@Laissez Faire If you look at my daily report again, you will see the following columns after the number of trades. I added these 5 columns for the very reason you mentioned. The average contracts per trade will now start to rise, yet my average Ticks/Trade should remain stable (or rise slightly over time as I improve). Regarding the scaling, I don't think I will be doing much of that. But if I do, each contract is counted separately and is considered an independent trade.
That's wrong. HOW you made it is more important. You will not find a single investor who will only ask how much you made. In fact that question will be preceeded by a lot of more important questions: Track record Average win Average loss % of winning trade Risk Reward AUM Max Drawdown Time to recover from drawdown Sharpe ratio But I can already tell you that NOBODY (with a bit of brains) will accept a Risk Reward of 4 to 1. And a stoploss at 10 points is totally unacceptable with the actual profits. So what matters is not just if he made money or not. If all the points I mentioned above are good, it would even not be a problem for many investors. The risk profile is important, and as it is now it is not good. Risk matters more than return, because if risk is too high, traders will sooner or later catch the mother of all losses.
I agree 100%. My main mode is mean reversion, but indeed sometimes the market tanks and sometimes it shoots to the moon. I am prepared for this. IF I don't jump on board, I simply take a small loss and patiently sit out the move. There will always be another trade. And I want to say this too. My goal is 3% per day right now. But I will never force trades to reach the profit goal for the day. If I don't see a clear trade, I won't take it. My $1M target is a sweet dream for sure, but most importantly, the $7k in my account must NOT be whittled away by stupidity. If I "only" end up with $100k in 12 months I will still have succeeded. Capital Preservation #1 New Profits #2.
I probably said I am doing better at going with the trend. But my main mode is mean reversion. The market is ranging 70% of the time I keep hearing, and that is what I have seen too. Ranges and mean reversion are my mainstay. I am doing better at seeing the trend entries and actually going with them. But my confidence is still microscopic, LOL. As I said before, I used to fade anything that moved. I am doing much better now.
Again I have to remind you that this is a scalpers journey. We dont look for investors. We just look to get some good bread on our table. I understand that you have a different approach, and I guess it is a good one. But what I dont understand, if your objectives are so different from us scalpers here, if you dont agree with most of the stuff going on here, why do you waste your time with us, with this thread ?
Yes, but many seem to forget this and just try to find the next hot indicator around the next corner. Everybody wants to be a trader, but nobody wants to put in the hard work.
Thanks for taking the time to write that. Lots to think about. Good stuff. Two weeks trading is not enough time to get any good stats. In two months lets see where I am.
I agree that it is of utmost importance to manage your risk, thats a top priority of every trader who wants to be able to come back to the game the next day, to earn another plate of meat and bread for his table. But to judge the risk of a trader by the R:R profile of his trades is such a narrow, limited and wrong view, that I dont even know where to start with you. All I want to say now is, kudos to you, if you can make good money this way. But if you do some research on ET, go through journals of the past 10-15 years, you will find plenty of journals of excellent traders who made a fortune going exactly against what you are preaching. Dont assume that because you dont understand or you cannot do something, that nobody can. Thats a huge mistake. Not just in trading. But in general, in everday life.
A very nice thread here, with very nice trading from sstheo, and very good discussions and input from all directions. We can all learn something from each other. I wish you all a nice evening, and a good weekend. Greetings, CALLumbus