At my prop...newbies start with around the 30k you stated. As (If) you progress you're allocated a lot more capital. I know my capital is close to approaching 8 digits. More than enough to do whatever I want.
I wouldn't think that is very much for scalping. I don't trade futures so I can't really comment intelligently in that arena. You're totally right that, as traders, we have to figure out the style that best fits our personality. So many people begin trading and fail with one strategy and think that they just can't trade. Sometimes they really can't trade, but often, they haven't found the right approach or product for their personality. I just hope that I can make it for 25 years in this business as you have and do really well for myself.
Most don't have the ability to day trade, and will never get it and the smart ones don't even try. Most traders I know, spend all day and most nights working there craft, playing the game. If you enter a stock near the lows and after several months the stock went up 500%, just one comm., it may have had several gaps in it's rise, this is huge profits considering the amount of time that went into the trade if you were working a different job and actually had a social life. But how many times has a stock gone up ten bucks in a day and you only have a dollar of it or less? In long term futures, trading some of the more wide moving markets like Crude Oil and other markets that have gaps, those are missed opportunities for the day trader. It is much easier to make several hundred percent on a small account than when the account reaches larger size, and even though you can increase size with a prop firm, if the shares are not there, you just not trading. But by studying history, most of the wealthiest did so by long term plan and not day trading. Maybe you will be one of the few.
Solution one to create ILLUSION of EXTRA time also eliminate NOISE of price!! Chart on TOP - 5 min regular candles Chart on Bottom - 3 min heiken-ashi candles (extra candles = extra time) and heiken ashi reduces noise and keeps focus on the trend. I have a another on the way. Let me hear some comments
Nothing new here.. Reduced the viewing area on the two charts that can be used to MANAGE the Trade and the main for entries. fewer candles would feed less info. and less processing time = better response time. Need to see this in live action. IDK... comments please..
Each trader should do what works for him and not what TraderNextDoor does. However trying to finding what works is unfortunately a long, expensive and painful process with no guarantees. For me swing trading works better because my strategy has more opportunities for proft because I'm able to focus all markets - equties, grains, softs, financials, energy, currencies, meats & metals. From that group there is always something thats tradable from +40 markets. Unlike daytrading focusing on one or two markets - less opportunities. Its like a lion that preys on any game viz a lion that preys only on buffalo. Because there is more opportunities in swing trading it provides an environment of better discipline.
Day Trading can be a noise. In day trading, every trader is not participating. It includes element of gambling as you are trading unknown factors. In weekly/swing trading, you can expect most of the traders participating. It is better to go with 'mass'. In a mass psychology, individual traders does not matter who are putting pressure on price. What matters is 'aggregation of all reactions'. It takes 10 years of effort to get this game right. I say to newbie traders put 10 years of effort, then start trading live with a single contract. Imagine a first year medical student doing a liver surgery and how he/she is going to mess it. Give the same surgey after 10 years of theoritical and practical training and how well he/she will perform. Most of the newbie traders are looking for mindless set ups or plug and play method. No one is willing to sweat it out !
Day Trading can be noisy but we have tools at each of our disposals to quiet that noise. We can either learn to use them or ignore them. I mentioned these to you in another thread. There is no element of gambling embedded inside of these learned environments. Participation is volume. It makes no difference as to whether 100% or 5% of those trading are participating in those unique trading or investing increments; intraday, swing or position. What matters is the accumulative volume and price action taking place at any given moment on the particular chart you are watching and trading. I will take it a step further than your comment. It takes far longer than 10 years for the average person to learn to understand how to take consistent profits from their charts the way you are learning it. It is the above average person that learns it in 10 years. It absolutely doesn't take 10 years to learn this environment using better tools. I have a 29 year old part-time farmer in my office that has been self evaluating these environments for right at one year and is consistently profitable. I have another gentleman in my office that was in a motorcycle accident and has mild brain damage and he is a consistently profitable trader and he has been at this for far far less than 10 years. What we do is not brain surgery. It is far less complicated, unless you make it that way. It isn't just new traders that are looking for mindless set ups and plug and play methods, everyone is. What I want you to understand is that there is a compromise point between where you think the length of time it should take to learn this and an alternative to the complicated environment you and most other traders have created for yourselves.