What is a realistic guideline for the number of Emini contracts to trade per 10K in your account (as opposed to how many margin would allow)? Say stops are 2 pts. What other considerations should go into choosing how many contracts to trade? Thanks!
Looking at your stop I'm assuming your trading intraday. I allocate roughly $20k-$25k per mini-sp for my swingtrades (overnights). More important to me is that I don't lose more than 2% of my acct(s) in any one trade.
If your broker approves it you may do 5 minis with a 10k account Remember though, that margin is a double edged sword. Just a thought triple
10,000 x 2% equals $200 divided by 2 times 50 equals 2. So therefore you can comfortably trade 2 contracts with 2 pt stops and presumably something greater than 2 pt targets. If you have a known winning system and it is hot, add one contract after every winning trade and drop down to one after every losing trade. (otherwise known as the anti martingale system) It bets that at some point you will streak, and your winning streak will occur with an ever increasing amount of size.
But seriously, just trade one if you have to ask. I sort of like 2 pt stops. More like 1.75 is when I give up. Sometimes 3. What kind of targets are you shooting for? You have a system? What is it? What are your exits based on if not stopped out?
so if your max size is 5 and your longest streak is 8 and your losing streak occured at the 5 contract size your losing streak would occur with 12 contracts (or $1200 with 2 pt stops) and your winning streak would occur with 30 contracts (or $3,000 with 2 pt targets) just something to think about
but the problem occurs when you have a high efficiency ratio and high losing streaks rarely occur (like max 4 statistically), which somewhat mitigates results when you have one losing trade between two profitable ones. Just a thought.