It has been helpful for me to look at the day structure at the beginning of the trading day. Today we had a significant gap opening from yesterday’s RTH close and the gap did not fill in the first 30 minutes. This was confirmation of a trend day. I’ve found that it’s never good for me to fight against the trend. I’m not sure if this will be helpful for you, but identifying the trend early on has really helped. Best wishes for tomorrow.
I’ve been enjoying your thread. I’m loving the NQ. I’m up 22.7% or $680 on a $3k account in 2 weeks. Hope you continue to do well.
BIG ANNOUNCEMENT. I am done for the day and the week. And I am done with the experiment. I have proven that by trading carefully and with the appropriate risk, a trader can incrementally make amazing strides in any kind of market, both regular and Trump Tweet & Tariff-Infested markets. The last few days have been extremely choppy for me, as you can see, but the overall average growth ended up at 1.9% per day, for a total gain of $961 over 36 trading days. Assuming consistent growth and 125 trading days in 6 months, I would have ended up with just over $10,000 in 6 months. I am stopping the experiment early because I have decided to FOCUS on the E-minis now, and here is why: I am about to have my LeeLoo account funded -- finally. I have been trying to get to the $9000 mark on the 15 contract trial for literally 6 months now, and I am just about there. I am close to $8,000. I don't want to blow it again, like I have many times with both OneUp/MES and then LeeLoo. No joke, I was a funded trader on OneUp/MES 5 different times in the last 2 years! Assuming I make it, this will be my first live account on LeeLoo. And I need to FOCUS to make sure it doesn't end up like my many other OneUp/MES live accounts. My time here with you has been really good for me to prove to myself that consistent, disciplined growth is both possible and required. And while I will not be trying to get 2% growth per day with LeeLoo, I think scaling up to 15 contracts is ultimately possible. Knowing that I was going to report to you made me think twice about certain trades!!! My original publicly stated goal with this journal was to show that new traders or beat-up traders with SMALL accounts could trade the new CME Micro E-mini's starting with as little as $500, and then GROW that small account into something AWESOME. I wanted people to see that they did NOT need to get into the combine mill at TST, OneUp, LeeLoo, E2T, and many other funding companies. With most of them, the expectation - if done in 2 months- is over 4% growth PER DAY to succeed in the combines. If done in one month, it is 9% per day on OneUp and LeeLoo. This is insane. And expensive, because 95%+ of people will fail - many times. I have spent over $8000 on TST, OneUp and LeeLoo. One study (cited elsewhere in this journal) showed people on TST spent over $2,000 each. People should take that $2,000 and trade the Micros. I am convinced that if I had not done the combines, but instead started trading with the micros with just $1,000 (as I have done here) and produced another $1000 (as I have done here), then I would have saved a ton of cash and would be completely independent because I could have kept it going. Please note that my bailing on this account and journal to go to LeeLoo is not hypocritical after all I just said. I have been funded 5 times before. And I started this journal AFTER I started with LeeLoo. And I have been trading for 13 years. As I said, I don't think NEW traders should trade any funding company, but instead trade the Micros. Summary: (1) While cut short, the experiment was a glowing success. (2) If you are still struggling as a trader, do not go to a funding company. (3) Trade on sim until you are consistently profitable. (4) Open a live account with AMP or another broker with low fees (not GAIN) and trade ONE micro MES, MNQ, or MYM contract at a time until you are consistently profitable on your own live account. (5) Grow that account by increasing the number of micro contracts with each extra $500 in profits. (6) Change to the E-minis once you get to $5,000 or $10,000 and then start over with the small, consistent growth. (7) Smile as you watch your bank account grow. It was a pleasure sharing my time with you. I really appreciated all the suggestions and encouragement. Success to all, and TRADE WELL.
