12/5/2019: Taxable Acct: Trade Zero ============= Realized gain: $676.63 ============= Taxable Acct: IB ============= Realized gain: $1421 ============= Shorted CL futures. Made $1421 on just a couple of lots. Ran out of margin. IB margins are too high. ROFL. Wanted to trade NQ too but ran out of margins on IB. Traded DWT. While I made money on it($676.63), I missed out on some monster trades AUPH, DLTH, because I ran out of buying power! Wished I had more buying power!
If you trade only futures, (and FOP), look into AMP Global. You know, you could also just have two brokers...AMP for futures, and IB for all the other bits you trade.
I use IB to trade futures(but their margins are quite high). For my account size, they only let me trade 2 lots of CL. CL margins were really low in the past. Not sure what happened. NQ margins are high in IB IRA account too! I use Robinhood(equities & options), TradeZero, and Merrill Edge for equities trading.
If the only thing you use IB for is futures trading, you are possibly on a bad path. There is no reason to stick with them. Use a discount broker for futures if you are conservative with your risk. IB assumes you will be a ragged warrior overlevering on every trade. Don't be that person. And don't trade GC!
I've been with IB for so long. I guess I can look into other brokers for futures trading with better rates and lower margins requirements. I stopped using IB for equities every since I signed up for Tradezero and MerrillEdge. Hard to beat $0 commission. I have IB Pro by default. I've made money trading NQ and CL. GC, I made some then proceed to lose it. It's such a strange animal. I stopped trading GC but I have indirect exposure with a gold stock that I've been holding for months. It's my long term position trade with gold exposure. I don't even look at that stock. It went down when GC went down then proceed to back up now. I just let it sit. Maybe in a year or so I'll check back in.
12/6/2019: Taxable Acct: Trade Zero ============= Realized gain: $402.7 ============= Taxable Acct: IB ============= Realized gain: $459 ============= Non-Taxable Acct: IB IRA ============= Realized gain: $765 ============= Reshorted CL_F (crude oil futures) today. Got in a little early on the way up. Should have waited for confirmation. But still ended doing fine on that short. But would have made a lot more had I was just more patient. Especially with mean-reverting countertrend trades. Gotta pick your spot very carefully. Then made a little on GLD options today. In TradeZero, traded DWT again. Made a little. Should have been more patient with the entries. But excellent exits. Exited right before the pullback. While not a superday on any individual account, across these 3 acounts total was $1626.70. Not bad. Gotta keep improving to hit the $5K/day target.
12/6/2019: Addendum Taxable Acct: IB ============= Realized gain: $562 ; added another $103 trading NQ the last few minutes ============= Got out of all of my other positions and freed up some margin to play a little NQ action at the close. Made $103 additional. It was close to $200 but didn't close out. Gave back some open profits and closed everything at $103 with 7 minutes to the close. lol. Not bad. It was on 3 lots too! I'm slowly upping my size on NQ up to IB margins(which is super high). But I'm Ok with it since IB is a safe broker. Don't want high risk fly-by-night operators with $500 margins on NQs. haha
12/9/2019: Taxable Acct: Trade Zero ============= Realized gain: $128.30 ============= Taxable Acct: IB ============= Realized gain: $1009 ============= Non-Taxable Acct: IB IRA ============= Realized gain: $656 ============= Traded $NG_F late last night. At one point, I was up like $2K across both IB accounts. I'm thinking to myself. This is cool. Up $2k on a Sunday night! But I didn't get out. I waited thinking it will be higher. It pulled back a little then I lightened up. This morning I sold the rest. So gave up like $400 in search of higher profits. When it came back to the lows, I should have reloaded. It's a bit frustrating that now I finally achieved some sort of consistency that IB margins are so high. I only got in 8 lots across 2 accounts. On a less restrictive broker, I could have gotten in like over 50 lots. I mean I don't know if I would actually bought that many. But this was an extreme gap down and then reversed. One of my favorite and most reliable pattern. And the most I could get in was 8 puny lots in IB. I'm OK with it now since I think it's important to be superconsistent and respect risk management. But to hit my $5k/day goal needs more rethinking. I like to keep 4 separate accounts rather than consolidate all of my accounts into 1 big account for risk management purpose. It's a form of self restraint. What happens if I loaded it up and I'm wrong then it would be a big hit. Then on TradeZero, I traded/scalped UGAZ. It was for peanuts. Then later the day, it broke out a little but I was afraid to get in. I'm not a breakout trader. I like to buy BEFORE the breakout and hold until it break out and then sell during the up move. Something I sell and it goes higher and higher and I just scaled out. It's just psychological. I don't know if I should work to change my psychology around breakout trading?? What do you guys think? But the way I trade now I have like 70%-80% win rate. I know breakout trades have much smaller win rate like <30%, but they can have potentially really big winners. Some people might say stick with what works. Sure. I agreed to that but I also want to add more styles to my toolkit. I see some of these crazy stocks that breakout and go up 50%-100% INTRADAY! Sometimes even more than 100% intraday moves! I haven't been able to participate in those big movers because they are outside my comfort zone. I have a system and set of habits that works and I can easily crank out over a $1K/day now. Sometimes up to $2K+. So should I just be patient and scale up with my current style. Or should I test with small # of shares(100 share) new styles that can potentially be added to my toolkit. It's like adding a new productline. Though I do like my consistency. I'm positive every single day last week. And on most week, I'm only down one day a week or so. Hmm..
Every week you got a decent pay check, way to go! That is certainly CONSISTENCY. And you trade multiple instruments , Future index, stock, options, all wining over them, that shows you have winning systems that performed in a consistent way too!