anyone care to clue me into what kind of size do people at prop firms in chicago regularly trade the ES? and also, the number of ticks they aim to/average a day on full size. thanks!
Probably clipping 200-500 ES per trade. What they aim for is going to be different for each trader, but good traders end up averaging out to 2-3 ticks per day over the long haul in ES. But, this is old info from when the market was less volatile, those average ticks per day could be much higher in these markets or everyone who traded like this could have blown out and been fired and replaced with a new batch of traders. I'd lean toward the first option as being more likely.
I heard there are traders that trade 50-100 lots and average 50 ticks a day consistently. Does that sound reasonable?
come on, with that sort of performance day in and day out, you would own the whole universe in a matter of years.
Not really. I mean, how many daytraders have you heard of making 15 million a year? Daytrading offers a great way to make money but intraday ranges offer limitations. The ES is a great vehicle to make money, but 50 ticks a day average is unreasonable. Possible, I wont say impossible, but very very unlikely.
I agree - there's a big difference from what people hear then what their monthly statements would reveal. Plus, the biggest money in futures is typically in overnight trading. Beefy positions, holding for days, weeks, months.
Consider that if you added the ranges of 5 min bars in a typical day lately you would get about 3 points per bar x 81 bars per day or about 250 possible points. Getting 50 ticks or 12.5 pts out of a possible of 250 is not that unreasonable. John
Maybe 50 ticks total, but not per contract. Only God or the guys who get the Bernake leaks could do that.