How does it go ... trading is simple, trading is not easy. OP thinks it is both. He'll find out how wrong he is, hopefully without too painful a lesson.
FJ, you made 120 ticks on ES news trade today = $150 if MES micro were used, but that's not the benefit, the benefit to using micro is that you get a realistic idea of fills. - FJ, Current Barriers to GoTime. Platform not determined. Platforms under consideration are: Method not determined. Methods under consideration are: - Funding - Plenty. Ability to pull trigger - Plenty.
Please listen to me...Fund your IRA. You can do it for both 2022 (till April 17th this year) and 2023 if you have income or are above a certain age. If you wish you can trade out of the IRA. You are limited to what you can do, because of federal laws. I personally would put it into SPY or QQQ until you have about $100,000. in a IRA account. If you went bankrupt (just saying if), the IRA can not be touched in bankruptcy court! I worked on this strategy before I made my first million. About 1/2 my trades are in my (and my wife's) Roth IRA. I won't get into Roths...They are too confusing at this time. BUT TRUST ME ON THIS...FUND YOUR IRA!! Talk to Schwab...They have people who can explain the benefits of opening up one. Even on paper (sim), it is not real!! 95% of traders will move in front of you to either open or close the trade!! Twenty or more books have been written on how and why this happens. You talk about scalping at Schwab...You are wrong! They won't even allow you to choose your exchange!! Read, study, learn... Two examples where you could get caught and be last in line to open or close your positions...9/11 and pandemic shutdown of the markets. Market Reaction Anticipating market chaos, panic selling and a disastrous loss of value in the wake of the attacks, the NYSE and the Nasdaq remained closed until Sept. 17, the longest shutdown since the Great Depression.1 Moreover, many trading, brokerage, and other financial firms had offices in the World Trade Center and were unable to function in the immediate aftermath of the loss of life and collapse of both towers. On the first day of NYSE trading after Sept. 11, the Dow Jones fell 684 points, a 7.1% decline, setting a record at the time for the biggest loss in the exchange's history for one trading day. (This has since been eclipsed by the market reaction during the global coronavirus pandemic). The close of trading that Friday ended a week that saw the biggest losses in NYSE history. The Dow Jones Average was down more than 14%, the S&P 500 Index plunged 11.6%, and the Nasdaq dropped 16%. An estimated $1.4 trillion in value was lost during this period. Eyes wide open...
Yes, taxes...But also bankruptcy. As a general contractor (with at least a million out there), all kinds of people could try and go after him for anything... One year (I was being sued about 30 years ago), I wasn't sure if I would win the case or not...It got dropped. But, since I was not totally sure, I went and bought 4 burial plots!! Excluded in bankruptcy court. After the suit, I just sold them to someone else...
scalping futures on schwab just sound so wrong. Those commissions are redonkulous https://www.schwab.com/futures
Easymon1 is giving super helpful actionable answers. I have been lurking the forum for years, and this thread got me to post because it is... just kinda ridiculous lol Almost everyone here, in their own way is right- some are just frustrated FJ does not seem to be getting the basics of this business, FJ thinks it should be understood that they get it based on their success in other non trading related ventures. FJ, because you understand home building process, it does not imply seamless transferrable skill to trading. The reality is that everything is it's own market. Even in the stock market, MES is correlated to ES but they are different markets so you may get filled in one and not the other. This is why Easymon is giving you the best answer here. You are using SIM now, it won't cost yo a lot to switch to live MES to test your fills because that is the only way if you really want to know 100% what broker will work. Every broker will work 100% in sim. I will leave you with this, and you can take it or you can leave it. There are 3 aspects to this- if you think you found a shortcut, prepare to do yourself in sooner or later. To be successful you need to master the technical (software,vps,etc etc), psychological, and business aspects… with accounting and statistics that go along with it. You must know statistically what your strategy consists of, things like max drawdown, max daily loss, max consecutive loosers, etc etc. If you do not have those skills, you must either learn or hire someone to do it. It is not optional.