Capital for futures trading?

Discussion in 'Index Futures' started by quietdaytrader, Mar 8, 2009.

  1. Hi.

    I decided to start daytrading about a year ago. For my first six months, I traded stocks, but eventually migrated over to index trading via ETFs where I started having a lot more success.

    Unfortunately, my wife's business failed due to the economy, and I had to use the rest of my trading capital to pay for living expenses.

    About six months ago, I decided that futures trading was my best plan, since I was only focusing on one market anyway (S&P 500 / SPY and the leveraged equivalents) and I prefer many aspects to futures trading over stock exchange trading. I opened an account with ThinkOrSwim and have been using their simulated trading module (as the web-based interface is the only futures trading platform that works through the firewall at my day job). After a few days of getting to know their account software, I set the account to $100,000 and started trading, treating everything about the account as "real" as I could.

    I've had very good success for the past five months as I learned how to trade the ES futures effectively while holding a full-time position. I've also really tightened up the way I trade to absolutely minimize drawdowns (which makes trading a lot more fun for me, and a lot more attractive for potential investors). I started posting my trading online about a month ago, and also post a spreadsheet with my P&L every day.

    This week I closed at $278,000 after trading costs. I've been up nicely every month, for a total return of 178% in the past 5 months, made via daytrading ES futures on the sim account. I am also up close to 5% for March so far after an 11% return in February, 20% in January, 15% in December, and 30%+ in October and November (my trading strategies increase returns with volatility, so I made money more quickly in the huge declines of Fall 2008, even though I consider my trading now to be significantly more skillful).

    I would like to find an investor to provide capital for futures trading. The investor would get the majority of any returns from trading, and I would get a lesser percentage. I would prefer to trade the investor's account with trading privileges only (so the investor would feel more secure about their funds).

    I'm posting here to seek advice on finding an investor to provide capital. Any suggestions on how I could find such a person? I'd like to trade an account of at least six figures, but would consider a lesser amount. I don't think my futures trading strategy (which involves scaling into and out of multi-contract positions) would work as well on an account with much less than $50,000.

    Any advice any of you would have on how to obtain trading capital would be greatly appreciated!

    Thanks!
     
  2. without years of audited real returns, acquiring funds is pretty much impossible. no one invests in paper trading results.
     
  3. Trade with real money and see the difference
     
  4. MTE

    MTE

    Everyone makes money papertrading...
     
  5. l2tradr

    l2tradr

    ...except stocktrad3r :p
     
  6. Much agreed. Hypotheticals are a joke.
     
  7. TOS simulator has the most unrealistic fills ever. I nearly blew an account thinking I had a nicely profitable system based on TOS simulator trades. TOS missed huge with respect to fills, prices, and the time from order sent to order filled. It was a joke. Three months later and I am finally re-jiggering my system to fit the real market not some unrealistic simulator.

    My two cents, get a brokerage with $500 intra-day margins and cheap commissions and just see (I use AMP (Ninja+TT), but that is not a recommendation, just a fact). You will probably have to start all over, just as I did.

    It sucks, but it's life. You will lose money converting from sim to real-time, but you will also get a better fill for how the markets really trade. Everyone has to go through this stage.
     
  8. this is quite confusing...most, if not 99.99% of people on elitetrader would love to have that much to trade futures...why do you need other peoples $$$ to trade with?...does not make any sense at all...you have more than enough $$$ yourself...please clarify...
     
  9. Duhhh .. Hey Increase, the guy is papertrading. Read tha beginning, Turkey!!!