What about expected shortfall or semivariance?. An for small traders, the simply use of Bollinger Bands with 3 STD will do a good job too. jjrvat
Well I can, but you are welcome to throw it back in I'm just trying to get to the nitty gritty on why someone can't scale up, if the reason is only psychological then we can focus on that, I wanted to talk about the trading aspects of it first. Exactly. If I start with a 40k account perhaps it is worth as much to me as the OP's 4k account. The account size significance is relative to the person and therefore should not be discussed here. I'm not talking about going for a billion dollars. Why would someone trading an $80k account (scaled by 20 over the original premise) have to change the strategy employed? We have already determined there aren't liquidity issues. Unless there are slippage issues, why not? It seems obvious to me that you can scale your strategy to a certain point - we are just determining what the point is. Fund managers are in a completely different league and I don't think the comparison is valid. Having a $100k account is a lot different then a $100 million account. Obviously the strategies would have to be different in that case because you can't place 5000 car trades without having an effect on the market.
Admirable logic Cavendish, but you're bringing the skills of Master Chess player to a game of Checkers. I'm not being a smartaleck, and I'm not oversimplifying either, but that's what intra-day traders do. They see the market as a checkerboard and they know their goal is to get X amount on a daily or weekly or monthly basis, so that's how they shoot for their target(s). Add-in (what I think is) a good position sizing algorithm (based on performance bond, as previously stated) and you're well on your way ... then, if a trader can move from the intra-day frame of reference to being a good position player, you're golden. I know it's possible, I've seen it done right in front of my eyes. Good trading, Jimmy Jam
Read my post again. I'm not comparing fund managers with daytraders. I'm telling you that the comparison is invalid. So thanks for reiterating my point. Also, if you think psychology is not a valid point in this discussion, you do that. Most daytraders fail because they can't conquer their emotions....
*** No, I'm talking about doing exactly what the OP is asking, making $600/day on AVERAGE by doing the same thing that the people who say $60/day AVERAGE is easy; just scaled by ten. So far I have not heard any technical trading reasons why they are not equivalent (e.g. slippage), just psychological concerns. *** I actually already explained the correct process that a trader should use to size up or increase the number of contracts they are trading. *** "Contracts should not be increased in an arithmetical fashion, but rather geometrically, and they should be based on the level of risk that a trader is assuming as a percentage of their total performance bond, not the total performance bond itself, nor should they be based on the amount of reward desired." *** But hey, at least we've gotten past the initial concept of whether it's even feasible to average $50 a day while working with 4G's. Good trading all, JJ
LOL, I'd hope by now that you understand why I don't think of scaling-up in the fashion that you're describing here. JJ
Depending on the trade style (and the instrument) there is a slippage issue. For instance, my style, essentially scalping, does have YM and ER2 problems geting all-in and all-out with size generally around 20. This sounds strange, but the style doesn't (necessarily) enter and/or exit based on high volume or otherwise broadcasted price levels. IMO, scaling out in particular, is not a good technique for my style of trading. I'd rather exit entirely and if I still like, put on another trade. Also as I've spoke of before, the key for smaller accounts is concentration, not diversification, and risk management, to achieve triple-digit monthly gains. Osorico
I think i menioned the expected shortfall. The Bollinger band at three stdev will be good for the smaller trader, as long as the time period is pecified correctly, and will have much the same type of risk parameter.
As most traders don't have any problem losing $60 per day all they have to do is fade their own system.
This is just too entertaining of a thread not to post. first off, I'm a newbie, not an expert trader, not a TA genius or anything like that. One thing that I hate the most on all these sites is the naysayers. It's always "No it can't be done", "Everyone only loses money on the markets", etc, etc, etc, etc... Here's the thing, to me they're either: 1) Jealous because they don't know how to. 2) They don't want you/us/newbies like me to get in, because they know if I make money, it might be coming out of their account. No wonder all of them lose with that kind of mentality. It CAN be done, if you set your mind to it and if you have a strategy that works and you understand money management. If you look at on of my first thread, when I started trading stocks in the late 90's I opened my E*Trade account with $1k, yes one thousand little dollars. I didn't know anything about the market, TA, stops, money management, every trade I made was emotional but guess what: I had some common sense because of the industry I work in (IT) and had a good gut feeling about what companies would go up in price, so what did I do? My $1k turned to $6k within 30 days. Then I bought another stock with the $6k and that turned to $40k after 2 months. Then I took all the $40k (yes it was legalized gambling for me I was a dumbass), bought a penny stock and within 6 month my account was at $200k. ok now for all of you geniuses that say it CAN'T be done, what kind of return in that?? 20,000% in less than a year?? Now did I take the money and run? No I let it ride from greed and didn't put a stop loss (had no clue what it meant), so when the market crashed I went down and lost most of it, but that's another discussion. So next time someone asks you "I have a $1k account and I wanna get it to $200k in 8 months, can it be done?" be sure to answer YES it CAN be done. One of my best friend quit his job and has been daytrading full time for the past 6 months and he's not a trading guru or anything like that either. How much is he making? Well out of a $50k account he's making reliably and with very little risk 0.6-0.8% per day some days a little more, some days a little less. but he is averaging $250-500 a day. Is he a genius with 20 monitors in front of him and thousands of signals and charts? No, he uses E*Trade Pro and has a very simple setup. Why does it work? Because we know our specific industry and are able to day trade 2-3 stocks that we know inside and out and with a couple very simple strategies (stochs and MACD) he's able to get in and out and make $200 on 2k shares within 10min. I have another friend who's been making consistently 1.5% average on Forex for the past 2 years. I actually gave him some money to trade for me and it's working out quite alright. Without making this a novel, I just want to say don't go for a specific daily $$ number, go for percentage. If you only concentrate on making 0.5% return safely everyday, you can make a living at it. And 0.5% a day is easily do-able. Don't listen to naysayers, they have no dreams and no goals, all they have left is trying to bring other people down to their level. Again I truly believe you can achieve anything you set your mind to. Peace and happy trading everyone!