Various. Sometimes it's seconds. Other times it might be hours. My main thing is that the trade must immediately go into my favor .. or it can slip a little if it's plain range trading. I always look to get profitable on all trades - and not risking losses. That's mainly because I do some size which I can't let get of hand.
That's a nice performance Gringho. However, if I remember from reading your previous posts, you normally trade 30-50 contracts and sometimes up to 100. The point that I am making is that 15 contracts held for 8 figures would have provided you the same result. I recognize that if we knew for sure that EUR would move 8 figures higher in those 1-3 months we certainly would have acted accordingly. Forget the internet debacle, that's history.
I consider myself an amateur - but a successful one. If I ever come up with a profitable automated program from all my adventures into that realm - I might consider getting more professional, but that would have to be with a lot more funds. Preferrably in the millions.
Yes, my position trades are in the roughly 5-10 sizes .. being rather careful. I agree that I would have been much more satisfied with my trading if I had such a long position during the 4 month time-period. When going into 100+ contracts it's like you're sky-diving and have to pull the cord at the exactly right time. My normal strategy is doing 10 or 8 contract increments to a max of 40. My optimal size is roughly 20. I have a target using equity and this is where I base my size and daily performance from.
When I was doing +- $80k per day I was not concerned at all. But when I got a drawdown in one day alone of more than $ 500k I took notice, and stopped the equities strategy I had. The Iraq war and the dot-com crash was not generally benficial to equity-trading. I held equities for years, but had to react in the end. I still had roughly 400% on those equities when I stopped trading them. The futures account I have is what I call "f***-up money", and I can play all I want with it.
You seriously need to put some money management rules into action. If you use max leverage, one whipsaw of this beast will eat you alive.
the dec 2004 issue of active trader magazine has an article on risk management by a gentleman named Grant who was doing this sort of thing for Tudor and SAC capital it might be worth looking at even if one does not understand the concept of risk