Have you sim traded? I recommend you paper trade until you can build a track record of success. I see people all the time who are too anxious to make money and end up losing big time. Once you go live, trade with just 1 contract to get a feel for real fills. Do a couple weeks until you're consitent with that, then go 2, 4, 8, 10, 14, 18, 20. Also, don't set targets based on points or $. Once you start thinking about MONEY, you're done. Set targets based on technicals (fib extensions, retracements, ect). Feel free to visit my blog. Could help you out... http://chrisdunn.typepad.com/blog/ Chris Dunn
Using the formulas above, once you've calculated your MTE, you can calculate how many contracts you can trade based on the size of your capital. Contracts to trade = ( MTE * Capital ) / Contract Margin For example: 1) MTE = 40% 2) Capital = $20,000 3) Contract Margin = $5,000 1.6 = ( 40% * 20,000 ) / 5,000 In this case, I round down to 1.0 contract to trade.