hi 4XIS4U what trading experience in general do you have are you an active daytrader of stocks or something else like currencies ? do you ever hold positions overnight or for weeks at a time ?
SethArb, I have been trading stocks (mostly swing trading) for over 5 years and have traded futures for about 1 year (without must success)
generally speaking... beginners should use MAXIMUM of 10k per contract and a MAXIMUM of 2 contracts. i strongly strongly recommend no more than 1 contract per 20k and no more than 2 contracts total. and generally speaking, i like trainees to have practiced at least a couple of hundred trades with DIA (much lower leverage) before they consider trading YM (if you can trade DIA, you can trade YM... period) beginning traders should spend AT LEAST as much time working on their business plan, trading manual, trading rules, etc. as they do watching the market and waiting for trades. they should METICULOUSLY go over every trade, and meticulously document every trade with more data than they think they need (i prefer about 15 data points to be recorded PER trade) they should stop worrying about the magic indicator, system, etc. it doesn't exist. they should NOT concentrate on the money, but on their methodology, their emotional control, the psychology of trading, their risk management, etc. you really should not start with less than 20k (for one contract) or 30-40k for two contracts... minimum. if you are considering mentoring with somebody AND you are not already an experienced and profitable trader in futures - any less than 3-4 weeks of training is not going to be worth much. and that includes homework, etc. imo, futures trading (at least for me) offers the most consistent opportunity to make a nice steady income. there are ALWAYS opportunities in the YM. every day. some days more than others. sometimes you enter a trade early on, and ride it into the close for 50-100 or more points. other days, the setups determine earlier exits. it is NOT about how much you make, or can make. it is about your profitability factor - how much you risk per $/won, how smooth your equity curve is, and how defined your edge is . the VAST majority of futures traders lose money. if you can't CLEARLY define what your edge is (and if it's some neato keen indicator, or lord forbid some moving averages - trust me. you almost certainly do not have an edge), if you cannot have ROCK SOLID DISCIPLINE in respecting your stops, defining your risk, and controlling your emotions - you are almost guaranteed to lose money. it is NOT that complicated. it is difficult. there is a difference.
Hi there, I agree with the general posts here, be careful of the "snake oil" out there. I've personally spent a lot of money of courses and I only respect 1 guy who taught me a lot but i won't mention him on this site since it's not my job to plug anyone (he does not teach that often anymore). My advice to you is to stay in contact with a couple of experience futures traders who trade in an array of differnt styles and see which suits you best. For example, I'm an intra-day Futures trader and use my own indicators, software and set-ups. So, I'm considered a technical trader. I enter between 2 and 8 trades a day, so i guess some would call me a scalper. Other traders, like to use the GLOBEX Level II to trade (tape readers) and others trade the intra-day trend, i.e. the put on a position at the open and close out at the close. Others still, trade positions of days or weeks at a time. I know tjis gives you a lot of choices and many decisions to make, but it is really the only way for you to discover the kind of trading style with which you'll be comfortable. Happy to help. Cheers! tfuad.
I recommend www.balancetrader.com It's an extremely rare resource only if you have the discipline to stick with it. And Frank is real!
Regarding, www.balancetrader.com, is it the case that you will need to learn to read a totally different kind of Chart, namely:- "TPO/price and volume profiles." I don't doubt that Frank is sincere, or at least delivers on what he claims. And the program is very cheap to get into. However, my concern, is that I always like simplicity over complexity in my trading. I agree that learning to read price action and volume, dynamically, is a skill that requires a lot of practice. But I don't agree, that you need special charts in order to do so. There are proprietary indicators out there that do the price volume anaysis for you and express the results on the standard OHLC or Candlestick Charts. Again, my concern is simplicity. Trading can be hard and stressful without the addition of human error, occasioned by exotic charting. Anyway, this is just my 2 cents. Cheers and Happy Trading! Tfuad.
Frank is fine and his approach is actually simple. Profile charts just give a different way of looking at support and resistance building up and then trading it. I bought the course and don't trade it because its not better than what I do now. But it's certainly something that I could work with (and might yet do as a way of working on kospi options). Ryan Watt's method is also very workable. Nice intraday swing trading or scalping strategy and again an inexpensive look at what's available.