Asiaprop, I get your point, but it's not mine. You don't need to justify common sense reasons on what or should be done. Let's assume that I'm irrational, and all I want to do is make $300 per day, for whatever reason. If I only have 50K and trade 2 CL contracts or whatever, can you not conceive that I may be able to achieve such a return of 15 cents per contract per day (not necessarily a smooth equity curve)?
Jack also thinks he routinely makes 3X daily range in ES when in reality he LOST 24% in a trading contest. I do reach my goal of 3x H-L in ES as a practice. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=912447&highlight=#post912447
you twist your arguments. I never claimed and I think that was also not your point that such return off the 50k cannot be achieved. However, for arguments sake I claim its highly unlikely. You dont account for days when you simply get it wrong, when a strong move blows right through your stops on news, when you face technical difficulties (trading platform down), or any other eventuality. But again speaking in absolute dollar terms does not make any sense. Can I imagine to make those 15cents per contract on average on a 200k account? Sure, because I would feel very comfortable risking 2% with 2 CL contracts, thus affording myself a 2.5% stop but also larger profit targets. I would be very doubtful the same can be achieved on a 50k account OVER TIME. Everyone runs at their risk level but statistics and the risk of ruin are facts not interpretations. I dont even know how people can start to argue in dollar terms it makes no sense whatsoever.
This year I'm trading a $50K account. Was trading a $60K account last year, but didn't make enough to cover living expenses. Just like last year, I'm averaging $340 a day (only traded 28 days this year). I'm looking forward to NOT repeating my noob mistakes of last year. BUT, in my sim account (where I practice trading futures), I'm averaging significantly more. Attached is my simulated account P/L for today which was a very slow day in sim for me, and I'm trading 5 ES and between 1-5 CL. Despite an uncanny ability to make money in sim with CL over the past 6 months it still scares me; traded live for the first time yesterday and decided I wasn't quite yet ready for the stress of worrying about those huge moves out of nowhere. So I believe that $300-$400 a day is not only possible with a $50K account, I agree with some of the posters here that it's conservative, especially trading futures.
Perhaps you misread what I wrote. We are talking about returns in an account, not of an individual stock. You are correct, a $10 stock gaining $1 and a $100 stock gaining $1, those are obviously different percentages. But, assuming they trade the same, a guy with a $10k account and a guy with a $50k account who each make $1,500 in a week did exactly the same. If they both trade 1 contract, the only difference is one guy had like $49k in unused margin and the other guy had $9k in unused margin. Talking about percentages becomes even more pointless if you're trading for a living. Say you make $1k every week. If you don't need any living expenses because your bank account is just fine you might not make any withdrawals from your trading account all year. In this example, your % gain goes down and down each week even tho you're still doing exactly the same trading results. Compare that with someone who tranfers $800 each week of his $1,000 gain into his bank account for expenses. His % gain is much bigger than the first guys because his account is smaller. Yet in both cases the actual performance was exactly the same. Hope this makes sense this time.
and you base that on the 24 days you traded last year and trading your paper account as well? Funny to say the least. In reality you averaged about 32 dollars a day.
no it does not make any sense whatsoever because you completely ignore risk and a possible streak of losses which will always occur soon or later. Trading only makes sense in the context of your trades taken relative to your account size. Everything else is blatantly ignoring risk.
I think one with a $50,000 account should be making $1k-$5k per day...the very, very , very least is $500 on a slow day
Huh? I averaged $340 a day so far this year. I averaged $330 a day last year in the first quarter, then gave back a big chunk in April 2009 as illustrated by the reference to my journal during that period. I netted 42% last year on a $60K account, my first full year trading. I only discovered I even had a sim account with IB in late July last year and I've NEVER counted my sim trading returns for anything other than what is possible.
with a $50k account one could be throwing 50 ES cars...how do you stay in a $400 to $500 profit per day realm?...huh?