twenty bites ? Are you sure ? Let's say you have 25000$ and you trade stocks, you lose 5% you are not wiped out you are just out because of PDT rules hee hee ! Just evidence. For Futures you have the margin and don't forget that authorities can modify that at will. Secondly notwithstanding what is said above, the 1%, 2% or 5% rule whatever it is has nothing to do with being professional or not, it has to do with the size of capital and the law of return that is not linear but decreasing. Doing 100% with 100000$ is much more feasible than doing 100% with 1000000$ so the relative risk is higher at equal percentage bet so you have to decrease the percentage of bet as your capital grows. Now given a capital, what must one chose 1,2 or 5% normally depends on its system not only the mean expectancy but the drawdown expectancy (statistically expectancy is not only for mean of course, expectancy of standard deviation and its variance can be calculated). So if one speaks generally the number is rather subjective or a rough order. Theorically the famous optimal f theory should give you this percentage - the problem is to calculate it in practice of course as often. Also if you think that 20 consecutives losses cannot occur you just forget a law of probability which is that it depends on the number of trials. And last but not the least you forget "accident" the unexpected that all veteran traders know can occur to them because they have either undergone it or saw some experienced fellows undergo it. And if you are a beginner your inexperience hugely increase your personal systemic risk.
Loukas: My percent profitability is a little more then 35% per system. For example how a day could look like: Stock a: -$300 Stock b: -$140 Stock c: +$1400 Stock d: No trade Future ES: -150 Future NQ: No trade Is a total of $810 profit for that day. Another day is only one trade at one stock: Stock a: -$250 Stock b: No trade Stock c: No trade Stock d: No trade Future ES: No trade Is a total of $-250 loss for that day. The beauty of the system is the way that it fits all together... Each system has a 60% chance of losing if it trade's that day. But if only one system wins that day it will make up for all the losses and at some, because my average winner is at least 4 times my average loser. With exception of the futures trading. I have made an excell sheet to demonstrate for you