Hi, Just a poll here. For those of you who trade in and out of the ES and YMs intra day, how many points do you typically realize per contract? Also, from your experience, have you found your risk profile to be like short vol (ie steady stream of points on most days, big blow out on a few bad days) ? or a stream of losses and gains with no pattern ? or like long vol (ie losses on most days and big wins occasionally) I think I would particularly like to hear from actual experiences as opposed to backtests ... I'll start - I've been learning the ES and it seems like 2-4 points is a decent day. I trade discretionary based on charts, volume and general situational appraisal. Commissions usually take up 0.5 to 0.75 pts. I have not hit a bad tail yet, but am psychologically prepared for it - ie shutdown all activity.
2-4 pts/day isn't bad at all. If I assume you pay about $5 per r/t, you are making 5-7 trades/day, so that's 0.5-0.8 pts per trade avg. I have a 3 pt goal/trade and a 4 pt 'crash' stop. When my indicator says get out I do, usually less than the 4 pts. I am avg about 5-6 pts per day on 4-6 trades/day.
I mentioned that 2-4pts is a decent day ... but there are plenty of indecent days when all I do is enrich my broker Avg 2 pts a day net = approx 500pts per annum = approx 50% unlevered ROIC based on S&P 1000 That's probably not realistic for mere mortals.
By your post it would appear that you are rather daytrading instead of scalping. By standard 1990's definition of scalping - an attempt to make several ticks a few dozen times a day. Some traditional scalpers will trade 200+ times per day and net $150.00 at the end of the day if they are lucky. The national average profit for a daytrader according to the NFA & the SEC is about $68.00 per day net. Are you beating the national average? Is is possible to beat the average? I think you get the point. Based on what you previously posted I would say that you are doing just fine. Keep up the good work. p.s. dont be fooled by some of the responses that you will more than likely recieve to your posted question. some will claim to be profitable but have yet to demonstrate thier so called profitability? Be careful my friend. dont be taken in by some of the bamboozlers out here.