Anyone care to post the average points that they have been pulling or losing from the ES or NQ daily/weekly? No need to list your paper trading; real trades only. That should eliminate approx 80% of the useless info or advice received. I have been pulling down approx $14K a month from Equities with a little over $25K in the acct (PDT) thus have access to $100K BP during the day. I rarely use the full amount. I do 3-4 little trades a day and sometimes hold for a couple days. Its taken me 3 1/2 years to really become profitable in the equities and trying to get a feel of the amount of points/cash future traders have been making with approx $15K-25K in acct. I read from one of the ET threads that a successful ES/NQ trader was making about 20 points per week with average of 2-3 contracts. So thats approx $2K-3K per week and wondering if thats a pretty good return off of 2 contracts, maybe I should stick with my equities trading?
The way you ask the question, it sounds like you are asking whether or not you should waste your time with es/nq trading if you are already making money in equities. Number of contracts shouldn't really matter, a 2 contract trade is virtually the same as a 50-lot, so don't bother calculating dollars/week. It's all a question of leverage; if you've been profitable trading stocks and think you can translate that success into the indices, then eventually you will be able to make far more in futures than stocks using the same size capital. But futures are a different animal than individual equities, so best to try it out for a time and see how you fare. Forget about "average points" per day or whatever, you don't want to be average nor shoot for it, you have to commit yourself to taking as many points as possible to even have a chance to survive. The answer to "how many points I should take" is "virtually infinite" -- then start trying to figure out how
If you look at an intraday chart of ES/NQ what kind of profit potential do you see yourself, assuming you want to daytrade them.
oh Dominic....What to say here....If you have found something that works for you then keep doing it. I find that when I want to expand my horizons, I start another Brokerage account and trade it separately. I just keep adding instruments and finding a time zone to trade in.....little time for sleep while holding down a full-time job to boot. I pull 31 NQ points/contract weekly with swing trades 3-19 days holds. (entry's and reversals done at 15:14cst about 3 times a month) I pull 19 ZB ticks/contract weekly with 1 trade per day strategy(7:20am - 8:10am cst) I pull 10 ES points/contract weekly with AM chat room trades(8:30am - 10:30 am cst) I pull 04 ES points/contract weekly with a 15 min/day strategy(this overlaps with chat-room trades- 8:30am - 8:45am cst) I find that trading and expanding is a time problem for me. I like to expand and diversify as my accounts grow. I feel that by diversifying I educate and challenge myself. If I were to just swing trade 3 times a month I would not be a trader. I find it necessary to satisfy my urge to trade with those other instruments. I am a NQ swing trader that works full time and my passions for trading come from the days I was a CTA trading other peoples money(I am no longer an active CTA). I trade in the first 2 hours in the morning from California before going to work. The instruments I am investigating for night trading after work are DAX. This first 2 hours opening (midnight for me) is troublesome to me due to its wild nature. I am having trouble to figure it out. but being the Savant that I am....I will stumble on to something.... Michael B. P.S. Does somebody know a Dax chat room in english for the first two hours? To help me learn?
Ideally, it should be measured in daily range. In the futures, 50-100% of daily range is a nice goal to go for. So you look at a few intraday charts, determine the daily range, and those with less daily range probably probably promise less profits, since you can't squeeze blood out of a stone. It also depends on your style. As for the guy who started this thread, that's why I've migrated to DAX, because the intraday range is 80+pts or so, while in the ES, it's currently something like 12 (~24 pts on DAX). But there are equities traders who do several hundred % of daily range on a regular basis. If you're one of them - I would forget futures, stay with equities and make hay while the sun shines. On the other hand, if you feel like more leverage, despite more competition and less predictability, will make you more profitable - Go for it.
31.25 per tick sorry.....(I edited it thanks) These are averages some weeks can be higher or lower. Michael B.
Michael, that seems like a very decent performance for a swing trader! Yet that does of course fully depend on your performance bond (margin). If you're overnight holding, your performance bond is probably pretty high, so your real % on capital earning drops. What relative margin do you tend to use on the ES / NQ swings? You will find that as soon as you enter the realms of intraday trading, things become a lot trickier - But they can also become exponentially more profitable, because of the lower risk (smaller stops, no overnights) and the corresponding higher leverage. Cheers, Scientist.
Thank you for the kind words. In the past I was a full-time intraday futures trader before I went to work for this Law firm I am a partner of. I find in intraday trading that labor is a factor and I do not think in percentages as a return of risk or investment quite the same way that you illustrate. I find that labor is the biggest factor to consider. Michael B.
Here is a bottom line number for you. All things considered, my equities/futures intraday ratio is: 1 to 50. What it could mean to you is: that if you use similar skill based methods in each marketplace and extract capital using the normal leverages of each, you will make about 50 bucks in futures for every dollar you make in equities using the same capital amount as a base in each for futures and equities. A caveat: I find that I am limited in the amount of capital I can put into any trade anywhere for the pace at which I make money. Scientist is correct in that you must considier the H/L ratio as the basis of extracting profits for what is the potential of the market. In what I do, I buy the spread because I am oriented to timing and making money primarily. It is not uncommon for me to do 40 transactions in a day for the futures in ES. Think of this as 10 points of movement (40 tmes 1/4 point (a normal spread)) a day that is expensed as I view things. I find that a person must trade both the futures and the equities because of the limitations of each market setup as compared to what an individual can monitor efficiently at any given time.