Ignore the naysayers! They are just jealous! They wish they could go back and start over from where you are! But with the knowledge they have now.
Sounds like you are looking to intraday trade, either swing or scalp. If your looking to swing, you account isnt big enough to withstand drawdown, and you will blow out your account before you have the chance to learn anything. If you are looking to scalp then join a no deposit prop firm, or one that requires like a 5000 deposit with 10-1 leverage. They might charge for platform fee and entitlements, plus you are going to need a decent chart package like eSignal. This will give you around $50000 Buying Power. Based on a stock that is trading around $13.50, You can trade up too 3500 shares at a clip. Trade stocks cheaper than $15.00 for now. Start by trading the most liquid NYSE stocks i.e BAC or GE or PFE. Start with 100 shares. Make mistakes and learn from them. But by trading US equities, where you trade can small size and also get rebates for posting liquidity, you can stretch your hard earned "tuition" dollars, allowing you to overcome the learning curve. Forget futures for now.
Dtrader85, you are on a roll so far. You have come to the best trading discussion board on the web, bar none. Once here, you chose exactly the right formum to post in. Your next decision is much harder: you must choose to ignore all negativity you encounter here. And I will help you find ET's positive places. Go to the search function and search on poster Jack Hershey. Go back as far in his posting history as there is. He also at one time posted as Grob109. Concentrate on his posts about daytrading ES. Do not attempt to absorb what he says, merely sample his early posting. Form a gestalt in your mind of his approach. Then search on poster Spydertrader. Find his threads on the Hershey ES method, starting about two years back. Or simply PM him and ask for a link, Todd is a very helpful fellow, tell him I sent you. A veritable howling shitstorm will follow my post. Ignore it. There is nothing better on ET about ES than Hershey. Ignore the bilious criticisms that invariably accompany Jack's posts. They come from jealous anklebiters who attempt to stymie with all their devious talent the hope of riches that Jack offers to all who have the courage to believe. Go for it!
whilst I enjoy reading his posts prior to contemplating zen koans, i have heard the Hershey guy was sprung from his nicely padded, sparkling white room by someone he had convinced through his circumlocuitious reconstitutued feces that he could make them millions. not sure if it happened, but to appease Arthur's wish for windblown turds, http://www.tradersnarrative.com/jack-hersheys-incomprehensible-method-971.html one of the problems with the OP is that he has only paper traded, which is often nothing like live trading regarding fills. until they get their executions down, the slippage would slowly devour their account if trading spreads. depending on the type of trading they are doing, it would be much easier to scale out (or in) trading SPY instead as one ES is the equivalent of 500 SPY and the liquidity is equally there with SPY IF they are trading size. from my experience, getting in with a prop is the best way to learn as i have had accounts with retail intraday oriented gigs like Cybertrader (r.i.p.), Tradestation, and IB and I learned much more in one month with a prop than 7+ years with the others and their mini e-seminars or whatever. Yeh, books are great too but hands on trading with people that are consistently profitable is hard to beat. may be subjective relating to how one best learns but IMHO, learning with a prop is the best way to go unless you have a buddy that kills it and is willing to let you hang around as he trades and answer your questions but then, you wouldn't be posting on here if you did.
Forewarned is forearmed: asking ETers how to trade is generally akin to asking Elmer Fudd how to hunt rabbit. Be vewwy vewwy careful.
Futures are much better to trade especially with Jack's method. The benefit being is that you can make money all day long. Only after you are trading over 100 contracts, switch to stocks for longer term returns.
This is very typical beginner mentality. Let me give you a couple of cents, since I am in a good mood today. " a few weeks" means nothing. paper trading means almost nothing. 'determination' and 'necessary work' means almost nothing as well. this is the reason most people on this forum are still endlessly struggling, hoping that someday they might get it. there is NO short cut in trading... it will take years of observing the market to feel it's breath. So, save your 7 grand. just trade 10-100 shares of anything... SPY, individual stocks, whatever, doesn't matter. Notice I say 10-100 shares, you need to trade a size that is big enough for you to feel the emotion, and small enough not to hurt the account. Now, go get a regular job, make your 35k/year salary.... then, at lunch break or at night, look at a bunch of charts. SPY, QQQQ, EEM (and/or individual country ETFs, EWZ, EWC, EWA). Ask yourself - - How do they follow each other? - Which is realatively stronger/weaker? - what is the driving force of the current swing? - what is the reaction to the last swing? - is the current swing running out of steam? - how strong / weak is the current reaction compared to the last swing? - who are the players in this market? mutual funds, hedgies, individuals? - what are bulls feeling at this moment? how would a bear feeling at this moment? - what would happen if market makes the next move? how would bulls/bears react? - and finally, what are you gonna do about it? This looks overwhelming in the beginning, but with practice it becomes 2nd nature and you really only need 5 minutes a day to plan / execute your next move. This is the best chance for a newbie to succeed. It requires some effort, but no need to over sweat it. You need to work it smart.. go with the flow as you identify the flow with a reasonable level of confidence. You need to experience the swing cycles a few dozen times.. and a few years later you may just get the hang of it. Looking at the P/L thread, I can't believe so many people throw away golden years of their working life, churning commission for the prop house, while making peanuts everyday... you might as well go flipping burgers. Don't be one of them. A regular day job takes the pressure off trading, give you cushions when you screw up (inevitably during your early years). Heck, if you just average down during the last bear (by dollar cost averaging), you'd have done better than most of the ETers here by now... assuming you have a regular job to generate funds to do a crude method like DCA. Trading is not difficult... it takes time, and the right approach, which means understanding of market participants, and participants emotions, and their likely course of actions. Most of the people take the wrong approach. They think they are onto something.... indicators, Gann, Fib, market profile, Elliot wave, blah blah. These so-called traders keep living in a stratosphere and will never succeed.. because all that stuff is just randomness. Don't fall into that trap.
1. Avoid futures. 2. You won't be able to day-trade stocks without going prop, given that your account is below the PDT rule minimum. 3. Read your ass off and be prepared to paper trade and watch quotes and charts for a long time. Expect at least 6 months of observation while risking almost nothing at all if you're serious about this. 4. Determine how much you can psychologically handle losing per trade (this depends on your desired time frame) -- call this R1. Determine how many times in a row you could psychologically handle losing that amount -- call this Q1. Only take trades that have a relatively high reward-to-risk ratio ("high" is obviously dependent on how often you make + trades). Always know the price where the trade would logically be invalidated before you enter a trade and size your position to risk $R1/2 when it hits that price. When you make Q1 losing trades, change that to $R1/4 for a while. 5. Prop is the best way to go if you can get into non-chop shops (a true rarity). You have the right instinct in identifying most as "boiler rooms". If you find a good place, you'll get solid exposure and an education that would otherwise take two years of observing, testing, and reading to acquire. Good luck. Trading will truly change your life, in good ways and bad. Overall, likely good if you've got a certain psychological profile -- because it's fucking awesome.