Well in three weeks I graduate from law school and its time for new endeavours. I spent the two years prior to law school as a proprietary equity trader at schonfeld securities. When I started I was immediately 14 cents per share gross profitable within a week. When I finished it had become a slow dull grind to make a measly just under 2. So I cut my loss (in a time sense I was making money) and took a scholarship to lawschool. My well-off grandparents have asked me to trade/invest their smallest brokerage accounts which they assured me they can afford to lose and after checking their financial statement they're not joking. I'm currently helping them setup a FFA account at IB with me as advisor. The master is setup and I'm getting live quotes. My plan is to put 80% or so of the account into stocks and bonds. And swing trade 15% or so if I see opportunities. And use the remaining 5% to start trading e-minis. I plan to paper trade at least a month till I can see if I have some edge. My style at schonf. was basically to try to guess the market and pick stocks that looked like they were about to follow. I used a hard/soft stop system with a get out rule at the hard stop and try to work out at the soft stop. I plan to start at 1 contract and increase by 1 for every 2500 in trading profits up to 10 contracts then 5000 to 20 then 10,000 beyond that presuming I get that far. Also a 10k maximum learning drawdown. So I'm going to start posting the paper trades and then live trades so people can make constructive suggestions and so I can monitor myself. And quit if its no longer useful.
It was difficult trading as I studied for the bar and my cousin got married last week. I paper traded for awhile however I was getting bored as the account at IB took a month and a half to finally transfer. I made eight trades over five days for a point and a quarter. I found it hard to accurately judge the distance of move. I found it harder to be selective on futures then stocks since the moves seem so much greater. Friday I discovered I was trading the wrong contract which explained why my tape reading seemed completely off. So next week I hope the septembers go better.
Traded 3 days for 5 trades this week for 2.75. So 13 trades so far for 4 points total. Tape reading with the correct contract is much easier.