30K in futures commissions, by my rough reckoning: If you are trading micros you did approx 30000 micro contracts. If you are trading minis then you did approx 7500 mini contracts. Those are not low volumes in my book. I would expect to be netting six figures at least when trading 7500 mini contracts per year. If you are only netted 25K then you over traded by at least 10x. Yes, it depends on strategy and maybe some people are happy netting $3 dollars for every contract traded, because they trade 100K+ contracts per year, but I don't recommend trading that way..
You daytrade futures contracts and beat the S&P on a risk-adjusted basis for a multi-year horizon and with a good size notional (e.g. minimum 100K profit a year)?
The fact that you think its $4 round trip makes me wonder if you actual trade futures. I never said 25K is what I net a year. I used this year as an example, which I should have taken out as it is not the point. The point is the extreme cost of doing business and from a utility perspective day trading to beat the S&P 500 can almost never make sense. You need so much capital to actually care about the additional profit above the S&P and if you have that much capital, you don't need to be doing it. When you say you "would expect to be netting six figures", you are referring to opportunity cost I assume. That's the point though isn't it? If only the most elite can beat the S&P on a risk-adjusted basis in a multi-year time frame by day trading futures, from a hourly rate perspective it generally cannot be justified. You have to get quite a bit over the S&P before you can justify your time and you need a lot of capital to make it worth your time. I enjoy doing it, but I wouldn't recommend anyone getting into futures trading unless they have the extra capital and just enjoy doing it.
Since I have end of day trading systems that I use futures for, perhaps its 20K on day trading futures. I don't have it split out. But my point was related to cost of doing business, which I think still applies.
I am paying around $4 to AMP per round trip for trading e-mini index futures. That includes exchange fees and clearing etc. This is the 'index futures' section of ET. Maybe you are paying more for trading metal futures? As for beating the S&P, as a day trader I can't beat the S&P that's for sure. The S&P/ES made over 1000 points this year. I can't do that as a day trader. But I do have access to very high leverage. As a leveraged futures trader if you can make 200 ES points a year with 100 contracts = $1M a year. That's just one style of day trading, I would hope swing traders holding overnight and over many days would be able to net way more than 200 pts per year though...
Tl;dr If you want real time market data to be consumed by a human you need to throttle it. Or aggregate it. Pretty much unusable otherwise. That's why computers do it all
You don't need to beat the S&P on a risk adjusted basis daytrading futures. You employ Nassim Taleb's barbell strategy where the vast majority of your money is in safe investments, then you YOLO on daytrading futures trying to run up your account. That's what Trader Tom does. He puts a tiny amount into his account and does blow up, but he then reloads his account. His risk-adjusted return is worse than the S&P since he has blown up several times, but he has had a 1,000% day (i.e., 100x return). I recommend everyone to get into futures trading. 1. No pattern daytrading rule 2. You have the obvious tax benefit of 60% daytrading gains being taxed at long term capital gains. 3. You have access to insane leverage: only $500 to trade one ES and $1000 for one NQ thus it is very capital efficient so you don't need to fund your account with $20,000.
Interesting point on the goal not needing to be beating the S&P on risk adjusted basis as I only daytrade futures on the side and have a passive portfolio and a portfolio with end of day triggered trading systems. So it's the total risk profile I should be looking at, not isolated. I'll look into this more for sure. Appreciate the point. Yes, Agree with the 3 benefits you list (e.g. no pattern day trading, etc.)