Actually, it depends on how many contracts, but if you can net 2 points/day with 15 contracts, that's $450K (assuming a 6-day trading week, starting Sunday night), pre-commission, which is enough to be in the top 1% of all US incomes. My guess would be that the top 1% of retail trader incomes would require a lot less.
Try thinking it through again by just starting with one contract and compounding. Or better still look over your past compounding records. Why did you not continue to build personal wealth?
Yes --agreed. Picking up pennies that are on the ground in a continuous fashion will make a person rich.
Why didn't you explain to logic man that he is focused on the wrong variables? Can you reason that to get to 15 contracts, there are two ways? 1. logic man saves until he gets 15 contracts. Then he trades 15 contracts and takes the profits out to spend on his lifestyle. 2. What if you and logic man could be taught to make money? Say logic man keeps saving and he trades as well. You start with just one contract to experience becomg rich in one year. He saves for another 15 contracts worth of capital and adds it to his trading. You compound by reinvesting every 30 points you make. Your additions are made on day 16, day 24, 28, 30 and 31. Then each day you add one or more contracts until you get to 240 days. As for knowledge and skills, neither of you have to do anything since you only make 2 points a day some how. It looks like a correct method hinges on compounding above all. The OP began with the CW of the world in 4 parts. Personally, I do not see any hold periods that make as little as 2 points. And as troublesome as it sounds, these things happen over 10 times a day everyday. Could both of you start thinking about figuring out how money is made?
The net 2 points don't have to all be 2-point wins. I've had wins ranging from a single tick to over 30 points in the past year. You "pick up" whatever the market decides to drop in front of you. Some day's it's a penny and other days its a crisp new hundo. Other times, it'll snag a dollar out of your wallet when you're least suspecting it.
So I buy ES at 700, with a stop below the "noise", it goes to 750 I buy more, idem with the stop, it goes to 800 I buy more... etc, etc...it goes to 1300 I buy more ES, with a stop below the "noise"... What am I doing wrong?.
You think the market has noise. What you may learn is how market volatility works. Think in terms of Gaussian distributions. Another thing you may wish to consider is extraction as a method instead of what you say you would do. consider how many trades you have been missing by the crude appraoch you are speaking about.