DON'T EVEN look down on 5% a month compounded return!! That's like INCREDIBLE!! Humans don't understand about exponential growth and thus UNDERESTIMATES the effects of compounding!!! 5% compounded return per month is insanely good. But that's like 79.5% a year! Uncompounded, linear return of 5% a month is only 60%/yr. And that divergence between compounded and linear return increase exponentially as you go out further in time! If you can do that on a large capital base year in and year out then you are a Trading Wizard! -99
If you can stay positive every day, you are -way- ahead of the game. Always keep learning with a passion and KISS (keep it simple, stupid).
Washington, I also trade with 4:1 margin around 50k and I am happy to make 1% a day ($500). My daily goal is $1000 - last year it was $500. Today I did $449 and thats all I could get out of it. Last week I did $3099 (trading 4 days). Key is consistency - for example yesterday I dropped $1,144. Which is bad since it can take me 2 or 3 days to make that back. 1% a day is definitely doable and in my book you are doing well if you can achieve that. The key is how much you drop on the bad days. Never add to a loser. Only add to a winner. Never risk your account!
Seems to me that compounding %'s sounds very nice on paper, but eventually I would imagine size would become a problem. I think it would be far easier for someone trading a five-figure account to pull in 10% daily trading eminies for some time before that number just gets unwieldly, than say at mid-six figures. If you start out with 10k, trading 5-lots intraday for net of 5 NQ points, that gives you a whopping 5% return daily. I would imagine that the same trades with a 5 lot would eventually run into problems at, say 50 lots. Is it possible to regularly target 3-5 pts/trade (say with a 1.5 stop) on 50 lots, NQ? I've grown my 6k account to 10k in a couple weeks trading 3-lots, but I know there's got to be some limit where the % gains stop compounding and go linear. Where can I expect to meet some turbulence size-wise?