one bad trade or event where your "stop loss" does not occur brings you alot closer to your lower number than the higher one in my opinion if you are pyramiding like that
SetrhArb, thanks for your post. My money management system calls for a REDUCTION of one contract for every drawdown of $1000 per contact.
The attached Excel sheet shows the scope of the opportunity under various conditions: average points per day being the most important, but margin requirements and trading costs are also modeled (simply). Here we scale up to a maximum of 50 contracts but the actual maximum is determined by the model. Table 1 shows the matrix of results (equity at year end) for varying average points per day and maximum contracts. You can see that at 2 points per day if you go to 50 contracts you will reach $432K equity from a starting base of 1 margin ($2.5K shown here). Also shown (not in the table) is that after 12 months you are at an annual run rate of $1.02M with your 2 points per day x 50. Table 2 shows the effect of margin on your scaling up efforts. I show a range of $1-5K margin per contract. Note that at 5K margin you top out at 16 contracts at 2pts/day average, whereas at 2.5K margin there is no real upper limit theoretically (200 contracts is achievable). The 3 charts show in order: 1. equity curve for the numbers shown 2. final equity curves for maximum contracts against average points per day (1-6 shown) 3. final equity at constant 2 pts/day average against margin per contract The model shows that you have to scale up to 22 contracts at 2.5K margin to make your 250K target (that's in 12 months). At 3K margin you have to go to 25 contracts. However, at 3.5K margin and above you cannot make it on 2 pts per day, shown in graph 3. To me, graph 2 shows where I would focus my efforts: 2 points per day is marginal - 1 bad trade at 20 contracts... Good trading to you.
I'm watching this market closely for trades. It's extremely thin but makes it interesting. Stay tuned.