From knowing nothing about spreads to becoming quite competent and eager to trade live - takes my clients about 12-15 months. Since I started taking on client work in 2008, I've had over 150 ET Members become clients.
For me personally, my weapon of choice is to identify emergent trends confirmed by three different identifiers. In other words, the market has already flipped to a degree and I'm looking for that nice R/R level juiced to the tits by short/long puking and fresh order entry by price oriented HF's. Don't be stupid - let the deep pockets turn the market. Get aboard with them just after after they've done the really heavy lifting to turn the market. Be on the side that inflicts pain. Try to avoid the receiving side - you'll live longer, make more money, and enjoy life.
My advice would be to communicate to clients directly. I have 2 schools of clients - fund managers/CTAs and independent self-funded traders. My feedback has been exceptional but I encourage due diligence.
Just a measure of rational motivation about what to accomplish- if you can make $200 per day on average over an extended period of time - you are golden. Lever VERY slowly. Your sizing bumps should be modest enough NOT to cause you to unconsciously create feelings of doubt. Naturally, the most angst is caused from going from a one lot to a two lot (I do a lot of hand holding and late night Skype sessions with clients). Bumping from a 5 lot to a 6 lot or a 10 lot to an 11 lot is much easier. This is much easier if you have another source of income than trading - and you can give yourself the required space and time to develop. In fact, IMO that scenario is ideal for the lone wolf. This is where I seriously part company with those ET'ers who think it's mandatory to start with $100K. Bullshit. Consistency is the key. Find it however you can. Work for consistency. The worm will turn once you find it and then establish a serious position management and growth regime.
Hey @bone Can you share what a good broker/platform/datafeed combo would be for a fairly small account getting started trading spreads? I'm currently looking at a simple futures calendar spread I want to put a few contracts on but my current broker doesn't recognize margin discounts on spreads and doesn't appear to have the charting ability to just chart the spread values.
What cal? You can do simple calendars on IB without an issue but beware most of these have significant front month correlation (however the spreads are better hedged against externalities to the instrument you're trading). You might want to think about choosing a broker now such that you'll be able to trade things like flies easier in the future but it depends on how mainstream the exchange and product you're trading is. Like bone I highly recommend eSignal for any spread charting. There's no better value out there by far.
I'm looking at lean hogs, two back months. I trade a number of markets directionally, just looking for something a little different. I appreciate the advice.
When you have properly constructed and modeled a spread trade, you make an entry based upon your expectation for the delta or "spread" between the instruments to either converge or diverge. It's a game within a game.