Was reading old p/l threads and numbers that lescor, Red Ink, Dustin, etc. posted daily on ET. What do they all have in common? They trade hundreds of thousands shares per day. Is this really necessary? Does anybody here on ET make $2K-$3K per day and trade less than 100K shares?
I may not post the numbers like the rest but definitely you don't need to be trading that much volume to make decent money. My best days (trading-wise, not necessarily numbers-wise) I trade under 50k shares, 2k max per position.
Decide how much money you want to make per day. Say $200. That's like $50k per year. Better than an entry level office job. Your number of shares are based on how much profit you're going to hold each one for. If you buy 100k shares and sell them for a 1 cent profit, that's $1,000. So that's probably way too much. If you buy 10,000 shares and sell them for a 2 cent profit, that's $200. Or you can buy 1,000 shares and sell them for 20 cent profit, that's $200. Or you can buy 500 shares and sell them for 40 cent profit, that's $200. So what you need to do is figure out with your system about how many cents you're making per share, and adjust your position size accordingly. Remember that a 20 cent move may be a lot for a $20 stock, but not for a $500 stock, so that's going to affect your decisions as well. You might want to pay attention to daily % increase of the stock rather than cents. I make about $400-$800 per day on average trading up to 9 ES contracts. You can view my journal in the "Journals" sub forum.
As been told here on ET 0.05 per share is pretty good average. So with 50K shares that's about $2,500. Does this sound right? Even 50K shares is a lot I would think. Do you think it is possible to use tight stops like 10c when trading volume like this ?
not exactly. 1 ES contract = 1250 shares of anything. 1c/ 1 tick move =$12.50 in F, AAPL, or ES if apple moves from 225.00 to 225.12 and your holding 12,500 shares you have your $1,500 profit - commish too bad youll need almost 3mm dollars in purchasing power. a bit more difficult to capture a 12cent move on a penny stock. i think in terms of tick value and how many ticks to my target. if you made a trade with 10 ES contracts at $125 a tick.. you need 3 points(12 ticks) to have your $1500. my account equity lets me trade $150 a pip in FX, thats $1500 in 10pips.. GBP has ranged >500 pips in the last 3 days. i dont feel confortable floating that :eek:
No it's not necessary to trade all those shares. The less I trade, the more I make. Some of my daily examples from this year (share count is total round trip): 1 trade, 1000 shares, $1200 1 trade, 2000 shares, $400 1 trade, 800 shares, $650 2 trades, 2000 shares, $800 Today, 3 trades, 1200 shares, $700