I thought you did fantastic and I watched your thread. Too bad you are stopping but I understand. Other things to do. Bigger things to do. In trading one has to be focused. Almost all my mistakes trading are made when I lose my focus. Happy trading the emini's. Do come back and let us know how the emini trading is going. Thank you for your time and I think you proved your points. The micro's do offer an opportunity for a new trader with a small account.
Great summary, but one quick question. Do you not think that jumping to the full contract right away is too much of a jump? You were trading 2 micros, but going to 1 mini is 5 times more! I count 6 losing days out of 36 trading days, which is excellent, but it tells us nothing about how many losses you had in a row. Imagine 3 or 4 back to back losing trades with a full contract. Now you're down maybe $500 or more with the way you have been trading. Now don't get me wrong, I think you have shown excellent resilience, but still, the full contract is a huge jump. With these micros, its very easy to now go in with 4 contracts, double what you were trading before with 2. Heck, even going to 6 and this being triple is a big jump. But 5 times more risk can be damaging if you hit a snag in the first few days. You are absolutely right though that these micro contracts should make any trader consider this is a far better option than any of these funded account/combine schemes. Since they only became available in May though, it would have been impossible for you to have gone down any other route. I do hope you give us updates though as I have really enjoyed your journal.
I did have several losses in a row, and so your concerns are valid. However, I will not be trading the E-mini on a $1500 account. That is a mistake I will not repeat. I tried that probably 25 times in the past 13 years. I have lost a LOT of money, more than I will ever publicly admit. This is what I will be doing: After graduating to a funded account at LeeLoo next week (I hope!), I will start with just one contract at time, the very same way I did it with the micros. The daily stop loss is $4,000 and the max account loss is $5,000. I will be tightening up my max stop to $100, so if I really, really blow it, I can still lose 40 trades in a row and still be alive. Of course that would be a really BAD, BAD day though. When (if) I surpass the $5,000 total profit mark, then the total max account loss will stay fixed, and my max loss will be my total profit gained. That should give me lots of breathing room if I have a bad week. So if I get to $10k profit, then I will have $10k total buffer. My average net ticks/day at the end of the micro experiment was 25 ticks. If I change nothing as I trade the E-minis then I should get 25+ ticks per day on the NQ or YM. That is $125 per day per contract traded, or $625 per week and $2,500 per month. I will add one contract per $5,000 gained, so in 6 to 8 weeks I should be up to 2 contracts and $1,250 per week and $5,000 per month. I have to pay LeeLoo 20%. So clearly I will withdraw the funds past a certain point and put them in my own live account. Once the live account surpasses the LeeLoo account in earning power, then I would shut it down - because I have learned that trading two accounts simultaneously is a recipe for disaster. Everything goes fine on the LeeLoo account until I start adding contracts- because the daily stop will always be $4000. For example, with 4 contracts, I "only" have 10 permitted losses in a row of $100. With 8, I only have 5. 10 contract would be 4 bad trades. With 15? Well, that would only be 2 bad trades allowed. So you can see that I will probably never trade past 10 contracts on the LeeLoo account. Interestingly, the only reason I paid for the 15 contract deal was to get the $4,000 daily max loss. First, I have to graduate to the live account, and I hope to do that next week. I will be happy to come back and report.
Hi sstheo,Good to see that you've done well for yourself and you're moving onto another stage of your trading journey.Wishing you more success. Is tightening up your NQ,and YM max stop to $100,which is NQ 5pts,and YM 20pts initial stop loss respectively not too aggressive,and incapable of giving your trades breathing space?
Hi Bobiz. Thanks for the well-wishes. Regarding the wiggle room, of course the lazy man in me would like a bigger stop loss, but the real trader in me knows that this is just an emergency stop. This is how I really trade-- the moment I see the market turning against me I will scratch the trade. My goal is to NOT let my emergency stop get hit. Many of my losses on the micros were tiny - like $4 or less. So with the E-mini's I plan on doing the same. My average loss should be less than $70 per contract. Of course, this kind of trading requires excellent entries. So that is the biggest challenge.