Don't stress over it. If you only have 2K, trade and see what happens. Worse case, you get a real job. However, that would be too stressful. Ok, take a loan out for 50K and trade again. I love being stress free.
It's very important that people do what they want. Your experience is really propelling you along and you are just at a level where you win and loose. Now after a month you do not have to have a job to cover losses and you made 50% net on your approximately 2k. 2k went to 3k. Actually it is greater than 50% because you had a neat recovery from a drawdown value less than 2k. Most people use their own methods and sometimes they get a small idea that helps them improve what they do. That is what happens to me anyway. I think that is the most common way it works here. There are exceptions. Now there is a thread about what people achieve in steady earnings daily. You are way out of the ball park according to the concensus in that thread. Nobody is pushing one method or another there either. I do a rolling average of performance over a three year period just to be able to know what to expect. I know you compare monthly with your colleagues as a good and different way to know what's cooking. I was never able to understand how I was doing from one of my monthlies. I do use dailies in futures just to see how much I have rolling along, though. I reflected on your posts after I was weekending. I'm drawing a blank on which of the four methods I suggested was the one you thought I was jambing down your throat. If anything i was just interested if you did any work to advance your learning curve. No need to respond to me; I gather that you are going to switch from one futures to another for protection and other reasons related to getting to an easier place to make money. You can see from the posts here why 4 out of 5 people don't cotton to the stuff I post. Can you imagine what it would be like if someone added to their stuff somethings I suggested?
>>>If I were wiped out apart from $2k, and if commissions were dirt cheap, if I had zero living and eating costs, and if I could get a FREE charting service from a friend (otherwise the charting service alone would eat up the yearly profits), I could possibly turn the $2000 into $4000-$5000 in a year (under normal, non-bubble market conditions)... an excellent % return, but hardly enough to live off... the point I am making here is that there would be too much effort for too little absolute $ return.<<< Thats the best answer in a nutshell. Even at 100% return, you will only increase your account by 2 grand in 12 months. By the way, if you were wiped out except for your last 2k, what makes you think you can turn around now? Have a plan? Did you backtest it? Any money management techniques? If no to the above well, just send me a check for the 2k, hell, I'll even take you out to lunch!
You know, - huh - that is 100% pure truth, without any shadow of a doubt. I'm sure all ET members, our true trading brothers will agree. If you could *just* help us a little bit here... how to make above 3 pts on ES? That will be $150 or just 3% from $5k account, 60% monthly, without compounding - just 720%/year, not the super-duper returns attempted by many.
Take a look at a 15 min chart of the 10yrs Notes future: seen the last two days, you could be close to doubling your capital... How? By riding intraday trends; committing towards a good trading plan and proper money management. Trading plan and money management are more meaningful to make money than large starting capital. alberto
By the way, the answer to this question is positive, there is a way...from another angle....There are brokers out there making 3 digits dollars on each of many $2000 account each month. No More.