

now you may feel that my numbers leave a lot to be desired, so why don't you run us up a set of your own.

personally, I prefer the option of learning to trade properly

 

I only trade with brackets and drag them around the DOM once I am live.
But I never ever drag the stop backwards.
For that matter I never scale or use trailing stops, but that is just me.

Is this what you mean Bone

 

Not exactly. When we enter a trade, we also set a resting GTC order for the profit level, and enter a Stop-loss limit order (should look like 'SL' in your order ticket DOM window) which is also GTC. Those levels are determined by among other things the volatility of the product we are trading - so, metals and energy are different than equity indices and fixed income for example.

Some of us actually change our stop-loss levels and profit targets as a position moves in our favor - this is a 'trailing stop'. A technique to let a winner run and hopefully lock in profit. Sometimes, you end up in a situation where your stop/loss level is where your original profit target was located when you originally entered the trade. Not a frequent occurrence, but it does happen enough to make it a very worthwhile endeavor.

'Scale trading' is essentially 'averaging' into a position or taking a profit. By rule, when a stop/loss level is triggered we are out of at least half the position - for newbies trading one-lots this is always an 'all in' or 'all out' proposition.

 

The outcome of what you are doing achieves the same results as dragging my stops around the DOM but never ever opening my protective stop.

The essence being that we both treat the trade as being dynamic by nature.

 

Trading without stops?

Come on, man!

 

"The essence being that we both treat the trade as being dynamic by nature."

Fair enough. The big piece for us at least is that the stop and the profit target are set when the trade is entered. Personally (and this is just me), I can't imagine putting on a trade and not having a clear definition of where my risk and where my reward is. For me, at least, the 'dynamic' aspect comes in to play for those occassions where I believe I can take more out of the trade than I originally modeled. There are times where I subsequently get out of a trade before either target or stop is reached - if over the lifespan of a position I come to the conclusion that it is not 'performing', then I will flatten up and continue to look for other opportunities and put the capital to use elsewhere.