Hello ET people, I've been a long time lurker and have absorbed tons of info from this site. In the next few weeks I am going to be trading futures for real(as opposed to on paper). The thing is, I have been trading a successful strategy on Thinkorswim and I understand it is not very accurate when it comes to fills. Even if I were to make 50% of what I have on TOS, I would still be doing fine but the problem I have is I don't really know what the best platform would be for me. I love TOS's but obviously I would be better off somewhere else. I have tried Ninja Trader and am not a big fan. Does anyone have any other suggestions, i.e. Tradestation, IB, etc? I am going to be trading one lot to start. I am hoping to take what I have learned here i.e., keep emotions in check, cut your losses quickly, and follow my system to a T to ensure I do not make irrational moves. I should be OK if I do that. Although I can support more than one lot at this time, I will not scale up until I've proven I can do this for real. Wish me luck. PS, my strategy has been on the TF, but it works just as well if not better on ES. I'm planning on starting on ES since it seems to be a bit less volatile than the TF. Any thoughts? Thanks IB
damn thats cool u might want to try to trade the S&P500 if you find the ES to be too highly leveraged...immediately after you buy or sell 1 contract of the ES your automatically down $12.50 due to the spread.
$12.50 wow. it that like, a lot of money? and if you buy on the bid you're not even down that go for it, if the worst you do is lose 12.50, I've give you 1 million to trade
Hello I'mbatman, you fly planes, thats cool, the big ones ??? you must be pretty smart guy, hä ??? Then trading should be no problem for you ??? WRONG i give you a few advices: -> do not try daytrading or even scalping. go a little bit longer, its easier in the beginning. -> trade the first 100 trades with real money only with the smallest volume that is possible. After that you will see, how you do in REAL MONEY trading. If youre good, you can leverage up. The most beginners fail by overtrading (= too high leverage, risk). Interactive Brokers is a good plattform. I dont like Ninja trader, too (i think its so unhandy). You can use Meta Trader4 as a beginner, use MB Trading for that, they are not scam you. Test a few different plattforms on different brokers if you like, try their demos and decide what is the easiest one for you. Good luck
Turn back now, before you even begin. This new road that you want to take, you don't want to take. You think it leads to paradise and bliss and wealth. But, it has the opposite of all those things as its destination. Turn back now, before you even begin, lest you end up like Jesse Livermore and Nicolas Darvas --- men who made millions, if not billions (in todays dollars) in the stock market, lost them all, and then went on to commit suicide. You'll cast your whole body into Hades all the time that you are trading live, then by the time you want your body and health back, it's already too late. The Devil has most, if not all of your soul. That's when you lose your superfluous fortune and commit suicide.
What a CROCK! There are so many losers on this forum, don't listen to them. Just because they cant trade they try to tell you that you cant. I have never studied anything, I have never backtested at all but I have been trading about 12 years and I started with real money...$600.00 and have never paper traded in my life. Most the losers on here will say it cannot be done, but when I started I was with Ameritrade and they did not even have a trading platform then. And I still made money. If you have a system that works for you, dont listen to all the negative losers on this forum. Just go for it and do what you know how to do. Everyone's style is different so do what works for you. You wont learn much coming to this site but it's awful entertaining. If you could see the real P& L form most the people here I bet you would see 9 out of 10 losers or people who have never traded with real money in their life. Dont let the fools discourage you, as there is plenty of money to be made!
$12.50 isn't alot of money by itself but every little bit counts and it starts to add up my point was that the ES is highly leveraged and if he's starting out it might be better to start out smaller by trading the S&P500 index