You CANNOT guarantee a 1 handle loss. Especially in a VIX > 40 environment. You can put all the stops you want out there, but guaranteed at some point in the day the market will gap right past them. If your funding level can't handle that, then the other poster is right, at the level you seem to be expecting to fund you might be blown out on your very first trade.
A couple of considerations. And by the way, I haven't read the thread...too many pages. First, it's not clear to me what "short term position trading" is. To me this means you may be holding a position overnight. If this is the case, you have to have at least initial margin. Right now that's $6188. Second, at some brokers (Interactive Brokers for example), you will need overnight margin just to daytrade. Again, that's $6188. So if you're an overnight trader, OR, if you have an account at IB, you need a minimum of $6188, plus whatever amount you want to cover losses. But here's another issue: some brokers are out there that may well let you trade with less intraday margin. So in the first few posts I see guys talking about taking $100 risk. To me, this is bull. This is a very volatile market right now. $100 per contract on the ES is only 2 points. I think using a stop like that is just asking to get yourself chopped up. If all you got is $5K....forget about trading ES. You need more. I wouldn't do it with less than $10K, and frankly, I would advise you that you really need to start with more...maybe $20K. $20K does a couple of things for you: it gives you some room to set a reasonable stop given today's volatility. And it also gives you some room to take the inevitable losses and still have ample margin to continue. OldTrader
Im going to say this again. There are many discount futures firms that will alow you to trade 10+ contracts with 5k. That is not the point. Simulator world is a lot different from the real world. I personally hate the mini SP. I am sure it is no better or worse than say the the mini nq or ym. Just my preference with the other 2 if I am doing the US markets. I say go ahead find one of the discounts and open an account. 5k is great for 1 contract but if you have more great. Be conservative and gauge your real world performance.
It is definatley a business that im interested in. It takes a great deal of commitment to dedicate that much time to a particular part of your life and I do understand what you mean. Its the same for any successful business person no matter what business your in. This business has such shitty stats for the amount of winners to losers because any joe blow at all can fund an account and hit the markets. That isnt what im going to do in anyway. sorry for any typos in advance, im on my blackberry.
All about the risk. You're leveraged 10:1 with just $5k. Too stupid for words. 2 points on es is 0.21%, and on your account is 2% lost. about 10:1 leverage. A stupid amount for someone so inexperienced. No one need listen to me. I'm only half way through the cfa curriculum.
Are you kidding? 1 contract per 50k? One of the attractions to trading futures is the lower capital requirements. That's like saying you can only trade 50 shares SPY with 50k. Why bother?