First trade on June 3rd, so that's 9 trades in 11 calendar days. Since you are tracking, please track period also.
Cornix, Since there has been much discussion on the percentage returns of day traders, could I suggest that you do what Peter Brandt did in his book, namely give a dollar value of capital per contract traded? If he could do it in a book published for all the world to see, I don't think there would be a problem here. Of course you may choose to go in with more leverage from time to time, that is your business and we don't need to know. My rule of thumb was $15k per futures contract traded, Carter suggested $10k. With your number we could work out an approximate percentage return on capital as well as on the return on notional value.
Yes, good idea, JT. My recommended capital allocation per NQ contract for these signals is $2500, which constitutes roughly 2% risk per trade. For my own money I'm usually a bit more aggressive, closer to $2000 or even slightly less, because I don't need to worry about the sexy equity curve there and only about absolute $ figures. Futures contracts are all different and certainly I use much higher capital per contract when trade FDAX for example, but for NQ those figures above are proven to be just fine.
I appreciate Pekelo's independent audit. Also will provide pretty much the same information myself in the end of report periods (months/quarters/years), because it only makes sense with enough sample size. Result of 9 and even 20-30 trades is pretty much random.
I only track female periods. But counting the business days would be more relevant... As about Cornix's strategy, I think he should go for bigger gains...
The reason I did not count business days is annual percentage returns are expressed as the return for a calendar year, ie. percentage returns, risk free interest rates and so on are expressed per annum, = 365 days. Comes back to the big debate about what percentage return day traders make.
I completely agree with Dr. Cornix regarding keeping low levels of capital in a day trading account. In fact, why anyone would keep anymore than the bare minimum to daytrade makes no sense to me. WIth $500 margins, having $1000 per contract is plenty. Obviously, if you hold overnight, the dynamic changes completely due to exchange minimum and wanting the ability to absorb drawdowns. However, if a day trader has a $500 drawdown per contract, in a day, something is seriously wrong with their technique. The only ones who suggest more funds are the brokers and broker shills. surf
What do guys do with the excess cash ? Why not ñeave the cash in accounts and use the even bigger leverage. These are times where money in the bank or even bonds cannot outweight inflation.