Hi, I am paper trading and I want to test with the same things I gonna use in my real account. What would be a good leverage? How much margin per contract? I do not plan to trade more than 1 contract at the begining. How about the risk? I won't hold position overnight. Trade for about 1 hour after 10 Est. I think that using always stops is unlikely to loose more than 10%, in extreme situations like a crash. I always will be out if the market go against my position for more than 2 points. Any other advise will be appreciated. Thanks Joaquin
wouldn't it be nice if you could make money by being properly margined and using a hard tight stop? How much profit do you intend to make the times you are not stopped out?
What's your actual trading account size right now ? Note: I'm not asking about what your account size will be via some date in the future.
Well actually is 10000 that I think would be sufficient to trade 1 single contract. Is this a reasonable value to trade one or two contract? As I said before I do not plan to trade more than 1 contract at the begining. Thanks Joaquin
It doesn't matter what account size you're starting out with, because you're going to pay that tuition, no matter what. Just be smart, and try to keep what you have in the account, as long as possible. The key, is to have enough funds to last long enough, to learn the ropes, and gain the experience. Once, you have proven, that you're profitable, then you could trade with as little as $2000 per contract, and it shouldn't affect your bottom line. Schaefer
a lot of doubt in your posts,you need to sim a long time before playing with cash,when your confidence is real, then you have found a solid reason to enter a trade and understand when to trade, not to trade, take a loss,let a winner run,until then, the belief is you can beat the odds, the reality is, most traders spend thousands turning small accts to zero before making a profit,the majority of this can be done in sim,once you have found that edge, you will have to learn to control your emotions with real money,not get elated when you win,depressed or angry when you lose,the market is geared to move in a direction with 2 or 3 point bounces on its way down or pullbacks on its way up, collecting the money in those 2 pt stop accts
One contract only and keep it that way until you're consistently profitable (a minimum of one year) assuming you're an active trader.
or, you could just go over to forex where you can add to losers and add to winners to your hearts content. hard to make money guessing on one contract maybe somebody did it, but it wasn't me last I checked, one ES was about 70k I know I sure as hell wouldn't be putting on 70k at a time with only 10k in my account
if you really like the stock market and think you have a good read on it you can spread ym vs es that gives you an es micro contract due to the fact that 1 es is worth slightly more than 1 ym twice the commissions and twice the spread but probably also twice the lifespan of the account