Is risk of ruin a concern? Let's go the other way. Is 25k enough? or 20, 15 or 10k? Can we agree that the chance of success in meeting his goal goes down with less starting capital and increases with more starting capital. I chose 100k because I am conservative. One that has any trading "skill" at all should be comfortable trying for a 24%/yr return without an unnecessary fear of ruin. As to 200k, you could just about put your money in an index fund to meet his goal and for 500k, put it in a CD. Joe.
I think you should take into concideration that the issue of "making a living " far outweighs the risk of ruin. Slowly draining a 100k account doesn't sound like "making a living" to me and neither does putting 500k in credit deposits. What it really comes down to is the ability of the trader. Three contracts have a market value of roughly 200k, an amount that can theoretically be traded by someone with a 6k account. Earning 24% on 200k could be called "earning a living", depending what your goals are. The 30k initial deposit would provide for a 80% drawdown until "earning a living" is no longer possible. I'd personally go for an intial deposit of 15k to determine if he makes the cut. Losing 9k is enough money to tell him that he doesn't.
There are some serious psychological barriers imho when it comes to trading bigger size. Most traders can easily handle 1 to 10 contracts at a time. After that it becomes tricky. I personally panicked when 20 lots were at play and had to scale back to half that in order to control my emotions. So having 100K or 300 or 500 would not make a difference for me, since I would still trade as if I had 30K. As for making it with 30K. difficult but doable if you have the experience and everything else put together. I know I guy who averages 4K a week with 25K capital week after week.
My brother in law makes 3-400 daily trading crude oil with a 15k account, so spare me the bullshit. So far its been two years now steady. If he were to get blown out, he does have back up capital to put more in, so he has confidence but he always sweeps everything out over 15k. So I now believe most people on ET are losers and the people that say 30k in a futures account is not enough probably never had that in their account anyway. My brother in law never posts on here either, I just thought it was ridiculous to ask advice on here, and then some of these guys come on here like gurus. I turned 5k into 75k got cocky gave most of it back as I started adding way more contracts then I should be trading and now, I only keep 20k in my account just to keep me in control. This is me of course. So can it be done with 30k? Answer yes very easily because your not going to go all in and leverage the whole amount. It should be there for some back up when there are draw downs. I wont go on and on, because some asshole will post and call me names and tell me Im full of shit. By the way we trade through mirus futures in Chicago and we get $500.00 margin on the CL so thats also is a factor in only trading with 15-20k. Again though please dont respond to me negatively as I will not reply and more than likely tell you to go F**CK yourself. I know what I draw every Friday and I dont have another job I live off of this.
You know me, I thought this thread would have fireworks and it didn't dissapoint. To be honest though, the few people that aren't full of $hit and know the real deal I didn't expect to show up. I'm very glad they showed up because I was starting to believe I would need a few billion to make a living trading based on some $hit I've read on here. Thanks for those of you that prove you don't need a fortune to do well in the markets.
Fuggin A. At least it took him some time, he could have lost that much in a week perhaps. Thanks for the update.
Yup, he was doing ok until he decided to hold for overnight one day before the big 500 point down day on the DOW