hello everyone, thankyou so much for all your help. the private notes have kept me positve--thankyou everyone who sent one !! i am so happy to know that some people still care. to answer your question--i only need about 500.00 per week net to survive and get back on my feet. i can't get a real job or a business for personal reasons. i am going to try with the eminis--one contract. jack
At the grain exchange they used to tell me that it took 6 months to a year for a trader who would make it to have a positive monthly return and it would take 1 to 2 years for a trader to be positive overall (making back the money you initially lost plus expenses 'invested'). This time line applies to traders who are in the market every day, the whole session, watching other real traders trade. (Note that is does not count the traders who leave, only the ones who eventually make it. So you have a huge survivorship bias here.) I thought this was a little pessimistic. Not really. You can take up to several months learning how the market works, finding support and resistance, analyzing charts in multiple time frames and all in real time. (Analyzing charts in real time, prospectively is much more difficult than looking at completed charts in a book.) Then you have to devise a trading strategy to take advantage of your analysis which usually involves testing various types of trades over the course of several months, losing all the while. So lets say you've got it figured out. It doesn't do any good if you just cherry pick a few trades a day, you can't make a living at that. You have to learn how to consistently execute trades. The real work is to be able to manage your losses and to take every trade that fits your criteria. Traders trade. Trades can take action without losing their discipline. The ability to do this is a whole other set of skills that you can only begin to work on only after you've gone throught the 4 to 6 months initiation. You are going to need 6 to 12 months of expenses, plus trading capital, plus a reserve to absorb your trading losses and still have trading capital AND a cushion left over. Here is a good article on the trading mindset. (Note it has little to do with zenning out.) MENTAL STATE by Vadym Graifer http://www.hardrightedge.com/wizard/rt2.htm "The truth is : if you want to be a trader, you must trade, you must change yourself from fearing to take a trade to cold-blooded readiness to react on valid signal. Working toward your goals and dreams, not sitting and doing nothing." "A trader that cannot execute a trade is not likely to be successful at trading." "Your success as a trader will be achieved when the probability of successful trades outweighs the probability of losing. This will not work if a trader only executes 1 of 10 trades. You desperately trying to pick the best trade rejecting trades that meet your criteria one by one. When you finally do take one and experience a loss on that cherry picking trade, it becomes more painful, reaching a point where it is impossible to take any trades at all. " --- Also read the literature on what it takes to become an advanced chess player. Thousands of exposures to board positions over many months, presuming you had a sound basic understanding going in. Then you start to 'get it.' Thats the kind of training that learning to trade is going to take. So my point is, a $5k account is not enough unless you already have a job and you are trading the european session. (I point out the european market as an alternative because you can't learn anything sneaking in a few trades during the day when you are supposed to be working. You need some way to a spend a couple of hours each day, full time on trading.)
Just a note, there is nothing mini or safe about the emini. There are well capitalized, full time traders here who trade one emini contract.
i do aprieciate your concern, but why wohld i well capitalize trader trade only one emini. that sounds like banging your head against a wall. emini moves 20.00 a point. with 5000 and 500 margin to trade one. i would have to lose 250 points to lose my capital in total. that seems to me to be a great way to learn and earn. jack
Jack Rabid, are you for real ? Puffy Gums' response sums up the situation very well and gives you yet another opportunity to come to your senses. No experience, no method, undercapitalised and you expect the gods to favour you so as to enable you to survive and make $ 26K a year with a $ 5 K bank ? If you had experience and had $ 26 K as capital then, playing it safe, it may be possible to make $ 5 K yes, but you want to do it the other way around !? I think you would have a better chance to achieve that in a casino.
Jack, for info, mini SP does not move 20$ a point but 50. So if you have, 5000$, you cannot lose 250pts but only 100pts (in fact, even less if you consider that you have to maintain a certain margin in your account). Good look (you will need some...) with your future trading!