daytrading profits --- how many cents per trade is realistic

Assuming you sell the stock by days end it would be 500/2000=25cps

 

the strategy is intraday, nothing held overnight. the win rate is around 70%. but what is that =25cps about. that has nothing to do with real profits. i base the real profit on 1000 shares traded for a .50c gain = $500. how can knowing cents per share (cps)improve a trading strategy??

 

That might b exactly the reason, why one is able to catch only 0,25% of a 2-3% intraday move.

My opinion is that every daytrader should learn to consider the longer term trend, formations. That is the key to ride the the realy big moves.

 

If you trade futures you might do a single trade... round trip 2 contracts, and make $200 that´s $100 per share... and that´s why cps is irrelevant. If you´re trading in 50,000 share blocks at JDSU you might make the same money as some one trading 2000 share blocks at XOM.

 

The poll question was for stock traders. The calculation wouldnt make sense for futures traders.

 

You want to know what to expect, on average? You should expect to lose. All but a small minority of traders eventually lose any temporary profits. You should expect to lose, unless you have reason to believe that your performance will be above average. Watch out for people who tell you different. They are either selling something, or they are legitimate traders who need to reassure you as a means to ward off their own doubts and to reassure themselves.

 

Still, the question remains pointless as you can make an equal amount of money by trading 100 shares of HANS or GOOG, than trading 50,000 shares of CMGI... On the one hand you´re getting several points with a small package, on the other you´re getting one or two cents with a huge package... If you do your bussiness on GOOG then you´re going to have a much nicer, "per share" avg, eventhough you might not be as profitable as someone trading 10,000 shares in QQQQ...

 

Which is why traders of similar strategies may find this info useful. Of course someone taking rebates on SUNW, compared to pairs trading, compared to trading goog with small size is all going to vary quite a bit. But if you are in a circle of traders that all do similar stuff it is the best measure of comparison to learn if you are getting all that you can out of your trading.

 

I buy a car for $1000 and sell it for $2000.
I made $1000 per car not $500 per car as suggested by above calculation.

 

Tell it to your broker.