<sigh> I'm clearly outnumbered in this thread. I'll be posting in the PnL thread from this point forward if anyone cares to watch me fail in the long run. Read: im done in this thread, leaving for a memorial day BBQ now. Going to take a swim to wash the ET hater off of me.
Actually, going from one car to two is easy. One can implement different strategies that allow for less stress. One I particularly like is taking out half the profit at a designated target (generally between 2 and 3 points and trailing the other half with a stop at 1/4 profit to cover the fee. This way you get your 2 points on 1 car and let the second car ride to either a stop of 1/4 or another couple of points. BTW I found this particular strategy to work very well when moving further up the game. Once you get some experience under the belt (3 to 5 years) and some capital to pile up contracts, the money does grow nicely.
Well, the reality is my being a site sponsor here had little to do with drumming up business. First of all, this is an environment not conducive to that. Talked about that enough before, no need to belabor the dead horse. Secondly, the people who got rich from the gold rush, found gold. The storekeepers who sold picks and shovels made a living. They did not get rich... all the mines out west are named after the finders and founders of the mines you can tour today. The storefront owner who sold supplies and goods has long since been forgotten. Lastly, I'm not picking on you or anyone specifically. My point is this: how about promoting reality instead of fantasy? I see you are trading with Ninja software by the look of that dome snippet. Me too. Here's what we can both do. Starting tomorrow, we can post snapshots of our trading day from the Control Center > Executions window. In the random example attached, note how the "accounts" column between commission and connection is blocked from full view. Just show the first digit in your account there... that way it shows everyone that real money was traded, not sim or replay. I'll post up my results each day this week... just like that. Can you think of any reasons why we both can't do the same? Not a contest or anything, I hope you out-earn me every day. Just keeping it real to show the days where gold was gleaned or iron pyrite filled the pans. Real money trading results... guaranteed
whatever you are losing now on your bad days as an avg, when you can afford to lose twice that, go to 2 contracts,or wait and as your acct grows ,you will have become a bettter trader and trade larger because you have learned to manage losses,and then you will increase and decrease your size according to the tradeable information you are seeing on your screen because you have learned how to percieve risk and reward,in this volatility you should be making 3 times what you made in feb still trading one contract,you wait for a trade to setup, you take it, instead of moving 2 1/2 -3 points its 6-10,i'm of the opinion that you should reduce your size and number of trades here because its easier to give it back, this strategy has worked great for the last 4 weeks
No hate here and not looking for you to fail. Assuming that you can generate your stated results why are you limiting yourself? I am serious about you having a documented one year track record trading real money and setting up a hedge fund. Why hold yourself back making thousands per week when it could be a million plus?
Yes but you have to take into account the contract's true value is really worth about $55,000 so in reality he is only making a 300 to 500% return on investment annually . Also as long as one does not hold through the cme maintenace period, you can trade on 300-500 margin per contract in es.
How long have you been averaging 60 to 100 points per week ? What was you weekly average when the vix was at 16 and we had 6 point range days ?
These are questions that should have been asked earlier... As far as 1 or 2 I think trading 1 is psychologically harder than 2 (or more) as there is constant regret leaving points behind with 1. May be better therefore to trade 2 NQ than 1 ES even though NQ more volatilte point-wise. Or trade something even smaller.. Point is to break your 1 ES into 2.
I agree. Just trading 1 forces you to either cut profits early or risk having a winner turn into a loser trying to catch a larger move. This will often wreak havoc on a trader mentally. I have always been a fan of starting with 2 contracts and scaling out once you have mastered the platform you are working with.
This is advice for Baywolf but the OP could use this technic too: Here is a solution for this kind of problem, there was a trader who actually used it here a few years ago: Have a partner, wife, internet buddy, who trades with you, using your signals but with more contracts. The point is that you don't know if your signals are traded with 3-5 or even 10 contracts or they are traded at all. i know, there is a danger that the partner will go heavy on a losing streak, thus accumulating a big loss, but it can be prevented just to go easy until there are profits to lose from. Since you claim to be a consistant winner, your partner could start out using 2-3 contracts first, then after 1-2 weeks moving up. Then you guys share the profits. The trick would be that you never really know how many contracts are used with your signal and if I were you I would do the summary/profitsharing only at the end of the week, so less information is aviable for you... P.S.: If it is an internet partner, there would be days, when he isn't even trading, so again, you could just focus on your own trading and giving the signals.