Profitable .. yes.. killing it no. I do it full time and still struggle with lots of trades and it has only gotten harder in my opinion and I do not mean just because the market has been selling off lately i mean over the last 2 years.. maybe it is just me but hte machines are backfilling mroe and more to the point where I find it exceedingly difficult to get behnd a trade intraday. I have had much better LUCK holding option spreads withthis volatility you can do 1x3's and even 1x4s and make some good money . itis a godo tim eto buy calls in a ratio spread.. 1x2 1x3 or 1x4 will all do the trick .. 1x3 is probably the safest. What works for me won't work for you. I Can tell you the market will be up tomorrow over 200 points in the dow and evenif you believed me you would still probably lose money due to your Numebr of trades, execution costs and some losers that you would take by not holding. If you look at each day as if it is a year.. would you buy one day and get out a day later if you were investing? Nope. well I do that an awful lot in day trading.. my fees eaat up 90% of my profits. without fees n commish I would be doing exceedingly well on a very very short time frame. i am working on tryign to get away from my scalping which just eats into my tading.. teh good news is i sget out of losses like I am scalping the bad news. I get out of solid winneer like I am scalping. THE RARE BREED of winners is true because it is set up for you to fail over and over again by design. they let you come in underfunded and give you a lot of leverage and let the wolf packs loose on you. To survive is winning. to survive with profits is legend. It is rare you ever see anyone with HUGE money day trading... not retail from home. MY best advice is alway trade teh market with mkt orders and don't put anything on the book ro jsut use stops to enter and exit the mkt. which are mkt orders anyway
there really is no secret formula.. trade long term like investing. solid companies and buy and hold. that way you catch big moves when they happen. only way to really make it day trading in my opinion is being able to size your positions with multiple contracts. adding to winners. cuttin gall losses immediatley. Futures are much harder than stocks in my opinion due to the emini being such a large contract. If people really made of hundreds of thousands day trading don't you think more people woould be doing it? Like 1 out of every 30 people wold say yeah i made 250K last year day trading and they would be proud of it and everyone would say yeah.. those day traders are making a killing from home with just a computer and 10K. NOTHING works that way. Look at BITCOIN.. it went to 20K .. I never bought any..that crypto is toxic.. anyway whtif i had bought 1000 at 10 cents I would have sold at like 50 cents or a buck.. right.. I mean who really held it until 20,000 and how many did and didn't sell ?? lots. it doesn't matter if you are in profits or losses or in between it is still ridiculously dificult and you are tradign against PRO's with billions everyday. Can you beat LEBRON JAMES 1 on 1 at basketball? then why can you beat the HFT computers and algo's? YOU CAN"T and I cannot either.. i am jsut getting luckhy for awhile and i think it is real and then .. BOOM i go bigger size and it all gets taken away.. There is talk that 30% of the volume is wah trades at the cme. well this allows a mkt participant to trade against themselves. yes .. why? well ehn you only pay .12centsa side.. it is pretty easy to spend a little bit of money to move the market to run stops or chagne the book to see what kind of real interest there is.. I mean this day and age the CME has an algo that checks and won't allow wash trades, but they elave it up to the algos decide what to do.. shouldn't that be a requirement..no wash trades.. it is a rule and thehy don't care if certain people break it. It went to court..there was proof.. but the judge said.. well you cannot sue the CME you ahve to sue the parties doing this and you have to show us how you had a monetary damage. all fo the algos and trades and clearing are kept secret so nop chacne at getting that information.. ever. The cftc and the sec don't have teh tech required to understand what is going on inside of a second.. they said oh it doesn't matter what ahppens sub second.. sure it does because within each secodn that makes up the mkt.. there are massive trades and manipulations going on. IF the orders ont e book had a requirement to stay active for 1 secodn then I would agree with them..bu they don't. It is a glorified casino and casino's and it owners (memebers) always have an edge wether it is legal ilelgal or in a gray area.. that is life.. outside the box. why do people BELIEVE that the mkts are really regulated and watched.
I think the secret is to risk little. For example, use a mobile media of 1200 in a minute graphic to capture a great movement and add contracts if it goes in your favor. Any suggestions?
I don't have very great futures commission rates right now because im sort of just getting my feet wet moving to it from options. However, even at my garbage contract rates I can trade once or twice a day and a few ticks covers my commissions no problem. In the ES a single tick in my direction more than covers my commissions. What broker are you at where fees eat up 90% of your profits? I don't think I need to explain to you how badly you are getting raked over the coals if any of what you wrote here is remotely true.
I appreciate your concern. I pay 3.78 a trip. no exactly raked over the coals but my fills are pretty shitty because they use WEDBUSH to execute just like so many other DISCOUNT BROKERS. SO your trade goes from your computer to your fcm to wedbush for them to trade against and kick back fees from this back to your discount broker then you get your fill.. all legal it is all in the paperwork and if you ask your broker if you use one who they use to execute 9 tiems out of 10 it will be wedbush. sad.. once you look into these markets just how ridiculously unfair they really are. I am going to open an account with a clearing fcm instead of non clearing and wedbush has a terrible discipline record. THE cme fees are ridiculous.. one would think that as the total voluems rose that the cme might actually reduce fees for non memebers instea of constantly raising, but this is what happens when you have a monopoly on index futures I do not think about commission period. it is a cost of doing business. If i make 1 million dollars and I had to pay my broker a million to get there.. so i made 2 million - 1 million fees and commission then I am happy. My point is that worrying about commission keeps you from trading. Just how I trade.. usually 20 to 50 round trips a day
I have never found ES to give 10 point swings i day trading unless you are willing to convert a winning trade into a losing trade in hopes of another move. Might want to take your time frame that you normally trade in, and measure the swing size times 500 swings measured...and get an average that you can hope for based upon your trade style.