Take a grand and trade the trip q's. I just bought 19 contracts on a small trade and netted 150 bucks in the morning session. Eminis are for wimps, if you want to be in a luxery RV listen to me. Find a good edge and trade index options. Papertrade until youre successful, then use the real thing. Rennick out
5k and 5 contracts and your new. Im assuming you were actually being whole hearted and true with yoru question. Thats too much risk for someone that is new to the market. Your looking at $25 swings per point in the dow or .5% of your account PER POINT in the dow. That is just way too much risk for someone without a lot of experience. I have been researching a method and practicing it while i built up the capital to trade the mini dow. My rule of thumb is 1 contract for every 2500 assuming you have a firm idea as to how you are going to trade it. When you start out you should just plan on surviving and not even plan on making money. It took me 5 years to find a system I am comfortable with. So far I have blew up once trading. Hopefully it was my last time. Good luck but just be realistic, start out trading 1 at a time. If you cant make money trading 1 at a time then its highly unlikely you can make money trading 5.
i didn't even bother reading through the last 10 posts, but if there anything like the first ten, you hopefully would have gotten the message than you should NOT be trading more than 1 contract. Like someone else who posted, I am an experienced trader and just started trading futures on the side and I only trade 1 contract. Understand that one contract im the E minis is the same as 500 shares of the SPY's. 5 contracts = 2500 shares. Thats a hell of a position to start trading with. This is a tough game and if you want to be a success you have to take it slow. Even experienced traders get whacked everynow and then. When you take a hit in the beginning and you will, if the loss is bigger than you can deal with you will suffer emotional and mental damage that will effect your trading. To reiterate the point again, TAKE IT SLOOOWWW!!!!!!!!!!! and keep it SMALL!!!! Sometimes less is more!!!
I've enjoyed reading the responses to the original post!! I think I made most, if not all of the mistakes you warned about!!! I traded the e-mini dow for several months, exploiting the opening gap. Had to bail when i ran out of "ammunition. Is there a mechanical trading system that will help combine the technical indicators and give a relatively reliable buy/sell signal?
I had a similar story. I started with a little under 10k first day was loading 10 contracts in the ES. while it was exciting going up 2K then down 2500 then up 1500 etc.. i blew up. now im more humble trading 1 contract looking to scalp 2-4 ticks. with less capital you have to look to stay in the game, so exposure to the market is something you have to think about. im a punch you and run away trader. but i look to do this 3-5 times a day and in the long run let compounding work so i can take those bigger trades, add more contracts and look to net full points instead to ticks.
dont confuse YM with ES just because the tick value is $5 vs $12.5 If YM moves 100 points/ticks.. ES -could move -about 10 points/40ticks. you will get your ass handed in both products. YM is inferior - less liquid and you will often see 2-3 point spreads. I would say that 5K is fine to try it out and start swimming in the market but be prepared to lose 75% of that.. even if you double up your account, you are still facing risk of ruin.
dude, most here are correct. 1 contract per $5K of capital is about average. Some people trade 1 contract per $10K or even $20K. Honestly if you're looking to run the account I would swing trade with that low an amount. I would look at the NQ instead of the YM or ES also because of margin requirements. The NQ is a slightly smaller contract, but can move a little better. Every 100points you earn on the NQ is $2000, how hard is that to catch on a swing trade?